Doubleplus Unsmart: Mixing Profits and Nuclear Weapons

By Bill Hatch

June 27, 2025

Source: CounterPunch

US nuclear weapons test at Bikini in 1946

From Los Alamos to Kwajalein (the Bechtel-built Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Test Site in the Marshall Islands) to Iraq, war, preparation for war, and profiting from war’s devastation are all profit centers for Bechtel.

—Western States Legal Foundation

One June 10, during a week of talk about bombs before bombs fell, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard dropped her own before she apparently caved under pressure from Trump:

This isn’t some made-up science fiction story. This is the reality of what’s at stake, what we are facing now, because as we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers.

Perhaps it’s because they are confident that they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and for their families that regular people won’t have access to.

The Bechtel Corporation, second largest construction firm in the United States, manages both Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and  Los Alamos National Laboratory and is the major construction contractor at the federal Department of Energy Savannah River Site, a nuclear-waste management complex. The three nuclear facilities are embarked on a multi-billion-dollar project to produce a new generation of nuclear weapons triggers, a vital component in the new nuclear arms race. Brendan Bechtel, fifth-generation CEO and chairman of the board of his family’s company, is a member of the political elite and leads a company with its own foreign policy. It is “an entity so powerful, so international in scope, that its officers…could move to the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the Department of State respectively as if they were merely shifting assignments at Bechtel,” wrote California historian.

Sally Denton, author of The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World (2016), began her chapter on Bechtel’s takeover of the nation’s nuclear laboratories:

With the labs run at a profit, and with the cost-plus, risk-free business model invented by Steve (Bechtel) Sr. and John McCone in the late 1930s to build pipelines in the Middle East, Bechtel’s 30 percent guaranteed management fee and indemnification from liability would give it a monopoly on the country’s nuclear stockpile.

Western States Legal Foundation concluded, “From Los Alamos to Kwajalein (the Bechtel-built Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Test Site in the Marshall Islands) to Iraq, war, preparation for war, and profiting from war’s devastation are all profit centers for Bechtel.”

When Bechtel took over the LANL and LLNL from the University of California in the early 2000s, “Operational costs at the labs soared … with American taxpayers shelling out $40 million more per year for Livermore alone. Fees paid to … administer Los Alamos and Livermore jumped by 850 percent and 600 percent, respectively,” Denton reported. “Executive salaries also swelled, with the Los Alamos director’s salary shooting from $348,000 to $1.1 million—more than double that of the US president.” When Bechtel took over LLNL, they fired 430 career employees in the first week, one senior official at the lab describing the new management style as combining “the worse aspects of the Department of Motor Vehicles and Goldman Sachs,” Denton wrote.

Denton reflected, at the conclusion her 300-page study of the Bechtels:

The Bechtel story is most important for how the company embodies the rise of a corporate capitalism forged in the American West that over the decades took the world by storm—a capitalism much more in line with cronyism than free market ideology. Bechtel pioneered the revolving door system that now pervades both US politics and the American economic system–a door that came to shape foreign policy not always in the interest of the nation and its citizens, but for the interests of multinational corporations.

In the end, this is the ugly, untold story of America. A story not of the triumph of laissez faire capitalism, but of Profiteers whose sole client was government itself.

The Union of Concerned Scientists’ Doomsday Clock still stood at three minutes when Denton finished her book in 2016. This year it stands at 89 seconds, closer to nuclear war than it ever has since it was begun by Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and others in 1947.

Several anti-nuclear-weapons activist groups have joined in a lawsuit to fight the production of new warheads, using the National Environmental Protection Act. A federal district-court judge in South Carolina¹ agreed with the groups’ attorneys that since the production of plutonium-pit triggers involved at least two nuclear labs across the nation, the environmental impact statement the government had prepared was inadequate and that a programmatic EIS must be prepared to reflect impacts across the nation from the transport and the design and development of the triggers in South Carolina, New Mexico, and California. The South Carolina Environmental Law Project represented the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch, and Tri-Valley CAREs in the successful suit against the National Nuclear Security Administration, “a semi-autonomous agency within DOE that designs and delivers a safe, secure, reliable, and effective U.S. nuclear stockpile.” Denton reported that in the first seven years of its existence, NNSA’s budget “jumped to one and a half times what the nuclear weapons budget had been at the height of the Cold War.”

Republican Congressman David Hobson called it “the ultimate white-collar welfare.”

“Profits and nuclear weapons don’t mix,” said a former general counsel for NNSA.

“The labs were now run by outsiders from private industry who reflected a different ethos than that of the traditional scientists,” Denton wrote.

However, according to Ben Cunningham of South Carolina-based SCELP,² the use of environmental law in court so impressed the Nobel Prize Center that it has invited SCELP members to Oslo on August 6, the 80^th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing to speak on the importance of the greater environmental scrutiny provided by the programmatic environmental impact statement.  The groups were also honored in Washington DC on June 10 by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability.

The PEIS will be ready in about a year. Comments on its scope³ may be made until July14 and can be emailed to PitPEIS@nnsa.doe.gov. After completion of the PEIS, in-person public hearings will be held in Livermore, CA; Santa Fe, NM; Kansas City, MO; Aiken, SC; and Washington, DC.

Many speakers in two virtual zoom meetings with NNSA commented that the government had not allowed enough time in the scoping period. Others, experts in specific aspects of the EIS, took them on in detail. Two people from Santa Fe, NM also noted that there was no place in the scoping requirements for “moral, ethical, or spiritual concerns.” This is presumably because such things are neither material nor quantifiable, therefore do not exist in the ideology of materialist scientism that dominates the nuclear “community” and the government regulators drawn from its midst, whose addicts are capable of blowing up the world for somebody’s profit.

Meanwhile, the Trumpers are busy trying to destroy any mention of environmental law forevermore. In the words of Sacramento lawyer/blogger, Casey A. Shorrock:

…Everyone⁴ from law firm bloggers to the Rolling Stone are reporting on the Trump Administration’s recent evisceration of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations and standards. On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14154, “Unleashing American Energy,” which, most notably: (i) revoked a 1977 Carter Administration executive order directing the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to adopt binding NEPA regulations; (ii) provided 30 days for CEQ to propose rescinding its NEPA regulations; and (iii) directed CEQ to issue guidance on NEPA implementation “to expedite and simplify the permitting process.” A day later, President Trump issued Executive Order 1417, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-based Opportunity,” rescinding a Clinton-era executive order requiring federal agencies to address environmental justice issues in minority and low-income populations, which ultimately has resulted in nearly 30 years’ worth of NEPA documents including environmental justice analyses. Then, as a kind of regulatory hat trick, in order to comply with Executive Order 14154, on February 25, 2025, CEQ published its interim final rule, “Removal of National Environmental Policy Regulations,” to take effect 45 days from publication and remove “all iterations” of CEQ’s NEPA regulations, including the version changed during the first Trump Administration in 2020 and the version promulgated thereafter by the Biden Administration.

It isn’t just that the environment is losing in this scenario; special private interests, not the public, are being handed a very large prize, all bought and paid for. In the words of an oil executive in the movie, Syriana:⁵ “Corruption is why we win.”

But what will be left for the political elite and warmongers to win after their “winnable” nuclear war? What good is a wholesale attack of dubious legality on environmental law if the environment is reduced to flames and ashes because certain elites figure they could survive nuclear war and get richer while snuggled together a half a mile beneath the tree roots negotiating a no-bid contract with the president for reconstruction of the country?

In a letter titled, “On My Participation in the Atomic Bomb Project,” published by the Japanese socialist magazine, Kaizo, in 1952, Albert Einstein wrote against the weapons governments produce, not yet imagining the profit motive presently driving American warhead development:

As long however, as nations are not ready to abolish war by common action and to solve their conflicts in a peaceful way on a legal basis, they feel compelled to prepare for war. They feel moreover compelled to prepare the most abominable means, in order not to be left behind in the general armaments race. Such procedure leads inevitably to war, which, in turn, under today’s conditions, spells universal destruction.

Under such circumstances there is no hope in combating the production of specific weapons or means of destruction. Only radical abolition of war and of danger of war can help. Toward this goal one should strive; in fact nobody should allow himself to be forced into actions contrary to this goal. This is a harsh demand for anyone who is aware of his social inter-relatedness; but it can be followed.

Gandhi, the greatest political genius of our time has shown the way and has demonstrated that sacrifices man is willing to bring if only he has found the right way. His work for the liberation of India is a living example that man’s will, sustained by an indomitable conviction is stronger than apparently invincible material power.⁶

NOTES

1. https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/01/31/hot-plutonium-pit-bomb-redux/ ↩︎
2. https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Settlement-Reached-in-Historic-NEPA-Lawsuit-Over-Plutonium-Pit-Bomb-Core-Production.pdf ↩︎
3. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/05/09/2025-08140/notice-of-intent-to-prepare-a-programmatic-environmental-impact-statement-for-plutonium-pit ↩︎
4. https://somachlaw.com/policy-alert/nepa-and-ceqa-the-times-they-are-a-changin/ ↩︎
5. https://imsdb.com/scripts/Syriana.html ↩︎
6. https://www.iflscience.com/on-my-participation-in-the-atomic-bomb-project-einsteins-powerful-letter-goes-up-for-auction-for-150000-79723 ↩︎

The Most Toxic Place in America

Review of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America by Joshua Frank (Haymarket, 2022)

By Chris Green

August 18, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.



It may seem odd to say it during this Trumpian era of extreme political polarization, but there is one area where Republicans and Democrats share a remarkably similar policy perspective.That common ground is found in the fact that, at the national level, both Republicans and Democrats have worked diligently to refrain from seriously addressing the epic dangers related to the long inactive Hanford plutonium production facilities located in southeast Washington state.

A few details of this beneath-the-radar bipartisan unity are provided in Joshua Frank’s fine 2022 book Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America. The book illustrates how Republicans and Democrats have seriously downplayed or ignored evidence of the massive damage to the environment and public health caused by Hanford’s past plutonium production. Both have also downplayed or ignored the potentially apocalyptic ticking time bomb presented by the tens of millions of gallons of nuclear waste contained within leaky and aging tanks buried beneath the surface on Hanford’s grounds.

The Deep State Run Amok

Since its original construction during World War II as a site for plutonium production, the federal government has succeeded to a large extent in keeping Hanford’s operations shrouded in secrecy. The extremely modest transparency and accountability mechanisms that have been instituted over Hanford’s operations are due in large part to activism on the part of members of the Umatilla and Yakima tribal nations. These indigenous groups had their land brutally expropriated during World War II so Hanford could be built. The activism helped trigger a massive declassified Hanford-related document release by the federal government in 1986. The document release showed that–in prior decades–federal government officials had engaged in numerous coverups of radioactive leaks and other accidents at Hanford. It included insight about a secret December 1949 experiment at Hanford called the Green Run. The experiment, carried out over two days, saw a substantial release into the atmosphere of radioactive iodine. Frank writes that the purpose of the experiment was not completely clear but it was possibly for the purpose of testing nuclear detection equipment in case of a Soviet attack. He notes that the impact of the Green Run and similar tests was illustrated in a 1996 study which showed that women who “lived downwind from Hanford had a frighteningly high rate of hypothyroidism.” There have been few studies that even begin to approach a comprehensive look at the long term impact on human health and the natural environment caused by Hanford’s operations–probably because powerful people with the capacity to launch them have a vested interest in not doing so.

Other activists exposing abuses at Hanford have included those who have suffered cancer and other severe medical problems as a result of employment at Hanford as well as Hanford scientists and engineers acting as whistleblowers. Frank conducted interviews with a number of these people for this book. The whistleblowers attempted to call attention to the cutting of corners and lack of safety protocols at Hanford on the part of the federal government’s Department of Energy (DOE) and its contractors Bechtel and URS. For speaking out, all faced coordinated campaigns of harassment and other forms of retaliation on the part of officials from DOE, Bechtel and URS. Frank’s account of their stories sometimes reads like a spy thriller novel, with courageous whistleblowers being targets for destruction by evil governmental and corporate bureaucrats. According to Frank and Tom Carpenter of the non-profit watchdog Hanford Challenge, circumstantial evidence suggests that the campaign against one whistleblower, Ed Bricker, may have even included an attempt to kill him during the 1980s. At the end of the day, the whistleblowers received financial compensation or other acknowledgement of victimhood from the courts and certain government agencies. However, in spite of the positive resolution of their cases, Frank reports that the whistleblowers often told him that their experiences were heavily traumatic. It was common for them to face daily hostility from coworkers who didn’t appreciate them rocking the boat. The retaliation against one whistleblower (Donna Busche)included sexually harassing comments from a male URS senior manager (who later apologized after Busche complained to HR).

During the George W. Bush and Obama years, Busche and fellow whistleblower Walter Tamosaitis worked on what has been an ongoing centerpiece of the effort to deal with Hanford’s nuclear waste, the site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). The project has been a massive boondoggle for Bechtel, the company under contract to construct it. According to Frank, the WTP, begun in 2002, was originally scheduled for completion in 2011. That target date was badly missed and by 2022 the earliest estimates placed the project’s finish in 2037. The cost was originally $12 billion; in recent years, according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), estimates place it at $41 billion.

In spite of its interminable series of delays and budget revisions on the WTP project, Bechtel has kept raking in the taxpayer dollars. Frank writes that its conduct in constructing the WTP has parallels with its actions during the Iraq War. In receiving many US government contracts for Iraq reconstruction, Bechtel engaged in destructive mismanagement and waste of taxpayer funds. In one instance, Bechtel’s work in constructing an Iraqi children’s cancer hospital was so mismanaged that the US government canceled the contract and awarded it to another contractor.

Bechtel has, for the most part, been able to avoid serious accountability for its colossal waste of taxpayer funds. It has spread its money among the campaign coffers of both Republicans and Democrats. Frank notes that in a 2021 interview conducted by Bechtel president Brendan Bechtel, Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg assured the company that it would have more opportunities for government contracts with the administration’s forthcoming infrastructure legislation.

Hanford has almost totally shut down its involvement in generating nuclear power since 1990. All governmental work on the site since then has supposedly been targeted at dealing with the massive amount of nuclear waste buried beneath its surface as well as remediating the land, air and waterways (mainly the Columbia River) which have been ravaged over the decades by its radioactive and chemical pollution. The fact that this recovery work has made such a small headway over a long time period is not just because of the political influence of corrupt government contractors like Bechtel. It is also because the US political class–Republican and Democrat–regard nuclear weapons as a lynchpin of US global hegemony. They would not want to delegitimize the production of such weapons or the military-industrial complex in general in the eyes of the American public by mobilizing a serious and comprehensive governmental effort to address harms caused by Hanford.

Meanwhile, Frank observes, it is not out of the realm of possibility that the tens of millions of gallons of nuclear waste bubbling and bursting at the seams beneath Hanford’s surface in rapidly aging tanks–filled well beyond their originally prescribed capacity–could produce an unprecedentedly catastrophic nuclear accident in the not too distant future. In general, those storage tanks have been managed with the utmost carelessness and recklessness by the US federal government and its private contractors.

The Way Forward

Frank’s book is primarily about Hanford–but it places Hanford within the broader issue of nuclear power. For example he devotes a particularly compelling portion of the book’s last part to criticizing progressive commentators George Monbiot, the Guardian columnist, and Bhaskar Sunkara, the founder of Jacobin: both for their embrace of nuclear power as a solution to climate change and their severe downplaying of the catastrophic dangers of nuclear power plant meltdowns. Some nuclear power advocates claim that it is carbon neutral. In reality, Frank points out, when every stage of nuclear energy development is taken into account–”from plant and reactor construction, uranium mining, milling and fuel fabrication to the transport of waste”–nuclear power creates a larger carbon footprint than natural gas plants.

Indigenous activists seem to be the best hope for wrenching any further substantive change at Hanford from the powers-that-be. These activists too have had their struggles making headway on the issue. Federal and state officials have frequently made a show of consulting tribal groups about Hanford and have co-opted some of their concerns. But they have also sometimes visibly worked to keep the tribes at a distance when designing Hanford policies.

Frank spends some time in the book recounting the Hanford related activism of Russell Jim, Yakama Nation elder, who died from cancer at age eighty-two in 2018. Frank quotes extensively from an interview Jim once gave and it is obvious from his prose that he is personally moved by the steadfastness and dignity Jim showed throughout his struggle against Hanford. Frank places Hanford within the broader struggle of Jim’s people to fight the robbery and contamination of their land: for example he also references the fight against the dams on the Columbia River which, from the 1930’s onward, destroyed traditional indigenous fishing grounds.

The book is based on years of research exploring government documents and interviews conducted with participants in the struggle. Frank is an editor at Counterpunch magazine. I’ve always admired his work as well as that of his Counterpunch colleague, Jeffrey St. Clair.

Overall this book is not only useful in calling attention to an under-reported and potentially epically catastrophic environmental ticking time bomb in Hanford’s haphazardly stored nuclear waste. It also is an important story of corporate and governmental corruption–and shows how courageous ordinary people have resisted it.

Environmental permit granted for first Polish Nuclear plant

22 September 2023

Poland's General Director for Environmental Protection (GDOŚ) has issued to Polskie Elektrownie Jadrowe (PEJ) its decision on the environmental conditions for the construction of a nuclear power plant in the province of Pomerania.

How the plant in Pomerania could look (Image: PEJ)

PEJ, the Polish government company that is progressing its policy to deploy up to six reactors at multiple sites in the country by 2040, submitted the environmental impact assessment (EIA) report for the first plant to GDOŚ on 29 March 2022. GDOŚ is an expert institution responsible for environmental protection and control of the investment process.

The EIA report examined the environmental impact of constructing and operating a plant with a generating capacity of up to 3750 MWe in the area of ​​the municipalities of Choczewo, Gniewino and Korkowa in the province of Pomerania. PEJ said the final EIA report complied with the provisions of the decision of GDOŚ, which in 2016 defined the scope of the environmental report in relation to the considered location variants and their technical sub-options, as well as in relation to the infrastructure accompanying the power plant.

The draft decision was reviewed by the Director of the Maritime Office in Gdynia, the State Sanitary Inspector for the Pomorskie Voivodeship, the Director of the Regional Board of Water Management in Gdańsk of the State Water Holding Wody Polskie, the President of the Polish National Atomic Energy Agency, and the Minister of Climate and Environment.

GDOŚ has now issued its final decision, which PEJ said is "a key permit obtained in the investment process, as subsequent administrative approvals, including the location decision and the construction permit, must be consistent with the terms and conditions contained in the decision on environmental conditions".

The obtained decision on environmental conditions determines the site variant for the first nuclear power plant in Poland, at the Lubiatowo-Kopalino site in the Choczewo municipality. It also defines the conditions of using the environment at the stage of development and operation of the facility, requirements concerning the environment protection necessary to be included in the design documentation, requirements for counteracting the effects of industrial accidents, and it also imposes an obligation of the reassessment of environmental impact, as part of the procedure for issuing the construction permit.

The decision was preceded by national and transboundary consultations with 14 countries that applied for participation in this procedure. The national consultations, held from 20 July to 18 August 2023, included all residents of Poland, who could review the documentation and submit their comments and conclusions. The transboundary consultations were held from September 2022 until July 2023. As part of the procedure, relevant protocols were signed with all the countries involved, including four protocols signed after intergovernmental expert meetings held under Article 5 of the Espoo Convention, which contributed to closing the process within the assumed timeframe.

"The issued decision on environmental conditions is one of the most important stages in the permitting process and brings us significantly closer to the start of the construction of the first nuclear power plant in Poland," said PEJ President Mateusz Berger. "It defines the conditions that must be met in order to execute a nuclear investment project in compliance with environmental regulations and requirements on both the national and international level."

PEJ - a special-purpose vehicle 100% owned by the State Treasury - has already obtained a decision-in-principle issued by the Ministry of Climate and Environment confirming that the company's investment is in line with the energy policy implemented by the state. In August, it applied to the head of the Pomeranian Voivodeship for a location decision for the plant.

The Polish government selected the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor technology for construction at Lubiatowo-Kopalino in Pomerania in November 2022.

Westinghouse and Bechtel have just signed a formal agreement to partner on the design and construction of the plant. They expect to sign an engineering services contract with PEJ within the next week.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Westinghouse, Bechtel sign consortium agreement for Polish plant

21 September 2023

Westinghouse Electric Company and Bechtel have signed a formal agreement to partner on the design and construction of Poland's first nuclear power plant at Lubiatowo-Kopalino. They expect to sign an engineering services contract with Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe (PEJ) within the next week.

From left: US Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski, Ahmet Tokpinar, general manager of Bechtel’s nuclear power business line, Elias Gedeon, Senior Vice President for Commercial Operations at Westinghouse, Miroslaw Kowalik, President, Westinghouse Poland, and Anna Łukaszewska-Trzeciakowska, Poland Government Plenipotentiary for Strategic Energy Infrastructure at the signing ceremony (Image: Westinghouse)

The Polish government selected the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor technology for construction at Lubiatowo-Kopalino in Pomerania in November 2022. The country's Ministry of Climate and Environment in July this year issued a decision-in-principle for Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe (PEJ) - a special purpose vehicle 100% owned by the State Treasury - to construct the plant. "Significant licensing and engineering work" on the project is already under way, Westinghouse said.

An agreement signed earlier this year by Bechtel, Westinghouse and PEJ set out plans for the delivery of the project, with Westinghouse to lead the consortium at the design stage and Bechtel during construction.

Westinghouse President for Energy Systems David Durham said the team has "demonstrated ability" to deliver on large nuclear projects. "The fleet experience we have earned with our advanced, proven AP1000 technology, including a 100% complete design and construction lessons-learned, will serve Poland well as it seeks decarbonisation and increased energy security," he said.

"Bechtel and Westinghouse bring more than 140 years of combined nuclear power experience," John Howanitz, president of Bechtel's Nuclear, Security & Environmental global business unit, adding that the companies are "eager to partner with the local workforce, suppliers, and community, to deliver the clean and reliable energy Poland needs."

The consortium agreement was signed at the US Embassy in Warsaw.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Bechtel awarded $1.2B to destroy mustard weapons at Pueblo plant
By Christen McCurdy

This 2015 photo shows a worker at the Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant. This week Bechtel received a $1.2 contract modification to continue destroying mustard munitions at the plant. Photo by Bethani Crouch/U.S. Army

April 1 (UPI) -- Bechtel National received a $1.2 billion contract extension this week to destroy surplus chemical weapons stored at the U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado.

The deal funds the construction of three new buildings -- called static detonation chambers -- to destroy munitions that could not be destroyed by automated equipment in Pueblo, according to Bechtel.

The Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant in Pueblo began pilot operations in 2016 and has destroyed more than 1,300 tons of mustard weapons. According to Bechtel, that's more than half of the stockpile in Colorado.

By the time the project is complete, Bechtel estimates staff will have destroyed more than 2,600 tons of mustard gas in three formats -- 155mm projectiles, 105 mm projectiles and 4.2-inch mortar rounds -- before ultimately closing the plant.

According to materials published by the Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant, staff at the plant use three processes to destroy chemical weapons: neutralization followed by biotreatment; explosive destruction; and static detonation.

"The mission of this plant, our people, and our customer has international significance: to help rid the U.S. of chemical weapons," Barbara Rusinko, president of Bechtel's Nuclear, Security and Environmental global business unit, said in a press release. "The team overcame the challenge posed by some munitions and is now simultaneously operating the main plant and building the new destruction facilities."

Michael S. Abaie, program executive officer for the Army's Program Executive Office for Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives, said the project puts his office in a "good position" to finish destroying the weapons stockpile by December 2023.

---30---

Secret IRS files reveal how much the ultrawealthy gained by shaping Trump’s 'Big Beautiful Tax Cut'

Justin Elliott, ProPublica Robert Faturechi, ProPublica
August 11, 2021

Donald Trump and Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago (Photo: Screen capture)

In November 2017, with the administration of President Donald Trump rushing to get a massive tax overhaul through Congress, Sen. Ron Johnson stunned his colleagues by announcing he would vote “no."

Making the rounds on cable TV, the Wisconsin Republican became the first GOP senator to declare his opposition, spooking Senate leaders who were pushing to quickly pass the tax bill with their thin majority. “If they can pass it without me, let them," Johnson declared.

Johnson's demand was simple: In exchange for his vote, the bill must sweeten the tax break for a class of companies that are known as pass-throughs, since profits pass through to their owners. Johnson praised such companies as “engines of innovation." Behind the scenes, the senator pressed top Treasury Department officials on the issue, emails and the officials' calendars show.

Within two weeks, Johnson's ultimatum produced results. Trump personally called the senator to beg for his support, and the bill's authors fattened the tax cut for these businesses. Johnson flipped to a “yes" and claimed credit for the change. The bill passed.

The Trump administration championed the pass-through provision as tax relief for “small businesses."

Confidential tax records, however, reveal that Johnson's last-minute maneuver benefited two families more than almost any others in the country — both worth billions and both among the senator's biggest donors.

Dick and Liz Uihlein of packaging giant Uline, along with roofing magnate Diane Hendricks, together had contributed around $20 million to groups backing Johnson's 2016 reelection campaign.

The expanded tax break Johnson muscled through netted them $215 million in deductions in 2018 alone, drastically reducing the income they owed taxes on. At that rate, the cut could deliver more than half a billion in tax savings for Hendricks and the Uihleins over its eight-year life.

But the tax break did more than just give a lucrative, and legal, perk to Johnson's donors. In the first year after Trump signed the legislation, just 82 ultrawealthy households collectively walked away with more than $1 billion in total savings, an analysis of confidential tax records shows. Republican and Democratic tycoons alike saw their tax bills chopped by tens of millions, among them: media magnate and former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg; the Bechtel family, owners of the engineering firm that bears their name; and the heirs of the late Houston pipeline billionaire Dan Duncan.

Usually the scale of the riches doled out by opaque tax legislation — and the beneficiaries — remain shielded from the public. But ProPublica has obtained a trove of IRS records covering thousands of the wealthiest Americans. The records have enabled reporters this year to explore the diverse menu of options the tax code affords the ultrawealthy to avoid paying taxes.

The drafting of the Trump law offers a unique opportunity to examine how the billionaire class is able to shape the code to its advantage, building in new ways to sidestep taxes.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was the biggest rewrite of the code in decades and arguably the most consequential legislative achievement of the one-term president. Crafted largely in secret by a handful of Trump administration officials and members of Congress, the bill was rushed through the legislative process.

As draft language of the bill made its way through Congress, lawmakers friendly to billionaires and their lobbyists were able to nip and tuck and stretch the bill to accommodate a variety of special groups. The flurry of midnight deals and last-minute insertions of language resulted in a vast redistribution of wealth into the pockets of a select set of families, siphoning away billions in tax revenue from the nation's coffers. This story is based on lobbying and campaign finance disclosures, Treasury Department emails and calendars obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, and confidential tax records.

For those who benefited from the bill's modifications, the collective millions spent on campaign donations and lobbying were minuscule compared with locking in years of enormous tax savings.

A spokesperson for the Uihleins declined to comment. Representatives for Hendricks didn't respond to questions. In response to emailed questions, Johnson did not address whether he had discussed the expanded tax break with Hendricks or the Uihleins. Instead, he wrote in a statement that his advocacy was driven by his belief that the tax code “needs to be simplified and rationalized."

“My support for 'pass-through' entities — that represent over 90% of all businesses — was guided by the necessity to keep them competitive with C-corporations and had nothing to do with any donor or discussions with them," he wrote.

By the summer of 2017, it was clear that Trump's first major legislative initiative, to “repeal and replace" Obamacare, had gone up in flames, taking a marquee campaign promise with it. Looking for a win, the administration turned to tax reform.

“Getting closer and closer on the Tax Cut Bill. Shaping up even better than projected," Trump tweeted. “House and Senate working very hard and smart. End result will be not only important, but SPECIAL!"

At the top of the Republican wishlist was a deep tax cut for corporations. There was little doubt that such a cut would make it into the final legislation. But because of the complexity of the tax code, slashing the corporate tax rate doesn't actually affect most U.S. businesses.

Corporate taxes are paid by what are known in tax lingo as C corporations, which include large publicly traded firms like AT&T or Coca-Cola. Most businesses in the United States aren't C corporations, they're pass-throughs. The name comes from the fact that when one of these businesses makes money, the profits are not subject to corporate taxes. Instead, they “pass through" directly to the owners, who pay taxes on the profits on their personal returns. Unlike major shareholders in companies like Amazon, who can avoid taking income by not selling their stock, owners of successful pass-throughs typically can't avoid it.

Pass-throughs include the full gamut of American business, from small barbershops to law firms to, in the case of Uline, a packaging distributor with thousands of employees.

So alongside the corporate rate cut for the AT&Ts of the world, the Trump tax bill included a separate tax break for pass-through companies. For budgetary reasons, the tax break is not permanent, sunsetting after eight years.

Proponents touted it as boosting “small business" and “Main Street," and it's true that many small businesses got a modest tax break. But a recent study by Treasury economists found that the top 1% of Americans by income have reaped nearly 60% of the billions in tax savings created by the provision. And most of that amount went to the top 0.1%. That's because even though there are many small pass-through businesses, most of the pass-through profits in the country flow to the wealthy owners of a limited group of large companies.

Tax records show that in 2018, Bloomberg, whom Forbes ranks as the 20th wealthiest person in the world, got the largest known deduction from the new provision, slashing his tax bill by nearly $68 million. (When he briefly ran for president in 2020, Bloomberg's tax plan proposed ending the deduction, though his plan was generally friendlier to the wealthy than those of his rivals.) A spokesperson for Bloomberg declined to comment.

Johnson's intervention in November 2017 was designed to boost the bill's already generous tax break for pass-through companies. The bill had allowed for business owners to deduct up to 17.4% of their profits. Thanks to Johnson holding out, that figure was ultimately boosted to 20%.

That might seem like a small increase, but even a few extra percentage points can translate into tens of millions of dollars in extra deductions in one year alone for an ultrawealthy family.

The mechanics are complicated but, for the rich, it generally means that a business owner gets to keep an extra 7 cents on every dollar of profit. To understand the windfall, take the case of the Uihlein family.

Dick, the great-grandson of a beer magnate, and his wife, Liz, own and operate packaging giant Uline. The logo of the Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, firm is stamped on the bottom of countless paper bags. Uline produced nearly $1 billion in profits in 2018, according to ProPublica's analysis of tax records. Dick and Liz Uihlein, who own a majority of the company, reported more than $700 million in income that year. But they were able to slash what they owed the IRS with a $118 million deduction generated by the new tax break.

Liz Uihlein, who serves as president of Uline, has criticized high taxes in her company newsletter. The year before the tax overhaul, the couple gave generously to support Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. That same year, when Johnson faced long odds in his reelection bid against former Sen. Russ Feingold, the Uihleins gave more than $8 million to a series of political committees that blanketed the state with pro-Johnson and anti-Feingold ads. That blitz led the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to dub the Uihleins “the Koch brothers of Wisconsin politics."

Johnson's campaign also got a boost from Hendricks, Wisconsin's richest woman and owner of roofing wholesaler ABC Supply Co. The Beloit-based billionaire has publicly pushed for tax breaks and said she wants to stop the U.S. from becoming “a socialistic ideological nation."

Hendricks has said Johnson won her over after she grilled him at a brunch meeting six years earlier. She gave about $12 million to a pair of political committees, the Reform America Fund and the Freedom Partners Action Fund, that bought ads attacking Feingold.

In the first year of the pass-through tax break, Hendricks got a $97 million deduction on income of $502 million. By reducing the income she owed taxes on, that deduction saved her around $36 million.

Even after Johnson won the expansion of the pass-through break in late 2017, the final text of the tax overhaul wasn't settled. A congressional conference committee had to iron out the differences between the Senate and House versions of the bill.

Sometime during this process, eight words that had been in neither the House nor the Senate bill were inserted: “applied without regard to the words 'engineering, architecture.'"

With that wonky bit of legalese, Congress smiled on the Bechtel clan.

The Bechtels' engineering and construction company is one of the largest and most politically connected private firms in the country. With surgical precision, the new language guaranteed the Bechtels a massive tax cut. In previous versions of the bill, construction would have been given a tax break, but engineering was one of the industries excluded from the pass-through deduction for reasons that remain murky.

When the bill, with its eight added words, took effect in 2018, three great-great-grandchildren of the company's founder, CEO Brendan Bechtel and his siblings Darren and Katherine, together netted deductions of $111 million on $679 million in income, tax records show.

And that's just one generation of Bechtels. The heirs' father, Riley, also holds a piece of the firm, as does a group of nonfamily executives and board members. In all, Bechtel Corporation produced around $2.3 billion of profit in 2018 alone — the vast majority of which appears to be eligible for the 20% deduction.

Who wrote the phrase — and which lawmaker inserted it — has been a much-discussed mystery in the tax policy world. ProPublica found that a lobbyist who worked for both Bechtel and an industry trade group has claimed credit for the alteration.

In the months leading up to the bill's passage in 2017, Bechtel had executed a full-court press in Washington, meeting with Trump administration officials and spending more than $1 million lobbying on tax issues.

Marc Gerson, of the Washington law firm Miller & Chevalier, was paid to lobby on the tax bill by both Bechtel and the American Council of Engineering Companies, of which Bechtel is a member. At a presentation for the trade group's members a few weeks after Trump signed the bill into law, Gerson credited his efforts for the pass-through tax break, calling it a “major legislative victory for the engineering industry." Gerson did not respond to a request for comment.

Bechtel's push was part of a long history of lobbying for tax breaks by the company. Two decades ago, it even hired a former IRS commissioner as part of a successful bid to get “engineering and architectural services" included in one of President George W. Bush's tax cuts.

The company's lobbying on the Trump tax bill, and the tax break it received, highlight a paradox at the core of Bechtel: The family has for years showered money on anti-tax candidates even though, as The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has written, Bechtel “owed almost its entire existence to government patronage." Most famous for being one of the companies that built the Hoover Dam, in recent years it has bid on and won marquee federal projects. Among them: a healthy share of the billions spent by American taxpayers to rebuild Iraq after the war. The firm recently moved its longtime headquarters from San Francisco to Reston, Virginia, a hub for federal contractors just outside the Beltway.

A spokesperson for Bechtel Corporation didn't respond to questions about the company's lobbying. The spokesperson, as well as a representative of the family's investment office, didn't respond to requests to accept questions about the family's tax records.

Brendan Bechtel has emerged this year as a vocal critic of President Joe Biden's proposal to pay for new infrastructure with tax hikes.

“It's unfair to ask business to shoulder or cover all the additional costs of this public infrastructure investment," he said on a recent CNBC appearance.

As the landmark tax overhaul sped through the legislative process, other prosperous groups of business owners worried they would be left out. With the help of lobbyists, and sometimes after direct contact with lawmakers, they, too, were invited into what Trump dubbed his “big, beautiful tax cut."

Among the biggest winners during the final push were real estate developers.

The Senate bill included a formula that restricted the size of the new deduction based on how much a pass-through business paid in wages. Congressional Republicans framed the provision as rewarding businesses that create jobs. In effect, it meant a highly profitable business with few employees — like a real estate developer — wouldn't be able to benefit much from the break.

Developers weren't happy. Several marshaled lobbyists and prodded friendly lawmakers to turn things around.

At least two of them turned to Johnson.

“Dear Ron," Ted Kellner, a Wisconsin developer, and a colleague wrote in a letter to Johnson. “I'm concerned that the goal of a fair, efficient and growth oriented tax overhaul will not be achieved, especially for private real estate pass-through entities."

Johnson forwarded the letter from Kellner, a political donor of his, to top Republicans in the House and Senate: “All, Yesterday, I received this letter from very smart and successful businessmen in Milwaukee," adding that the legislation as it stood gave pass-throughs “widely disparate, grossly unfair" treatment.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, responded with a promise to do more: “Senator — I strongly agree we should continue to improve the pass-through provisions at every step. You are a great champion for this." Congress is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, but Treasury officials were copied on the email exchange. ProPublica obtained the exchange after suing the Treasury Department.

Kellner got his wish. In the final days of the legislative process, real estate investors were given a side door to access the full deduction. Language was added to the final legislation that allowed them to qualify if they had a large portfolio of buildings, even if they had small payrolls.

With that, some of the richest real estate developers in the country were welcomed into the fold.

The tax records obtained by ProPublica show that one of the top real estate industry winners was Donald Bren, sole owner of the Southern California-based Irvine Company and one of the wealthiest developers in the United States.

In 2018 alone, Bren personally enjoyed a deduction of $22 million because of the tax break. Bren's representatives did not respond to emails and calls from ProPublica.

His company had hired Wes Coulam, a prominent Washington lobbyist with Ernst & Young, to advocate for its interests as the bill was being hammered out. Before Coulam became a lobbyist, he worked on Capitol Hill as a tax policy adviser for Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch.

Hatch, then the Republican chair of the Senate Finance Committee, publicly took credit for the final draft of the new deduction, amid questions about the real estate carveout. Hatch's representatives did not respond to questions from ProPublica about how the carveout was added.

ProPublica's records show that other big real estate winners include Adam Portnoy, head of commercial real estate giant the RMR Group, who got a $14 million deduction in 2018. Donald Sterling, the real estate developer and disgraced former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, won an $11 million deduction. Representatives for Portnoy and Sterling did not respond to questions from ProPublica.

Another gift to the real estate industry in the bill was a tax deduction of up to 20% on dividends from real estate investment trusts, more commonly known as REITs. These companies are essentially bundles of various real estate assets, which investors can buy chunks of. REITs make money by collecting rent from tenants and interest from loans used to finance real estate deals.

The tax cut for these investment vehicles was pushed by both the Real Estate Roundtable, a trade group for the entire industry, and the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. The latter, a trade group specifically for REITs, spent more than $5 million lobbying in Washington the year the tax bill was drafted, more than it had in any year in its history.

Steven Roth, the founder of Vornado Realty Trust, a prominent REIT, is a regular donor to both groups' political committees.

Roth had close ties to the Trump administration, including advising on infrastructure and doing business with Jared Kushner's family. He became one of the biggest winners from the REIT provision in the Trump tax law.

Roth earned more than $27 million in REIT dividends in the two years after the bill passed, potentially allowing him a tax deduction of about $5 million, tax records show. Roth did not respond to requests for comment, and his representatives did not accept questions from ProPublica on his behalf.

Another carveout benefited investors of publicly traded pipeline businesses. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, added an amendment for them to the Senate version of the bill just before it was voted on.

Without his amendment, investors who made under a certain income would have received the deduction anyway, experts told ProPublica. But for higher-income investors, a slate of restrictions kicked in. In order to qualify, they would have needed the businesses they're invested in to pay out significant wages, and these oil and gas businesses, like real estate developers, typically do not.

Cornyn's amendment cleared the way.

The trade group for these companies and one of its top members, Enterprise Products Partners, a Houston-based natural gas and crude oil pipeline company, had both lobbied on the bill. Enterprise was founded by Dan Duncan, who died in 2010.

The Trump tax bill delivered a win to Duncan's heirs. ProPublica's data shows his four children, who own stakes in the company, together claimed more than $150 million in deductions in 2018 alone. The tax provision for “small businesses" had delivered a windfall to the family Forbes ranked as the 11th richest in the country.

In a statement, an Enterprise spokesperson wrote: “The Duncan family abides by all applicable tax laws and will not comment on individual tax returns, which are a private matter." Cornyn's office did not respond to questions about the senator's amendment.

The tax break is due to expire after 2025, and a gulf has opened in Congress about the future of the provision.

In July, Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., proposed legislation that would end the tax cut early for the ultrawealthy. In fact, anyone making over $500,000 per year would no longer get the deduction. But it would be extended to the business owners below that threshold who are currently excluded because of their industry. The bill would “make the policy more fair and less complex for middle-class business owners, while also raising billions for priorities like child care, education, and health care," Wyden said in a statement.

Meanwhile, dozens of trade groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, are pushing to make the pass-through tax cut permanent. This year, a bipartisan bill called the Main Street Tax Certainty Act was introduced in both houses of Congress to do just that.

One of the bill's sponsors, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, pitched the legislation this way: “I am committed to delivering critical relief for our nation's small businesses and the communities they serve."

Polish-US nuclear cooperation expands to USNC microreactors

31 March 2023

Grupa Azoty Police, Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation and the West Pomeranian University of Technology have signed an agreement to build a nuclear energy research facility based on Ultra Safe Nuclear's Micro-Modular Reactor (MMR) technology. Meanwhile, Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe, Westinghouse and Bechtel expect to soon sign a contract for the design of Poland's first large-scale reactor.

The signing of the agreement between Grupa Azoty Police, Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) and the West Pomeranian University of Technology (Image: Grupa Azoty)

Polish chemicals producer Grupa Azoty Police, the USA's Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) and the West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin agreed on 29 March to develop and construct a research facility based on USNC's MMR at Police, a town in the West Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northwestern Poland. Over the next six months, the parties will prepare a comprehensive research programme and will jointly develop a plan for the construction, operation and maintenance of the MMR.

The first stage of the collaborative project will consist of the construction of a 30 MWt MMR to serve as a training, research and test facility. It will be connected to the existing energy infrastructure of Grupa Azoty Police, providing a unique opportunity to study, test, optimise and integrate the MMR as a zero-carbon generation source into an industrial plant.

The collaboration will ultimately lead to the development of a plan for full-scale use of nuclear energy to power chemical processes and to generate steam and hydrogen at Grupa Azoty Police's plant.

"The Grupa Azoty Group's strategy for 2021-2030, with its flagship Green Azoty project, targets new renewable capacities totalling nearly 380 MW across the group by 2030," noted Tomasz Hinc, CEO and President of the Management Board of Grupa Azoty. "In our strategic plan, we have also communicated entry into the segments of wind power and small nuclear sources, including MMRs, which will provide us with additional megawatts of zero-carbon energy.

"The tripartite agreement signed today at the Szczecin Province Office is paving the way for the Grupa Azoty Group to successfully deploy the 4th Generation MMR technology at our sites by the end of the period covered by our current strategy, that is by 2030. Seeking to make the fastest possible transition towards climate neutrality, clean energy and diversified energy sources, we want to agree on the detailed framework of our cooperation within the next six months."

"Deploying our high-temperature nuclear batteries with Grupa Azoty and the West Pomeranian University of Technology opens the path for decarbonisation and the development of modern nuclear infrastructure and workforce in Poland and exemplifies US support of Poland's national energy independence," said USNC CEO and founder Francesco Venneri. "Together with our partner Hyundai Engineering Corporation, we fully support Grupa Azoty's plans to reduce CO2 emissions and we are glad to offer the West Pomeranian University the possibility of research in the area of our high-temperature nuclear batteries."

USNC's MMR is a 15 MW thermal, 5 MW electrical high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, drawing on operational experience from reactors developed by China, Germany, Japan and the USA. It consists of two plants: the nuclear plant that generates heat, and the adjacent power plant that converts heat into electricity or provides process heat for industrial applications. The USNC system is designed to be simple, with minimal operation and maintenance requirements, and no on-site fuel storage, handling or processing. The MMR uses TRISO fuel in prismatic graphite blocks and has a sealed transportable core.

The MMR is at an advanced licensing stage at the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's Chalk River Laboratories campus in Ontario. The project is a collaboration between USNC and Ontario Power Generation through the jointly owned Global First Power Limited Partnership.

The project at Police joins the growing list of global training, test, and research MMR projects at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the USA, McMaster University in Canada and Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland.

Plans for large-scale plant progresses

Poland's Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe (PEJ) and the USA's Westinghouse Electric Company and Bechtel Corporation have held talks about enhancing cooperation in the project for the first nuclear power plant in Poland.

The talks were attended by the acting President of PEJ Łukasz Młynarkiewicz, President of Energy Systems at Westinghouse David Durham, Vice President and CEO of Bechtel Craig Albert and John Howanitz, President of the Nuclear Energy, Safety and Environment segment at Bechtel.

"In the near future, it is planned to sign a Memorandum of Understanding between PEJ, Westinghouse and Bechtel, which will allow to formalise the selected model of cooperation in the form of a consortium," PEJ said. "Such a model of cooperation, preferred by Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe from the beginning, will be applied already at the stage of the next contract, planned later this year, i.e. the contract for engineering services, covering the first stage of work on the detailed technical design of the power plant in Pomerania.

"Signing the contract with the Westinghouse-Bechtel consortium will allow us to use the unique competences and experience gained during the construction of two AP 1000 reactors in the USA, which is now being finalised."

In September 2021, it was announced that six large pressurised water reactors with a combined installed capacity of 6-9 GWe could be built by 2040 as part of Poland's plan to reduce its reliance on coal. According to the adopted schedule, the construction of the first nuclear power plant will start in 2026, with the first reactor, with a capacity of 1-1.6 GWe, being commissioned in 2033. Subsequent units will be implemented every 2-3 years.

In November 2022, the Polish government selected Westinghouse for the country's first nuclear power plant. In February this year, PEJ and Westinghouse signed a contract commencing joint activities that will lead to the preparation of the design of the first nuclear power plant in Poland.

Meanwhile, Poland's ZE PAK, Polska Grupa Energetyczna and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power have signed a letter of intent to cooperate on a nuclear power plant project in Patnow, in central Poland, assessing the viability of building South Korean APR1400 reactors on the site.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News