Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet ‘no longer fit for purpose’
The admiral, who led the Trident value for money review in 2010, called for Britain to pull out of the multi-billion “Aukus” defence deal with America and Australia to build 12 new nuclear submarines.
SSN-Aukus is a submarine which is not going to deliver what the UK or Australia needs in terms of capability or timescale. “Performance across all aspects of the
programme continues to get worse in every dimension.”
Former Navy chief calls for ‘radical’ action to revive programme after catastrophic failures.
Tom Cotterill, Defence Editor, 06 December 2025
Britain is “no longer capable” of running a nuclear submarine programme after “catastrophic” failures pushed it to the brink, a former Navy chief has warned. In an extraordinary critique, Rear Admiral Philip Mathias said the UK’s “silent service” was facing an “unprecedented” situation that it was “highly unlikely” to recover from without a “radical” intervention. The former director of nuclear policy at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said delays in building new attack boats had reached record levels and had driven up the duration of patrols for crews from 70 days during the Cold War to more than 200 now.
This had led to the “shockingly low availability” of submarines to “counter the Russian threat in the North Atlantic”, the retired submarine commander warned. The admiral, who led the Trident value for money review in 2010, called for Britain to pull out of the multi-billion “Aukus” defence deal with America and Australia to build 12 new nuclear submarines.
“The UK is no longer capable of managing a nuclear submarine
programme,” he said. “Dreadnought is late, Astute class submarine delivery is getting later, there is a massive backlog in Astute class maintenance and refitting, which continues to get worse, and SSN-Aukus is a submarine which is not going to deliver what the UK or Australia needs in terms of capability or timescale. “Performance across all aspects of the
programme continues to get worse in every dimension.”
He added: “This is an unprecedented situation in the nuclear submarine age. It is a catastrophic failure of succession and leadership planning.” The Navy’s fleet of Astute submarines is already facing significant problems, with many having been stuck in port for years. Out of the seven planned, only
six are in service.
He also criticised the role of industry giants for
delays to programmes. He added not a single of the UK’s 23 decommissioned nuclear boats had been dismantled since the first, HMS Dreadnought, left service in 1980. “This is an utter disgrace and brings into question whether Britain is responsible enough to own nuclear submarines,” the admiral said.
Telegraph 6th Dec 2025,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/06/britains-nuclear-submarine-fleet-no-longer-fit-for-purpose/
Non-corporate nuclear-related news – week to 7 December
Some bits of good news- A roadmap for ending plastic pollution was published. Antarctica’s shrinking ozone hole ‘signals hope’. One Year Later: A Dam Removal and a River’s Rebirth, The Nationwide Movement Turning Guns into Garden Tools
TOP STORIES.What Defeat Looks Like.
Russia Dangles Business Ties To U.S. at Europe’s Expense – Kremlin pitched White House on investments and industry to end war – today’s Wall Street Journal.
Von der Leyen pushes ahead with reparations loan for Ukraine as Belgium maintains its opposition.
Trump’s AI Push May Hinge on Renewable Energy.
Climate. What’s behind the massive death toll in floods across Southeast Asia –and why it should serve as a warning. ‘Deeply disappointing’: Experts slam Cop30 for ignoring climate’s impact on food supply.
Noel’s notes. Why my work is clearly biased. The obscenity of Christmas, and how to fix it?
AUSTRALIA.
Australia’s New Censorship Is Voluntary – and That’s Why It’s Dangerous.
The Moral Hazard of Being US Deputy-Sheriff .
No fog, no war – Hegseth’s war crimes put Australian soldiers at risk.
US submarines carrying nuclear weapons could dock in Australia despite ban, Senate told.
Labor backs ‘practical’ nuclear disarmament, Wong says.
Government backflips on nuclear-capable submarines under AUKUS .
The architecture of a vassal: how US bases in Australia project power, not protection.
Follow the money – A radioactive farce of failed land purchases.
Australia’s most advanced renewable grid is its most secure, but NSW must scramble as it nears “no coal” scenario.
South Australia averages 100 pct wind and solar over week, 90 pct over last 28 days.
Solar and wind reach 100 pct of demand in biggest isolated grid, as batteries allow it to keep its thermals on.
NUCLEAR TOPICS
| ART and CULTURE. On Becoming The First Species To Go Extinct From Politeness. |
ATROCITIES.
Gaza Denied the Right to Heal: Ceasefire Fails, New ‘Green-Zone’ Plan Threatens Modern Ghettos and Collective Imprisonment. International tribunal finds Israel guilty of genocide, ecocide, and the forced starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza.
A Ceasefire in Name Only: Gaza’s Prolonged Purgatory. Amnesty: So-Called Gaza ‘Ceasefire’ becoming Smokescreen for continued Israeli Genocide
ECONOMICS.
- Europe could be on the hook for $160 billion to keep Ukraine afloat.
- UK energy bill payers will hand £2bn a year to EDF for new power stations.
- Former Heads of CIA, MI5, Mossad and CSIS Profit From Israel’s Genocide.
- Russia’s economy is not about to explode..
| EDUCATION. Educators Worry Palestine Censorship Could Reshape Public Education Entirely. |
| ENERGY. Inside the power-hungry data centres taking over Britain-ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2025/12/03/1-b1-inside-the-power-hungry-data-centres-taking-over-britain/ Use less energy : Demand-led policy scenarios show promise. |
| ENVIRONMENT. UK is running out of water – but data centres refuse to say how much they use– ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2025/12/04/1-b1-uk-is-running-out-of-water-but-data-centres-refuse-to-say-how-much-they-use/ New mini nuclear reactors are jeopardised by wildlife fears – ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2025/12/07/2-b1-new-mini-nuclear-reactors-are-jeopardised-by-wildlife-fears/ |
| ETHICS and RELIGION. A line crossed, a standard shattered. |
| EVENTS. PETITION, No solutions for nuclear waste – no new nuclear power plants!Week of Protest sees 100 Actions Demanding No War with Venezuela |
| HEALTH. ‘A New Form of Genocide’: Gazans Feel Little Relief from Israeli Strangulation Since the Ceasefire. |
| HUMAN RIGHTS.Outrage after footage of Israeli soldiers executing two Palestinians in Jenin goes viral.After Canadian Police Raid Homes, Six Peace Activists Face Charges. |
| LEGAL.Together Against Sizewell C (TASC)’s new legal challenge against Sizewell C’s secret flood defences. Legal Experts Accuse Hegseth of ‘War Crimes, Murder, or Both’ After New Reporting on Boat Strike Order. Hegseth ‘Responsible’ for ‘Murder’: Family Files Formal Complaint Over Killing of Colombian Fisherman. First strike on small, unarmed boat off Venezuela, not second, makes Trump and Hegseth war criminals. Microsoft Faces Reckoning for Assisting Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. |
MEDIA. Earth’s Greatest Enemy, the second feature film project by Abby Martin, is a groundbreaking anti-imperialist environmental documentary –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rphBWk15_h4
MAGA media scramble to defend Pete Hegseth.
PERSONAL STORIES. Israel Is Quietly Expanding Its Occupation of Gaza Under Cover of “Ceasefire”
| RADIATION. $400 Million DOE Bailout for “SMRs” at Palisades. CT scans: benefits vs cancer risks. The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation |
| SAFETY. Bombed Chornobyl shelter no longer blocks radiation and needs major repair – IAEA Chernobyl nuclear plant’s shield damaged: UN agency. U.N. nuclear agency returns to Chernobyl to check damage from recent Russian drone attack. Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant temporarily lost power overnight, IAEA says. Decommissioning. Fifth Belgian reactor is permanently shut down. UK Government’s nuclear taskforce does not radiate authority –ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2025/12/07/2-b1-uk-governments-nuclear-taskforce-does-not-radiate-authority/ Hinkley Point C contractor issued notice after ‘significant fire safety shortfalls‘ . British Energy Ruled Out Nuclear At Heysham Due to Geological Fault. Incidents. Illegal drone shot down at nuclear submarine base. French navy shoots at 5 drones buzzing nuclear submarine base, AFP reports. Opponents ‘vehemently disagree’ on omitting transport from nuclear assessment. |
| SECRETS AND LIESUkraine’s Energoatom, Holtec International, and the US retreat from fighting corruption abroad. How Israeli-Linked Operatives and Firms Are Embedded in U.S. Cyber Systems. |
| SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. Europe militarizes its space agency. Star Wars redux: the false promise of space-based missile defense. |
| SPINBUSTER. Michael Mann To Bill Gates: What World Are You Living In? |
| TECHNOLOGY. Do we really want to bust net zero targets for AI cat pics? -ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2025/12/07/2-b1-do-we-really-want-to-bust-net-zero-targets-for-ai-cat-pics/ |
| WASTES. Ministry Of Defence looking at ‘various sites’ for sub dismantling project. Towards a transparent and responsible management of radioactive waste. |
| WAR and CONFLICT. France & UK Still Insist On Sending Troops To Ukraine, In Effort To Sabotage Trump Peace Plan. Trump’s buried complicity in lost US proxy war against Russia No Quarter: The White House’s New ‘War’ Lets the President Kill First — and Pardon Drug Lords Later. Trump and Rubio’s Venezuela Play: Regime Change Under the Guise of the Drug War. The New Officer Class: How Silicon Valley Executives Were Sworn Directly into the Heart of the U.S. Army. Israeli army shells east of Gaza Strip, detonates buildings despite ceasefire. Israel is violating all its ceasefire agreements and escalating on all fronts. |
| WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. South Korea’s nuclear submarine gamble raises prospect of underwater arms race in Asia. Israel’s threat of nukes shows us who is running U.S. foreign policy. The looming missile crisis in the Arctic. |
Follow the money. A radioactive farce of failed land purchases
Rex Patrick | Dec 1, 2025, https://michaelwest.com.au/follow-the-money-a-radioactive-farce-of-failed-land-purchases/
The Federal Government is refusing to release any details of the land purchase for radioactive waste management. Rex Patrick follows the money trail.
n 2023, the current Minister for Resources confessed to the Senate that the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR) had spent $108.6 million not finding a place for a National Radioactive Waste Management Facility (NRWMF).
In July 2023, Federal Court Justice Natalie Charlesworth set aside a November 2021 declaration made by then Minister Keith Pitt that Napandee, a 211-acre property near Kimba in SA, was to be the future site of the NRWMF. Pitt’s declaration for this site was nine years in the making, but he and the Department had botched the site selection process.
Not the way to select a facility
If you wanted to select a site for a national facility to store radioactive waste, you’d look to the storage requirements, including technical, environmental, geological (such as earthquake tendency), social, and indigenous cultural and heritage considerations. And then you’d look for sites that met all those requirements.
That’s not what DISR did.
In September 2012, the Government released a notice of intention to conduct a nationwide request for land owners to nominate land for the NRWMF. The official call for nominations was conducted between 2 March and 5 May 2015.
A sweetener was added to entice landowners; the successful land seller would get four times the market value. It was quite an extraordinary proposition – it wasn’t as though the Government was intending to compulsorily acquire land from an unwilling seller.
But, why not? The geniuses who concocted the plan in DISR knew only too well that the extra money was just taxpayers’ money.
Buy, and then sell back
On 26 November 2021, the Government declared land in Napandee, owned by the Baldock family*, would be the site for the facility.
Minister’s Decision (Source: DISR)
Three days later, the Minister issued a press release stating the Government had acquired the land.Minister’s Decision (Source: DISR)
Three days later, the Minister issued a press release stating the Government had acquired the land.Minister’s Decision (Source: DISR)
Three days later, the Minister issued a press release stating the Government had acquired the land.
MWM is trying to get access to the land sale contract and the purchase price, using FOI. But access to it has been refused. You paid, but are not allowed to know.
The FOI decision is now the subject of challenge, where the Information Commissioner will be the adjudicator.
Last week, the Minister for Resources also refused to answer a formal “how much” question asked by Senator Lambie.
Local scuttlebutt is that the Department spent $10m of taxpayers’ money buying that land – almost 8 times the market value. The refusal by the Department and the Minister to give sale price answers under FOI or, respectively, to the Senate adds suspicion that this is correct.
Local scuttlebutt is that the Department spent $10m of taxpayers’ money buying that land – almost 8 times the market value. The refusal by the Department and the Minister to give sale price answers under FOI or, respectively, to the Senate adds suspicion that this is correct.
Or when the Department of Infrastructure acquired the Western Sydney Airport ‘Leppington Triangle’ land for $30m, when it was only valued at $3m.
Maladministration or something more sinister?
It’s unheard of that the Senate would be denied past expenditure information on land at Napandee.
The Government has surely overpaid for the site, even after meeting their own unexplained ‘4x price’ rule, by $4 million, but possibly by $9 million if the scuttlebutt is correct.
At best, the Government has engaged in a farce. The Department knew that the path they had taken to select Napandee was flawed.
On 1 February 2020, Senator Matt Canavan, who preceded Pitt as the Minister for Resources, announced Napandee as the site to host Australia’s NRWMF. But the Canavan decision was informal.
Realising the process would be found wanting by a Court, the Government changed tack and on 13 February 2020 introduced legislation into the House of Representatives that would have the Parliament select Napandee as the site.
Representatives that would have the Parliament select Napandee as the site.
On 6 March 2020, a senior departmental official, Sam Chard, met with the Mayor of Kimba, during which he said words to the effect that (as recorded in Justice Charlesworth’s decision) ,
“parliamentary scrutiny would replace the mechanism for legal challenge under the NRWM Act.”
MWM can’t publish for legal reasons – but you can read about it here).
DISR and the Government thought they were onto a winning solution because the proposed legislation would shut down the option of challenging the decision in a court (Courts can’t overturn the decisions of Parliament unless they are unconstitutional). The problem was the Senate refused to pass it. So, they went back to the original plan, and Minister Pitt formally made the ministerial site decision on 26 November 2021.
What the FOI has revealed is an extraordinary fact – the land was actually purchased on 11 November 2021, 15 days before Pitt made the decision that it was the Minister’s chosen site.
* Editor’s note: MWM makes no allegation of wrongdoing by the Baldock family. They are merely a beneficiary of DISR maladministration or of their farce.
The Israel lobby is melting down before our eyes
The American Jewish community is in open crisis over its support for Israel after two years of genocide in Gaza. A key issue in this crisis is a topic once considered too taboo to criticize: the Israel lobby.
By Philip Weiss December 2, 2025 , https://mondoweiss.net/2025/12/the-israel-lobby-is-melting-down-before-our-eyes/
Last month, a top staffer at the Jewish organization J Street who had worked for Obama and Harris explained that Congress’s tradition of backing Israel “no matter what” was imposed by a “well-funded group of… Jews.”
“A small, organized and well-funded group of American Jews treated the issue as a threshold question in elections, and most candidates decided it wasn’t worth antagonizing them,” Ilan Goldenberg wrote.
Not long ago, such attacks on the Israel lobby (including my own) were dismissed as antisemitic conspiracy theories. Now, a leading Jewish organization publishes them.
That’s because the American Jewish community is today in open crisis over its historic support for Israel. Prominent Jews are finally attacking the lobby, a political structure created 60 years ago by leading Jewish groups to make sure there was no daylight between the Israeli and U.S. governments.
The crisis was catalyzed by the insurgent victory of New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who broke a rule of American politics. You can’t be an anti-Zionist and be taken seriously in American politics.
The Israel lobby spent tens of millions to defeat Mamdani, led by Bill Ackman and Mike Bloomberg, yet Mamdani still beat Andrew Cuomo twice. After the general election last month, the Jewish establishment spoke with fearful force. Mamdani’s election is “grim” and “ominous,” the Conference of Presidents said.
“Zohran Mamdani’s elevation to Gracie Mansion reminds us that antisemitism remains a clear and present danger.”
The ADL announced a “Mamdani-tracker” on the idea that Mamdani will promote antisemitic violence—a claim based on Mamdani’s criticisms of Israel. “Mamdani has promoted antisemitic narratives… and demonstrated intense animosity toward the Jewish state that is counter to the views of the overwhelming majority of Jewish New Yorkers.”
If the lobby thought it was knocking Mamdani down, it failed. Two weeks after the election, Mamdani went to the White House and spoke of Israeli “genocide,” and Trump did nothing to contradict him. It’s about time we heard that word in the White House.
Mamdani’s courage set off the new Israel-critical discourse, but it has been enabled by a broader social movement. Young Americans are turning against Israel over its anti-Palestinian policies of genocide and apartheid.
Rahm Emanuel brought the sad news to the largest Jewish organization, the Jewish Federations, last month. Noting that Obama toured Israel before he announced his presidential campaign in 2007, Emanuel, who is running for president, said that in 2028, no Democratic candidate will dare follow the traditional playbook.
“Nobody is leaving America to travel to Jerusalem. That’s the politics.”
And not only Democrats. Emanuel said that all young people, left and right, are turning on Israel.
“Look where Israel stands in America with people under 30,” he said. “Forget party. It is a political risk today to take a [pro-Israel] position. Israel is extremely unpopular—I want to drive this point home for all of us who support a Jewish state– today, Israel for a generation under 30, the last two years will be as seminal a definition as what the Six Day War was for [an earlier] generation. But we have to be honest about the task we have here.”
The Israel lobby is melting down before our eyes. At that same conference, Eric Fingerhut, a former Congress member who leads the Federations, said Israel’s bad image was the result of an international conspiracy:
“We have experienced a planned and coordinated attack on Israel’s standing in North America and on the Jewish community that supports Israel. Fueled by billions of dollars in dark money…. [from ] Iran and Qatar and China and Russia and more. Spread by the most advanced communications tools ever invented…”
The conference was devoted to restoring Israel’s good place in the American discourse– “a major long-term rehabilitation of the narrative of what Israel means.”
But it failed, spectacularly. Coverage of the event focused on another meltdown — author Sarah Hurwitz, a former Obama speechwriter, who’s lamented that talking to young people about Israel today means trying to get through a “wall of dead children.”
The dead children are even getting to American Jews, Hurwitz said:
“You have tiktok just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza. This is why so many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews, because anything we try to say to them they’re hearing through this wall of carnage. I want to give data, information, facts They’re hearing it through this wall of carnage.”
Hurwitz said that Holocaust education had failed with young Jews. It caused them to see heavily armed Israelis as Nazis and their emaciated Palestinian targets as the objects of sympathy.
Hurwitz was savaged on social media for these comments. But she is a hero to the official Jewish community in her insistence that those who deny the right of Jews to a Jewish state are antisemites.
Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East is inherent in Jewish religion, Hurwitz says, and Israel’s military strength is the necessary response to a 2000-year story of Jewish hatred. By denying these truths, anti-Zionists show that they hate Jews.
These ideas are wrong and dangerous. The reason that young Americans hate Israel is that it has killed Palestinian civilians indiscriminately and destroyed their means of life for two years in Gaza, with the underwriting of the American government and the Israel lobby.
The children’s media star Ms. Rachel voiced the moral dimensions of Gaza in November when she welcomed a traumatized girl named Qamar to New York:
“I’m so sorry to Qamar that the world stood by as her camp was bombed, she was denied medical care for 20 days, and they had to amputate her leg, and she lived in a ripped, flooded, cold tent.”
It is no wonder that Ms. Rachel has emerged as a leader in the Palestinian solidarity discourse within the U.S., due to her clarity, simplicity, and sense of responsibility.
The mainstream media are today doing all they can to deny this movement. They deny that attitudes on Palestine had anything to do with Kamala Harris’s defeat in 2024. They deny that they were an important factor in Mamdani’s victory in New York.
Even as insurgent candidates who are running against Israel are sprouting up in Democratic primaries across the country.
This political upheaval is now a Jewish crisis, as it should be. The Jewish community is fracturing over its official support for genocide.
Jews who denounce Israel’s actions were key to Mamdani’s coalition. Some were liberal Zionists. But liberal Zionism is itself in disarray, ditching old dogmas—like, BDS is antisemitic — to align itself with young Jews.
While Sarah Hurwitz and Eric Fingerhut, and Jonathan Greenblatt are leading the Jewish establishment into a fringe position. Hurwitz’s ultimate argument is exceptionalist. Jews have a special role to play in the world– and that’s why people hate us.
She’s in a long tradition: The lobby has foisted one lie after another on our political discourse. The refugees have no right to return to their homes. Moving 700,000 settlers into occupied territory is fine. There is no apartheid. There is no genocide.
Israel’s wars against its neighbors are in the U.S. interest.
These lies are now failing. Whatever ideals Zionism embraced at its origin as a European liberation movement, it solidified into bigotry in the face of Palestinian resistance. The official Jewish community promoted that bigotry.
The Israel lobby’s lies were once a taboo subject in America. Today its crisis brings that discussion into the public square.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 