Tag: Nuclear Energy

Bombs and viruses: The shadowy history of Israel’s attacks on Iranian soil | Israel War on Gaza News

EXPLAINER

From cyberattacks and assassinations to drone strikes, Israel-linked plots have targeted Iran and its nuclear programme for years.

Israel’s leaders have signalled that they are weighing their options on how to respond to Iran’s attack early Sunday morning, when Tehran targeted its archenemy with more than 300 missiles and drones.

Iran’s attack, which followed an Israeli strike last week on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, that killed 13 people was historic: It was the first time Tehran had directly targeted Israeli soil, despite decades of hostility. Until Sunday, many of Iran’s allies in the so-called axis of resistance — especially the Palestinian group Hamas, the Lebanese group Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq and Syria — were the ones who launched missiles and drones at Israel.

But if Israel were to hit back militarily inside Iran, it wouldn’t be the first time. Far from it.

For years, Israel has focused on one target within Iran in particular: the country’s nuclear programme. Israel has long accused Iran of clandestinely building a nuclear bomb that could threaten its existence — and has publicly, and frequently, spoken of its diplomatic and intelligence-driven efforts to derail those alleged efforts. Iran denies that it has had a military nuclear programme, while arguing that it has the right to access civil nuclear energy.

As Israel prepares its response, here’s a look at the range of attacks in Iran — from drone strikes and cyberattacks to assassinations of scientists and the theft of secrets — that Israel has either accepted it was behind or is accused of having orchestrated.

Assassinations of Iranian scientists

  • January 2010: A physics professor at Tehran University, Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, was killed through a remote-controlled bomb planted in his motorcycle. Iranian state media claimed that the US and Israel were behind the attack. The Iranian government described Ali-Mohammadi as a nuclear scientist.
  • November 2010: A professor at the nuclear engineering faculty at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Majid Shahriari, was killed in a car explosion on his way to work. His wife was also wounded. The president of Iran at the time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, blamed the United States and Israel for the attacks.
  • January 2012: Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemical engineering graduate, was killed by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist in Tehran. Iran blamed Israel and the US for the attack and said Ahmadi Roshan was a nuclear scientist who supervised a department at Iran’s primary uranium enrichment facility, in the city of Natanz.
  • November 2020:Prominent nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in a roadside attack outside Tehran. Western and Israeli intelligence had long suspected that Fakhrizadeh was the father of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. He was sanctioned by the United Nations in 2007 and the US in 2008.
  • May 2022: Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was shot five times outside of his home in Tehran. Majid Mirahmadi, a member of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, alleged the assassination was “definitely the work of Israel”.

Israel’s cyberattacks on Iran

  • June 2010:The Stuxnet virus was found in computers at the nuclear plant in Iran’s Bushehr city, and it spread from there to other facilities. As many as 30,000 computers across at least 14 facilities were impacted by September 2010. At least 1,000 out of 9,000 centrifuges in Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility were destroyed, according to an estimate by the Institute for Science and International Security. Upon investigation, Iran blamed Israel and the US for the virus attack.
  • April 2011: A virus called Stars was discovered by the Iranian cyberdefence agency which said the malware was designed to infiltrate and damage Iran’s nuclear facilities. The virus mimicked official government files and inflicted “minor damage” on computer systems, according to Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization. Iran blamed Israel and the US.
  • November 2011: Iran said it discovered a new virus called Duqu, based on Stuxnet. Experts said Duqu was intended to gather data for future cyberattacks. The Iranian government announced it was checking computers at main nuclear sites. The Duqu spyware was widely believed by experts to have been linked to Israel.
  • April 2012: Iran blamed the US and Israel for malware called Wiper, which erased the hard drives of computers owned by the Ministry of Petroleum and the National Iranian Oil Company.
  • May 2012: Iran announced that a virus called Flame had tried to steal government data from government computers. The Washington Post reported that Israel and the US had used it to collect intelligence. Then-Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not confirm the nation’s involvement but acknowledged that Israel would use all means to “harm the Iranian nuclear system”.
  • October 2018: The Iranian government said that it had blocked an invasion by a new generation of Stuxnet, blaming Israel for the attack.
  • October 2021: A cyberattack hit the system that allows Iranians to use government-issued cards to purchase fuel at a subsidised rate, affecting all 4,300 petrol stations in Iran. Consumers had to either pay the regular price, more than double the subsidised one, or wait for stations to reconnect to the central distribution system. Iran blamed Israel and the US.
  • May 2020: A cyberattack impacted computers that control maritime traffic at Shahid Rajaee port on Iran’s southern coast in the Gulf, creating a hold-up of ships that waited to dock. The Washington Post quoted US officials as saying that Israel was behind the attack, though Israel did not claim responsibility.

Israel’s drone strikes and raids on Iran

  • January 2018: Mossad agents raided a secure Tehran facility, stealing classified nuclear archives. In April 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel discovered 100,000 “secret files that prove” Iran lied about never having a nuclear weapons programme.
  • February 2022: Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett admitted in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal in December 2023, that Israel carried out an attack on an unmanned aerial vehicle, and assassinated a senior IRGC commander in February of the previous year.
  • May 2022: Explosives-laden quadcopter suicide drones hit the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran, killing an engineer and damaging a building where drones had been developed by the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces. IRGC Commander Hossein Salami pledged retaliation against unspecified “enemies”.
  • January 2023: Several suicide drones struck a military facility in central Isfahan, but they were thwarted and caused no damage. While Iran did not immediately place blame for the attacks, Iran’s UN envoy, Amir Saeid Iravani, wrote a letter to the UN chief saying that “primary investigation suggested Israel was responsible”.
  • February 2024: A natural gas pipeline in Iran was attacked. Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Owji alleged that the “explosion of the gas pipeline was an Israeli plot”.

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Russia says Ukraine attack hits Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant | Russia-Ukraine war News

Ukraine has struck the dome above a shutdown reactor at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear station, the plant’s Russian-installed administration said.

It was not immediately clear what weapon was used in Sunday’s attack against the nuclear plant, which was taken by Russian forces shortly after their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, although the Russian state-owned nuclear agency Rosatom said the site had come under a drone attack.

Radiation levels were normal and there was no serious damage after the attack, according to the plant’s officials. But Rosatom later said that three people had been wounded, specifically in a drone strike near the site’s canteen.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has experts at the site, said it had been informed by the Russian-run plant that a drone had detonated at the site and the information was “consistent” with IAEA observations.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has warned both sides to refrain from actions that “jeopardise nuclear safety”.

The nuclear plant, which is the largest in Europe, has six Soviet-designed VVER-1000 V-320 water-cooled and water-moderated reactors containing uranium-235. There is also spent nuclear fuel at the facility.

Reactors number one, two, five and six are in cold shutdown, while reactor number three is shut down for repair and number four is in so-called “hot shutdown”, according to the plant’s administration.

The plant remains close to the front lines, and both Ukraine and Russia have repeatedly accused the other of attacking the plant and so risking a possible nuclear disaster.

Front-line fighting

Earlier on Sunday, a woman was killed when shrapnel from a downed Ukrainian drone hit a car travelling in Russia’s Belgorod region, according to the local Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

In a statement on the Telegram messaging app, Gladkov said that four more people, including two children, had been wounded after air defences downed four Ukrainian drones on the approach to Belgorod city.

The Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, has come under regular attack from Kyiv’s forces since 2022, with 25 people killed in a single missile strike on Belgorod city in December.

Russia’s army on Sunday said that it had destroyed 15 Ukrainian drones over its border in Belgorod and in the Bryansk region.

The army added that 12 of the 15 drones were destroyed over the Belgorod region.

Ukraine has for months launched drone attacks on several border areas as it tries to push back Russia’s advancing forces.

“Ukrainian drones destroy the occupiers. They protect the lives of our soldiers on the front lines. And they help Ukraine decrease Russiaʼs war potential,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on the social media platform X on Saturday.

“In the sky and at sea, our drones have demonstrated that Ukrainian strength can defeat Russian evil,” he added.

However, Zelenskyy also highlighted that Russian attacks continue in front-line regions like Kharkiv and Zaporizhia.

On Sunday, Kyiv said that a Russian strike on the town of Huliaipole in the southern Zaporizhia region killed three people.

“Two men and a woman died under the rubble of their own private house, which was hit by a Russian shell,” the head of the region, Ivan Fedorov, said on social media.

Officials added that a woman was also killed in the city of Kupiansk, in the northeastern Kharkiv region that has seen increased attacks in recent months.

Meanwhile in the main city of Kharkiv, Kyiv said Russia launched another attack on Sunday, wounding five civilians, a day after a deadly attack there.

On Saturday, two Russian strikes on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killed eight civilians and injured at least 10 people, according to regional officials.

“We must put an end to this terror,” Zelenskyy said.

On Sunday, during a video meeting of the Kyiv-organised fundraising platform United24, Zelenskyy said that it was crucial for the US Congress to approve military aid to Ukraine, as the war continues to rage.

“It is necessary to specifically tell Congress that if Congress does not help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war,” he said.

“If Ukraine loses the war, other states will be attacked.”



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Nuclear energy cannot lead the global energy transition | Climate Crisis

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake and a subsequent 15-metre tsunami struck Japan, which triggered a nuclear disaster at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Three of the six plant’s reactors were affected, resulting in meltdowns and the release of a significant amount of radioactive material into the environment.

Today, 13 years later, Japan is still experiencing the impacts of this disaster. Immediately after the earthquake struck, more than 160,000 people were evacuated. Of them, nearly 29,000 still remain displaced.

Disastrous health effects due to exposure to radioactivity are still a serious concern for many, and environmental impacts on land, water, agriculture, and fisheries are still visible. The cost of the damage, including victim compensation, has been astronomical; $7bn has been spent annually since 2011, and work continues.

Last year, Japan’s plan to start releasing more than a million tonnes of treated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean sparked anxiety and anger, including among community members who rely on fishing for their livelihoods, from Fukushima to Fiji.

Yet, Japan and the rest of the world appear not to have learned much from this devastating experience. On March 21, Belgium hosted the first Nuclear Energy Summit attended by high-level officials from across the globe, including Japanese Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Masahiro Komura. The event was meant to promote the development, expansion and funding of nuclear energy research and projects.

The summit came after more than 20 countries, including Japan, announced plans to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050 at last year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP28).

All of these developments go against growing evidence that nuclear energy is not an efficient and safe option for the energy transition away from fossil fuels.

Despite advancements in waste-storage technology, no foolproof method for handling nuclear waste has been devised and implemented yet. As nuclear power plants continue to create radioactive waste, the potential for leakage, accidents, and diversion to nuclear weapons still presents significant environmental, public health, and security risks.

Nuclear power is also the slowest low-carbon energy to deploy, is very costly and has the least impact in the short, medium and long term on decarbonising the energy mix. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report pointed out that nuclear energy’s potential and cost-effectiveness of emission reduction by 2030 was much smaller than that of solar and wind energy.

Large-scale energy technologies like nuclear power plants also require billions of dollars upfront, and take a decade to build due to stricter safety regulations. Even the deployment of small modular reactors (SMR) has a high price tag. Late last year, a flagship project by NuScale funded by the US government to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars had to be abandoned due to rising costs.

In addition to that, according to a report released by Greenpeace in 2023, even in the most favourable scenario and with an equal investment amount, by 2050, the installation of a wind and solar power infrastructure would produce three times more cumulative electricity and emit four times less cumulative CO2 compared to a water nuclear reactor in the same period.

And the climate crisis is not just about CO2 emissions. It is about a whole range of environmental justice and democracy issues that need to be considered. And nuclear energy does not have a stellar record in this regard.

For instance, uranium mining – the initial step in nuclear energy production – has been linked to habitat destruction, soil and water contamination, and adverse health effects for communities near mining sites. The extraction and processing of uranium require vast amounts of energy, often derived from nonrenewable sources, further compromising the environmental credentials of nuclear power.

Nuclear energy also uses centralised technology, governance, and decision-making processes, concentrating the distribution of power in the hands of the few.

For an equitable energy transition, energy solutions need not only to be safe, but justly sourced and fairly implemented. While nuclear power plants require kilometres of pipelines, long-distance planning, and centralised management, the manufacturing and installation of solar panels and wind turbines is becoming more and more energy efficient and easier to deploy.

If implemented correctly, regulation and recycling programnes can address critical materials and end-of-life disposal concerns. Community-based solar and wind projects can create new jobs, stimulate local economies, and empower communities to take control of their energy future as opposed to contributing more money to the trillion-dollar fossil fuel industry.

Although the 2011 disaster in Fukushima may seem like a distant past, its effects today on the health of its environment, people and community are reminders that we must not be dangerously distracted with the so-called promises of nuclear energy.

We must not transition from one broken system to another.

Wealthy countries have an ethical historical responsibility to support global finance reform and provide ample funding for renewable energy in lower-income countries. To keep our world safe and fair, not only do we need to tax and phase out fossil fuels immediately, but it is essential that we power up with renewable energy, such as wind and solar, fast, widely, and equitably.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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UK’s Sunak to unveil $252m investment in nuclear deterrent, nuclear energy | Nuclear Energy News

UK leader says investment is vital in ‘more dangerous and contested world.’

United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is set to announce plans to invest 200 million pounds ($252m) in the country’s nuclear deterrent and civil nuclear industry.

Sunak will on Monday announce a “national endeavour” to secure the future of the nuclear submarine-building and nuclear energy industries, creating 40,000 jobs in the process, the prime minister’s office said in a statement on Sunday.

Under the plan, the government will create a fund for the northern England town of Barrow-in-Furness to help support people taking up jobs, improve transport links and build more homes.

The government will also partner with industry players, including BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, EDF and Babcock, to invest at least 763 million pounds ($962m) in skills, jobs and education by 2030, the statement said.

The UK’s nuclear industry is experiencing an “unprecedented period of growth” due to the government’s nuclear energy targets and will need 123,000 new workers by 2030, the statement said.

The UK’s nuclear submarine industry is also set to grow in the coming years following the formation of the AUKUS security pact, under which the UK and the United States are assisting Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.

“In a more dangerous and contested world, the UK’s continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent is more vital than ever,” Sunak said. “And nuclear delivers cheaper, cleaner home-grown energy for consumers.”

“That’s why we are investing in Barrow, the home of UK submarines, and in the jobs and skills of the future in the thriving British nuclear industry. Today we usher in the next generation of our nuclear enterprise, which will keep us safe, keep our energy secure, and keep our bills down for good.”

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