Best Of

The US military is developing mini-nukes for bases, and emergencies. They are small enough to be moved by trucks, or even airplanes, and produce enough power for 1,000 average American homes, according to a TV story I saw. (I like the fact that the Army and the Navy have competing programs.)

The programs are promising the first deliveries by 2028.

Incidentally, such reactors might be a good for civilian use in parts of the Arctic. (I assume the military reasons for them are obvious.)

Rolls Royce in the UK is developing something similar, called SMR (small nuclear reactor), intended for town-sized deployments.

Yes the military use case is obvious, you can drop it in the middle of nowhere and have no need for a constant supply of fuel for electricity generation.

Rolls Royce reactors aren’t really designed for Towns. The plan is to have a cluster of assembly line built reactors on the same site instead of one big one.

It’s good in theory and they are selling it on being quicker and cheaper to build than traditional ones thus providing cheaper electricity. All that is true…..but!

What they aren’t saying is that they won’t be quicker or cheaper to build than wind or solar or that the electricity will be as cheap as either.

It’s a sort of sleight of hand, where they want you to look at it compared to the Like of Sizewell not Whitelees!

Peter.

The European Commission is dropping their investigation as to whether Korea's KHNP won the competition to build new reactors in the Czech Republic due to unfair state (Korean) subsidies. Article link in reply.

Another bidder, France's EDF, claimed that it would be impossible to build reactors in Europe at the cost that KHNP bid, unless there were illegal state (Korean) aid.

In addition to a lower cost bid, KHNP offered the Czech's a guarantee that the construction would not be delayed or become more expensive.

The truth, that the French can't accept, is that the Koreans are just better at building nuclear plants, as their record shows. They likely benefitted from the experience they got from building four reactors in the UAE..
https://x.com/HopfJames/status/2064369846616522867

The modern reactors in Korea and the UAE are a step-change in the process and efficiency of large-scale nuclear design.

UK should be paying careful attention, and considering the same. Not that they will of course, they’ll come up with a very British solution that costs five times as much, and hand it to the Chinese.

The irony is that China is also about as efficient as S Korea in building new nuclear.
It's the British solution bit that's massively expensive.

Ukraine has completely destroyed the Crimea bridge!

https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/2064645197951050183 https://x.com/warmonitor3/status/2064634279305281644

(No, it’s not the Kerch Bridge, it’s the alternative route through occupied Ukraine to the North, taking out the land corridor. There’s one small bridge left to go, then everything has to go over the Kerch or by sea.)

I saw on X they have a 1.5 ton weight limit on the Kerch bridge as it clearly hasn't been repaired properly from previous attacks. Of course they could get heavier trucks over as that will be based on an estimate of how many vehicles would be on it at any one time, but it would mean banning civilian traffic and sending over carefully controlled convoys.

Crimea is rapidly becoming not a very nice place to live.

The view from Goodwin Towers.

"Matt Goodwin
@GoodwinMJ

It’s not social media that’s “inflaming tensions”.

It’s not Elon Musk.
It’s not Nigel Farage.
It’s not the ‘far-right’.

It is the very deliberate policy of mass uncontrolled immigration & open borders.

This policy has to end or it will destroy Western nations.
6:40 AM · Jun 10, 2026
·
12.1M Views"

https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2064583575530287577

And the answer to this "crisis" is to entrust the nations immigration policy into the hands of Jenrick and Braverman who were the Justice and Home Secretaries during the Boris wave and let in the people they are now moaning about?

Is that really the best answer? Or perhaps we could notice that immigration has falled 75% since they were last in charge with deportation of criminals up significantly?

Why do none of the facts matter?

It's the 21st century.

Facts don't matter.

The view from Goodwin Towers.

"Matt Goodwin
@GoodwinMJ

It’s not social media that’s “inflaming tensions”.

It’s not Elon Musk.
It’s not Nigel Farage.
It’s not the ‘far-right’.

It is the very deliberate policy of mass uncontrolled immigration & open borders.

This policy has to end or it will destroy Western nations.
6:40 AM · Jun 10, 2026
·
12.1M Views"

https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/2064583575530287577

Who seriously thinks there is a "deliberate policy of mass uncontrolled immigration & open borders"?

Anyone on here? Do you @Andy_JS, whom I have always taken to be a serious and considered contributor?

You may think, as I do, that the policy is underfunded and poorly implemented with leaky borders. You may further think the policy is too lax, etc.

But a deliberate policy of mass uncontrolled immigration & open borders? Really?

Well, effectively it is, because that’s what we have. It might be policy to wish it were otherwise, because government can’t think of a nice way of stopping it.
If we were in a tank with water levels rising, and our approach were simply to wish that it were not, I think it would be reasonable to say that there is a deliberate policy of uncontrolled flooding.

The boat crossings arent in any sense mass immigration. They are 35-40k per year, about 0.05% of our population.

The rest of immigration is not uncontrolled.

I think there is a further point here.

The boat crossings reinforce the perception of a lack of control, while historically high levels of legal migration reinforce that perception rather than challenge it.

There is also a scale issue. 40,000 people may be a tiny percentage of a country of nearly 70 million, but people don’t experience immigration at the level of the UK as a whole. They experience it locally.

A few dozen arrivals in a small town, a local hotel being used for accommodation, pressure on GP appointments, school places or housing can be highly visible even when the national numbers look insignificant.

That doesn’t mean every concern is justified, nor that every perceived impact is caused by immigration. But it does help explain why arguments based solely on national percentages often fail to persuade people whose experience is much more immediate and local.

Although if the people voting for right-wing populists were purely those impacted personally by small boat arrivals the polls would be very different. So I do think much of the anger is driven by a false perception (straight out lies as often as not) spread by those populists.

Ukraine has completely destroyed the Crimea bridge!

https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/2064645197951050183 https://x.com/warmonitor3/status/2064634279305281644

(No, it’s not the Kerch Bridge, it’s the alternative route through occupied Ukraine to the North, taking out the land corridor. There’s one small bridge left to go, then everything has to go over the Kerch or by sea.)

I saw on X they have a 1.5 ton weight limit on the Kerch bridge as it clearly hasn't been repaired properly from previous attacks. Of course they could get heavier trucks over as that will be based on an estimate of how many vehicles would be on it at any one time, but it would mean banning civilian traffic and sending over carefully controlled convoys.

Crimea is rapidly becoming not a very nice place to live.

Very rapidly.

Next to the Kerch Bridge there’s a ferry boat for the heavy vehicles. Last week about two dozen fuel tankers all parked right next to each other in the car park by the ferry on the Russian side.

You can guess what happened next. 💥

There’s apparently tens of thousands of stranded Russian tourists there, who can’t get fuel for their cars. It’s only a matter of time until the food runs out.

Crimea River, as Justin Timberlake once sang.

The world media is just starting to notice that Putin's "inevitable" victory is going rather awry.

Turns out, if there's one nation on Earth you don't want to take on, it's the Ukrainians. When they shout "Exterminate!!" - Putin should hide behind the sofa...