Nuclear-related scandals unfold at highest levels of U.S. and Canadian politics

An opinion column in the New York Times by Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof is but the latest in a growing collection of news stories questioning the Trump administration's eagerness to transfer weapons-usable nuclear power technology to the reckless Saudi Arabia regime.

Kristof has pointed to a "gargantuan conflict of interest involving [Jared] Kushner," Trump's son in law, and highly controversial senior advisor. It turns out that Brookfield Asset Management, headquartered in Toronto, Canada, which bailed out the infamous, billion-dollar Kushner real estate boondoggle at 666 5th Avenue in Manhattan, also took over the bankrupt Westinghouse corporation, which is trying to sell its high-risk nuclear wares in Saudi Arabia.

Kristof also quoted U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), who stated "A country that can't be trusted with a bone saw shouldn't be trusted with nuclear weapons," referring to the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Turkey, a crime that even the Trump CIA, and the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate unanimously, have concluded implicates the highest levels of the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) regime.

For his part, MBS has come right out and said Saudi Arabia could develop a nuclear weapons arsenal, to counter its arch enemy, Iran -- something Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mohamed ElBaradei, former director of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, warned about more than a decade ago.

But Brookfield Asset Management isn't the only the nuclear-related Canadian firm embroiled in high-level political scandal. Montreal, Quebec-based SNC-Lavalin, which recently partnered with Holtec International of New Jersey, to undertake nuclear power plant decommissioning and highly radioactive waste management in the U.S. (as at Oyster Creek, NJ), is at the center of an unprecedented Canadian political scandal that could take down Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as federal elections approach this autumn.

Holtec and SNC-Lavalin have proposed taking over the soon-to-close Pilgrim nuclear power plant site near Boston, something the Massachusetts State Attorney General, as well as the watchdog group Pilgrim Watch, are challenging.

The writing on the wall is that Holtec and SNC-Lavalin could raid the billion-dollar Oyster Creek and Pilgrim decommissioning trust funds, do as little actual radioactive contamination clean up as the complicit U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will allow, and use the money to expedite transfer of irradiated nuclear fuel to Holtec's proposed centralized interim storage facility (CISF) in New Mexico.

Beyond Nuclear has legally intervened against the Holtec CISF, as has a broad coalition of environmental groups from NM and across the country. Learn more about the CISF fight at Beyond Nuclear's Centralized Storage website section.