DOGE’s incompetence is a clear and present danger to America’s nuclear safety

Is it incompetence or is there a plan?

Big tech is turning to old reactors (and planning new ones) to power the energy-hungry data centers that AI systems need.

Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and other so-called “tech bros” who also happen to be among the world’s richest men have thought about how the energy industry can—or must, in their view—keep pace with AI’s rapid growth.

An ulterior motive is an unrevealed reason for saying or doing something. Often, people with ulterior motivation say or do something that will benefit themselves without sharing that motivation with others or while positing that the action is actually beneficial to someone or something else.

Musk: “I think long term, most of civilization's (aka the poorest of humanity) energy is going to come from solar, and then you need to store it with battery because, obviously, the sun only shines during the day, and sometimes it is very cloudy. So you need solar batteries. That will be the main long-term way that civilization is powered. But between now and then, we need to maintain nuclear. I can't emphasize that enough. This is total madness to shut them down. I want to be clear, total madness.”

POWER FOR THEM AND NONE FOR YOU...

In just the past year, US electric utilities have nearly doubled their estimates of how much electricity they’ll need in another five years. Electric vehicles, cryptocurrency, and a resurgence of American manufacturing are sucking up a lot of electrons, but AI is growing faster and is driving the rapid expansion of data centers. A recent report by the global investment bank Goldman Sachs forecasts that data centers will consume about 8 percent of all US electricity in 2030, up from about 3 percent today.

December 19, 2024

When Microsoft bought a 407-acre pumpkin farm in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, it wasn’t to grow Halloween jack-o’-lanterns. Microsoft is growing data centers—networked computer servers that store, retrieve, and process information. And those data centers have a growing appetite for electricity.

Microsoft paid a whopping $76 million for the pumpkin farm, which was assessed at a value of about $600,000. The company, which has since bought other nearby properties to expand its footprint to two square miles, says it will spend $3.3 billion to build its 2-million-square-foot Wisconsin data center and equip it with the specialized computer processors used for artificial intelligence (AI).

Microsoft and OpenAI, maker of the ChatGPT bot, have talked about building a linked network of five data centers—the Wisconsin facility plus four others in California, Texas, Virginia, and Brazil. Together they would constitute a massive supercomputer, dubbed Stargate, that could ultimately cost more than $100 billion and require five gigawatts of electricity, or the equivalent of the output of five average-size nuclear power plants.

2025: DOGE Fired Key Nuclear Safety Staff.

Is there a clear and present conflict of interest?

Last week, the Trump administration’s headlong rush to dump federal employees by the thousand, backed by Elon Musk’s increasingly controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), saw over 300 staffers at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) fired as part of Department of Energy layoffs. It quickly became clear this was an embarrassing blunder, because those hundreds of experts, who already had the required security clearances, were critical to managing the U.S. nuclear stockpile, CNN reports. Having realized the dramatic extent of the mistake, thanks to members of Congress who petitioned Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a race to rehire these workers ensued, lasting through the weekend.

Elon Musk: Shutting down nuclear plants is “total madness”

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that nuclear is “critical” to national security, while the risk of radiation is overplayed. And venture capitalist Marc Andreessen called for “1,000 new state-of-the-art nuclear power plants in the US and Europe, right now.”

In a wide-ranging interview published by Business Insider on March 26, Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla and SpaceX, repeatedly referred to efforts to shut down nuclear power plants as “crazy” and “madness.”

2025: Trump Fired, Then Unfired, National Nuclear Security Administration Employees. What Were Their Jobs?

The administration asked some of the agency’s workers, who were part of last week’s massive layoffs across the federal government, to come back.

When termination letters were sent to employees across the federal government last week, the Trump administration affected an agency charged with the readiness of America’s nuclear arsenal.

The move also shined a spotlight on the agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration, which few Americans likely think of often, if ever, but has a monumental responsibility.

Here’s a rundown of what the obscure agency does and the potential reasons that the Trump administration had to quickly adjust some of the firings:

What is the agency’s mission?

The National Nuclear Security Administration maintains, refurbishes and keeps safe the United States’ more than 3,000 nuclear warheads. It also supervises the production of new nuclear warheads. It has a $25 billion annual budget and around 2,000 directly hired employees, who manage more than 55,000 contractors who play an integral part in warhead production and maintenance.

Congress also put the agency in charge of thwarting nuclear proliferation, researching and developing nuclear propulsion systems for submarines and directing national laboratories that provide key scientific and engineering knowledge for the U.S. nuclear weapons system.

Trump wants to make sure U.S. nuclear arsenal at 'top of the pack' By Steve Holland February 24, 2017.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Trump was asked about a December tweet in which he said the United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capacity "until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes."

President Donald Trump said on Thursday he wants to ensure the U.S. nuclear arsenal is at the "top of the pack," saying the United States has fallen behind in its weapons capacity. In a Reuters interview, Trump also said China could solve the national security challenge posed by North Korea "very easily if they want to," ratcheting up pressure on Beijing to exert more influence to rein in Pyongyang's increasingly bellicose actions.

Trump also expressed support for the European Union as a governing body, saying "I'm totally in favor of it," and for the first time as president expressed a preference for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but said he would be satisfied with whatever makes the two sides happy.

“Insanity and folly”: experts on Trump’s proposal to build tens of thousands of nukes “We now know why Tillerson called Trump a moron.”

AFTER ADDING TRILLIONS TO THE NATIONAL DEBT IN TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH, TRUMP WANTED TO ADD TENS OF TRILLIONS MORE..

2017: President Donald Trump asked his top national security officials to build tens of thousands of new nuclear weapons during a July 20 meeting, according to an NBC News report published on Wednesday morning. The president’s request, experts say, is simultaneously impossible and terrifying.

“The insanity and folly of this … cannot be overstated,” Kingston Reif, the director for Disarmament and Threat Reduction Policy at the Arms Control Association, tweeted in response to the report. “Increasing [the US] arsenal would constitute [a] radical departure from U.S. policy and likely lead to [a] full fledged arms race with Russia and perhaps China,” he added.

There is no strategic reason for the US to increase its nuclear arsenal by such a large amount: The current US nuclear stockpile, around 4,000 nuclear devices, is more than enough to deter attacks from any hostile power. Building 32,000 more, the precise number Trump requested, would take many years and cost trillions of dollars.

And indeed, there is no indication that such a buildup is going to happen in real life. The president’s comments appear more grounded in Trump’s almost childlike fascination with military hardware — he has repeatedly requested a military parade in his honor in Washington, despite the fact that such a parade would destroy DC’s streets — than anything else.

“I do not think it is worth even analyzing this as any kind of realistic policy proposal. It is impossible,” writes Alex Wellerstein, a historian of nuclear weapons at the Stevens Institute of Technology. “It is just a sign of his lack of understanding of the issues, and perhaps a window into his own insecurities.”

Trump denied the NBC News report in a Wednesday morning tweet. “Fake @NBCNews made up a story that I wanted a ‘tenfold’ increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal,” the president writes. “Pure fiction, made up to demean.” And, later in the day, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis denied the report as well in an official statement.

2025: Trump is putting nuclear disarmament on the agenda.

Trump is putting nuclear disarmament on the agenda, Australia must join the ban. Last week, US President Donald Trump proposed to cut the US defence budget by half and to stop producing new nuclear weapons. “We already have so many,” he said, “you could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over.”

In response to Trump’s statements, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Australia) Director, Gem Romuld, said:

“Trump’s statements to stop spending money on nuclear weapons are a welcome development, and we hope will lead to action to reduce stockpiles. They should strengthen Australia’s resolve to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), as Labor has promised to do in government, and to cease the policy of “extended nuclear deterrence” (END) once and for all.

Nine countries possess nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. In total, the global nuclear stockpile is close to 13,000 weapons. While that number is lower than it was during the Cold War—when there were roughly 60,000 weapons worldwide—it does not alter the fundamental threat to humanity these weapons represent.

THE WORM KING

We discuss brainworms, Elon’s new gig, and why it’s a really bad idea to micro-dose E. coli.

Dr Ruth Mitchell, neurosurgeon and founding member of the Australian Nobel Prize-winning group, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the global consequences of Trump’s cabinet picks and what his election means for efforts to eradicate nuclear weapons.

Guest: Ruth Mitchell, Board Chair, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War // @drruthmitchell

Host: Emma Shortis, Director of International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 21 November and things may have changed since recording.