General

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The Russian and the Syrian governments have exposed over the past three days the intention of the British-backed terrorists in Syria, together with their “White Helmet” terrorist support apparatus, to stage a fake chemical weapon attack, film the White Helmets “saving” the victims, blast the videos around the world on fake news outlets, and induce President Trump to allow the war party to unleash a missile and air assault on Syria. It worked twice before, although Trump restricted the attacks to minor, limited attacks, with few casualties. However, with ISIS largely defeated by the Syrian army, the British intend to provoke a wider war, both to prevent President Trump from carrying out his intention to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, and to destroy the effort by both Presidents Trump and Putin to bring the U.S. and Russia into a friendly and cooperative relationship. In the eyes of the British Empire, the Helsinki Summit between Trump and Putin marked a deadly threat to the Empire itself.

Let there be no doubt: The British would vastly prefer a thermonuclear showdown, or even a thermonuclear war, between the United States and Russia, rather than see the imperial division of the world between East and West torn down. The power of the City of London and its Wall Street subsidiary depends absolutely on that division.

The first fake chemical attack in Syria took place while Trump was meeting with Xi Jinping in Florida in April 2017, aimed at undermining Trump’s personal cooperation with China’s leader. The second attack came in April of this year, based on a White Helmet video which was proven by multiple witnesses, and even the testimony of the supposed “victims” themselves, to have been completely staged by the White Helmets.

The difference now is that the Russians and the Syrians have the evidence ahead of the fake chemical weapons attack, and have made it public, calling on the world to stop it. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Igor Konashenkov told the press on Aug. 25: “To carry out the alleged `chemical attack’ in the city of Jisr al-Shugur in the province of Idlib, militants from the Tahrir al-Sham [Jabhat al Nusra in Syria]…, had delivered eight tankers with chlorine to a village a few kilometers from Jisr al-Shugur. This provocation, with the active participation of the British special services will serve as another pretext for the U.S., U.K., and France to conduct a missile strike on the Syrian government and economic facilities.” He identified both the White Helmets and the Olive Group, a 5,000-strong British mercenary organization based in Abu Dhabi, as active participants in preparing the provocation.

When the British claimed that Assad was using chemical weapons in 2013, without evidence, President Obama ordered preparation for a full-scale military assault on Syria. Only the mass mobilization of the citizenry forced Obama to back down, after an outcry against yet another illegal and genocidal war against a Southwest Asian country which was no threat the West, and which in fact was staunchly anti-terrorist.

A similar mobilization today can and must prevent the current British plan for war. The fact that President Trump, unlike Obama, is opposed to regime change, wants to pull out of Syria as soon as ISIS is fully eliminated, and wants the U.S. and Russia to collaborate in this and other tasks, means that exposing this British provocation will also greatly contribute to stopping the British coup attempt against Trump through the Mueller Russiagate witch hunt.

In fact, President Trump was elected precisely because he is intent on breaking the “Special Relationship” with the British, a relationship which has turned the U.S. into a post-industrial junk heap, with a drugged up and demoralized population and a policy of permanent warfare. The LaRouche movement knows what is needed to make Trump a great President and to truly make America great again: He must be liberated from the coup attempt, freeing him to join with Russia and China and India in a New Bretton Woods agreement, to put the Western financial system through bankruptcy proceedings and restore the industrial economies of the West, in league with the New Silk Road development of the entire world. Without the United States taking that dramatic step, there is no possibility of the world avoiding disaster, and no possibility of the United States taking that step if Trump is brought down by the war party.

The New Paradigm is within our grasp, if we rise to the moment as a human race, to end geopolitics and Empire from the face of the Earth.

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The possibility that President Donald Trump may pardon Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, now being slowly killed in a London prison, especially in the aftermath of the recent resignation of Attorney General William Barr, has raised a tantalizing question. Will the Russiagate “computer hack that never was” so central to the present Assange incarceration and torture finally be brought to light if he is released from prison? Will the criminal conspiracy against the US Presidency that involved “Five Eyes” intelligence agencies, and City of London/Wall Street financial interests, be exposed, through the declassification and release of all documents essential to revealing the Russiagate hoax? Will these documents include relevant portions of the tens of thousands of pages Ty Clevenger has learned the FBI has just acknowledged to exist in their files that are relevant to his request in a FOIA lawsuit regarding information on Seth Rich? Will we perhaps finally see the release of these and other documents through the firings and/or resignations of CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christopher Wray, following William Barr? 

Swift, unexpected and unorthodox action by the President could now be the only way to reveal the true nature, and reverse the present outcome of the 2020 Presidential election. By allowing justice, through such actions, to provide a platform for Snowden, an ailing Assange, National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney and others, to reveal how the surveillance state has nearly mortally wounded the American electoral process, just as it has manipulated and fixed elections throughout the planet for decades—regardless of where the chips may fall—Donald Trump could yet be inaugurated President in January 2021. If the truth of the campaigns of 2016 and 2020 were finally told to the American people, whoever does that will have earned their undying support. And that truthful explanation will instantly reveal the bloody face of the Obama-Bush Administrations joined at the hip through their advocacy of war as the primary tool of diplomacy.

British Intelligence, Not Russia Or China, Is The “Foreign Actor”

Have you noticed that, if one names China or Russia, many are quick to simply accept the idea of foreign intervention in the US elections, but whenever the well-documented involvement of British intelligence in interfering in the United States elections and presidency in the past five years is brought up, “conspiracy theory” is the term used to reject that analysis? The names Christopher Steele, Robert Hannigan, Sir Richard Dearlove, American Stefan Halper, and Sir Kim Darroch—all of them attached directly to GCHQ, MI6, or the British Foreign Service—are only those operatives so far known to have directly fomented either the “Russia, Russia, Russia” story, or the “China, China, China” story. There may be many more. 

Yet “it’s really hard for me to see how Great Britain is involved “ is still used as an excuse by most {not} to face what has actually been going on. Ignoring the truth however, becomes impossible when looking at the case of Julian Assange. Assange is being killed before our eyes in a British prison in order that the Russia fiction be preserved. How is this done? On February 20 earlier this year, the Guardian newspaper printed the headline: “Donald Trump ‘offered Julian Assange a pardon if he denied Russia link to hack.’” Most media would be instantaneously discredited as hoaxsters, and reluctantly ever believed again, once Assange, along with knowledgeable others, were allowed to speak publicly about Russiagate. The cui bono—who benefits—from Assange’s silence, is the conspirators that originated, carried out, and hid the plot against the American Presidency—British, American and otherwise. As journalist Viktor Dedaj stated at the December 12 Schiller Institute panel, “Hang Together or Hang Separately: Free and Sovereign Republics, or Digital Dictatorship”:

“When Julian Assange was finally removed from the Embassy in violation of international law and even the Ecuadorian constitution, it only took a quarter of an hour for the British judge, first to insult him and then to sentence him to 50 weeks in prison for violating what? His ‘conditions of probation’….But he (was) not just…sentenced to 50 weeks, but to 50 weeks in a high security prison. We will see that this is the only case to my knowledge in Great Britain, that a journalist, accused of nothing, in preventive detention, is locked up in a high security prison…. We saw a trial that almost took place behind closed doors, refusing by name the presence of about 50 NGOs, where 90 journalists had been accredited…”

Edward Snowden, it should be remembered, was aided in 2013 by Julian Assange in his successful escape from Hong Kong. Snowden was then marooned in Moscow when his passport was revoked, thus making it impossible for him to travel further. National Security Agency whistleblower Kirk Wiebe has observed that, far from being a traitor, as many have asserted, Snowden may have been forced to act in an illegal way in order to preserve his sworn oath to the Constitution of the United States. His actions occurred several years after Wiebe, along with William Binney and Ed Loomis, and later joined by House Intelligence Committee staffer Diane Roark, had used “the approved channels and procedures” to report wrongdoing following their resignations from the NSA in 2001, only to be raided at gunpoint by the FBI and nearly railroaded and sent to prison by the Department of Justice in 2007. President Trump’s recent indication that he might look to pardon Snowden, after Trump had years earlier even stated that Snowden deserved death, has deeply worried intelligence insiders, Republican and Democrat. These “deep staters” above all else want to draw attention away from the ugly truth. The systemic overthrow of governments, including through the manipulation and fixing of elections by members of the “Five Eyes” secret government arrangement, is standard operating procedure for what is called in the American intelligence world “Project Democracy,” first widely revealed to the American public by Lyndon LaRouche and Executive Intelligence Review in the 1987 Report “Project Democracy: The Parallel Government Behind the Iran-Contra Affair.”

How Project Democracy’s Campaign Against Lyndon LaRouche Destroyed American Elections

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller

The past is prologue. To understand how it came to pass that American intelligence agencies, acting in collusion with a British foreign power that no one cares to name, committed fraud against both the 2020 and 2016 elections, it is necessary to understand the use of Executive Order 12333 and other 1980s Presidential directives to reorganize and centralize many intelligence functions into the Office of the Vice President. (To understand the implications of what this means, think “Dick Cheney.”) E.O. 12333 and various other orders hastened the privatization of military and intelligence functions. Companies, sometimes referred to as quasi non-governmental organizations (“quangos”), infested daily American life—and then came the internet, developed originally for military use and afterwards illegally deployed for universal surveillance through criminal applications of programs originally designed to defend the United States, such as Bill Binney’s ThinThread program. 

Studying the case of Lyndon LaRouche, and his 1984–1989 legal lynching, is the single most efficient means by which today’s American electorate can begin to understand the true nature of the grand crime against the Presidency presently being committed, a crime that will require, for its correction, LaRouche’s exoneration, as well as justice for Assange and Snowden. 

In fact, whether Julian Assange is successfully kept alive and released from prison in the next weeks, or whether Edward Snowden is soon allowed to return home and assist in the process of cleaning out the “secret government” that has run the United States, is intimately tied to whether Lyndon LaRouche, economist, statesman, and Presidential candidate, is finally exonerated. Though LaRouche died on February 12 2019, his exoneration now plays an even greater role in rectifying the destruction of the American Presidential system that has gone on for over a half-century. The October 6, 1986 attempted assassination of LaRouche, and his subsequent prosecution, conviction and imprisonment, was not an attack on a “maverick political extremist,” as it was portrayed by literally thousands of printed and electronic media stories at the time. It was, because of LaRouche’s use of his Presidential campaigns to change the direction of the policies of the Reagan and other presidencies, that destroying him meant, in reality, a violent, near lethal assault on the American Presidential system. It was the same Presidential system that came under violent attack with the November 22, 1963 murder of JFK, the April-June 1968 double assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and the March 1981 near-assassination of Ronald Reagan.

Lyndon LaRouche(1922–2019), economist and statesman, was for five decades the most controversial figure in American politics. He became a world-class threat through his United States Presidential campaigns. His 1970s denunciation of the genocidal looting policies and predatory lending practices of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Anglo-American financial establishment in general, and his successful organizing of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative in 1982-83, earned him the undying enmity of the “baby doomers” that have now huddled around the trillions-dollar financial scam known as the “Green New Deal.” LaRouche had to be taken out, or at least, down. That attack was coordinated through the privatized intelligence route , including the April 1983 establishment of a “Get LaRouche Task Force” headed up by financier John Train of New York, and involving multiple intelligence agencies. Individuals such as London’s favorite Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, also played a central role in initiating fraudulent legal actions that aimed to stop him. LaRouche’s enemies, including Robert Mueller, played a role in the attempt to shut down LaRouche’s Presidential campaigns in both 1984 and 1988. 

It is virtually impossible for Americans to understand what is now unfolding around the Presidential election without knowing why LaRouche posed such a threat, and what was done to silence him. LaRouche’s enemies are the Malthusians—those who want to see the planet’s population reduced by at least half in the next 30 years—the bankers’ environmental movement. Poor people are very bad for the environment, they say. And the most prominent of environmentalists are now, often, also the world’s biggest bankers. Take, for example, the newly-formed Guardians for Inclusive Capitalism, founded by Lynn Forester de Rothschild, whose leaders claim to represent more than $10.5 trillion in assets under management. Is this a “grassroots environmental movement?” Is this even an “astroturf movement? “ Their plan is to de-carbonize the planet by lessening the number of people presently on it by four, five, or six billion. Famine, pestilence, disease, and war—the “Four Horsemen”—are their preferred way of doing it. And those are the policies that are the immediate future under the new, friendly, enlightened cyber-dictatorship. 

Only a vigorous campaign on behalf of justice in all forms—electoral justice, economic justice, defense of the right to know—can save the United States, the trans-Atlantic world, or the world as a whole. These next days before us give us a chance to not merely demand, but secure that justice. Action in these three cases—pardons in the cases of Assange and Snowden, and exoneration for Lyndon LaRouche—are the direct path to securing justice for all citizens throughout the world, and in every country. They are the path to justice for the President of the United States as well. Fiat Justitia ruat caelum —“let justice be done, though the heavens fall.” Now, in these next days, justice given, is justice gained.

Nov. 12 – The proposal to build a Eurasia Canal for ships to traverse between the Caspian and Black Seas was presented to the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Shortsea Shipowners Association in Piraeus, Greece, on Nov. 8. The idea was depicted by Dean Andromidas, representative of the Schiller Institute and the EIR Strategic Alert, who spoke for 20 minutes and then fielded questions from board members.

The Eurasia Canal was first proposed by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2007. The project calls for a 750-km cement-lined canal across the Manych Depression in the Russian Caucasus. It would have five locks and accommodate ships of the Handymax class of up to 35,000 DWT, thus for the first time introducing ships of this class to the Caspian Sea.

According to studies by the Chinese Sinohydro company, a potential of 120 million tons of cargo could pass through the canal, including hydrocarbons from the Caspian Sea region, which accounts for 6-10% of the world’s oil reserves. It would also carry other bulk cargo, including grain and mineral resources. The container traffic from China could amount to as much as 24-30 million tons. This compares with the 101 km Volga-Don Canal, which has a capacity of only 15 million tons, accommodating ships no larger than 5,000 DWT.

By opening up all of Central Asia to maritime shipping, the Eurasia Canal would create a new economic development corridor stretching from the port of Lianyungang in China on the Yellow Sea, through Urumqi in China’s westernmost Xinjiang province, to the port of Aktau on the Caspian in Kazakhstan, through to the Black Sea and into the Aegean Sea, right on Greece’s maritime doorstep. This is a region comprising more than 11 countries and more than 1 billion people. The canal would be an important contribution to the ongoing Belt and Road Initiative composed of the Economic Silk Road Belt and Maritime New Silk Road integrating Eurasia and Africa.

Questions posed by the participants demonstrated a lively interest in the project. Many of them, who were already active in the shipping sector on the Caspian and also the Danube, quickly grasped the potential for such a channel. While one might have expected concerns about the costs of such a project, none were raised. One participant said, the real issue is the will among the concerned nations to build the project. As for financing, the participant pointed to China and how it is able to mobilize financing for major projects after it had made the decision to go ahead.

German government spokesman Steffan Siebert has reported that according to toxicology tests performed on Alexei Navalny’s blood samples by a German military lab, there is now “unequivocal proof” that the Russian opposition figure was poisoned by a nerve agent of the Novichok family, Reuters reported. Predictably, this has unleashed a wave of indignant responses from within Germany and internationally on a par with the hysteria around the orchestrated 2018 Skrypal case, demanding that Russia be held accountable. Putin himself is targeted.

    While spokesman Dmitry Peskov reported today that the Kremlin has received no report from Berlin on these findings, nor replies to any previous requests for more detailed medical information on Navalny’s status, Seibert solemnly announced that the “federal government will inform its partners in the EU and NATO of the results of the investigation…and will discuss an appropriate joint response with the partners in the light of the Russian response.” The implication is that sanctions could be imposed on Russia. In her own statement, Chancellor Angela Merkel proclaimed, “it’s now clear” there was an “attempt to murder Navalny…He is the victim of a crime. He was meant to be silenced. This raises very difficult questions that only the Russian government can and must answer. This goes against the basic values that we stand for.” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said he would be calling in the Russian ambassador to demand an immediate response to the German lab’s findings. The name of the lab hasn’t been identified.

      The stench emanating from Siebert’s assertion of “unequivocal proof,” is unmistakable. {The Guardian} gives it away when it mentions that, according to {Der Spiegel}, experts at Berlin’s Charite hospital where Navalny is being treated, consulted Britain’s secretive Porton Down lab, notorious for its role in the Skripal case, precisely “because of possible similarities with the 2018 Skripal attack.” It also quotes a German Green MP who studied at Yale University with Navalny who bellows that this new information raises the whole issue to “an international level,” demanding an international investigation be launched immediately. B {The Guardian} coyly notes that, so far,  Germany remains committed to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project with Russia, implying that the alleged poisoning of Navalny might change that.

      Tass notes that Russia’s Prosecutor General had requested Germany’s legal assistance in replying to 20 pertinent questions regarding Navalny’s treatment, diagnosis and test results as well as on a preliminary diagnosis from the German clinic, and medical documents and research by German specialists, both during Navalny’s transportation from Russia to Germany and his stay at the Berlin clinic. The Germans provided no information.

If you believe the popular gossip that you have to choose between bringing the economy to a halt to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, or “reopening” the economy and letting the disease rip, you’re being snookered – once again – by the British financial crowd that brought you both catastrophes in the first place: the City of London and their Wall Street sidekicks. As Lyndon LaRouche warned four decades ago, and the LaRouche organization restated explicitly as early as February 2020, the then-emerging pandemic was caused by 50 years of catastrophic British economic policies which had brought the world’s Potential Relative Population Density well below the actual population on the planet. The solution to {both} crises does not lie in some trade-off between the two, but in a single global solution to both, revolving around the application of LaRouche’s famous Four Laws. This was elaborated by EIR in its May 2020 “The LaRouche Plan To Reopen the U.S. Economy: The World Needs 1.5 Billion New, Productive Jobs.”

Consider a recent indication of the problem. As China was announcing that it had fully eliminated absolute poverty in the country, and that they had created 11 million new urban jobs in the period January-November of 2020 (meeting their annual target a month early), a new study of poverty in the U.S. reported that the poverty rate rose sharply in the five months from June to November, from 9.3% to 11.7%, with 7.8 million more Americans falling below the poverty line. According to the study released Dec. 16, of the 7.8 million new poor, about 2.3 million are children under 17.

Continuing widespread unemployment, combined with the end of government support in late July, were cited as the two key causes of the problem. The average unemployment payment was over $900 per week from March to the end of July, and after that it dropped by two-thirds, down to an average $300 per week. The federal poverty line is $26,200 for a family of four.

James X. Sullivan, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, who co-authored the study with Bruce D. Meyer, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, stated: “We’ve seen a continual rise in poverty every month since June.” Predictably, things are worse for Blacks (up 3.1 percentage points, or 1.4 million people since June) and for Americans with high school degrees or less (up 5.1 percentage points, or 5.2 million people). These are the people who tend to work in low-wage restaurant, travel and retail positions. The GAO recently reported that many states now pay gig workers and self-employed workers unemployment aid that is below the poverty level.

Back to China: President Xi Jinping stated that innovation is the “primary driving force” of the economy. And Xinhua, in reporting on the November data, stated: “China needs scientific and technological solutions, more than ever, to boost economic and social development. In the first 11 months, the output of high-tech manufacturing sectors increased 6.4 percent, markedly outpacing the overall growth in industrial output.”

Leading officials from the China National Space Administration (CNSA) held a press briefing to report on the results of the Chang’e-5 mission, which was deemed a resounding success. But the press was obviously very curious about where China would go in space after this, and, of course, when they would send people to the Moon.

Yuanhua, the Vice Administrator of the CNSA, said that Chang’e-5 was the result of over a decade of development. The 23-day mission now enters the stage of scientific investigation. An entire institute has been built to conduct, store and study the samples and a back-up storage facility has been constructed in Shaoshan in Hunan province, the birthplace of Mao Tsetung, because of his push for a Chinese space program in the 1950s  [“Two Bombs and One Satellite”, was the motto in the 50s]. Hu Hao, the chief designer of the China Lunar Exploration Stage 3, said that the handling of the samples also represents a new capability for China which would aid in its technological advancement. “We need to explore more in space in order to advance our technology,” Hu said. The samples would also be available to research and university institutions for their study. And in the not too distant future, some of the samples would be placed on view in the National Museum of China.

Wu also congratulated the countries that had worked with China on the program, including ESA, Namibia, Argentina and Pakistan. In reply to a question about China’s cooperation, he said that China was prepared to work with “like-minded institutions” in other countries. At one point he was asked specifically by Reuters about cooperation with the U.S. Wu then discussed the restrictions of the Wolf Amendment, which prevented cooperation with the U.S. and at one point  he said that cooperation had to be based on equality,  mutual benefit and win-win cooperation.

He also noted that the series of Chang’e missions had involved thousands of institutions and tens of thousands of scientists and engineers. He noted that China through this process had now developed a tremendous capability for space development in the interest of mankind. “Our goal will be different from the U.S. and the Soviet Union,” Wu said. “In those days, it became something of a “star wars.” We want to conduct scientific research and serve mankind.”

The Chang’e-5 mission was more complicated than it had to be for a simple sample return. But Wu indicated that the technologies that were used would also be a vital element for a  human exploration mission. As China’s newly named “space ambassador,” Professor Yang Yuguang, succinctly put it: “We did it that way not because it was easy, but because it was hard,” reflecting the words of Kennedy with regard to Apollo.

Wu Yunhua was also queried about China’s future space plans and he was not reticent in talking about them. “We have a number of plans for the coming years, some of which have been made public,” he said. In exploration, they still have Chang’e-3 and Chang’e-6, which were backup missions If other missions failed. They would now be utilized in some form, perhaps to do a sample return from the South Pole of the Moon. Then there is Chang’e-7 and 8, which he said would be used to work with other countries in exploring  the possibilities of establishing a lunar space center.

There were also other planetary missions, he noted. Tianwen-1 is already on its way to Mars and is scheduled to land on Mars in May of next year. There are also three other planetary missions, an asteroid-return mission, a Mars return mission and a Jupiter exploration mission. In terms of manned space, there will be 11 missions in the next two years, utilizing the space station, including the launch of a core capsule with 4 people.

And there will also be innovation in China’s launch capability. Long March-5 which carried the Chang’e-5 (labeled the “Fat Five mission”) will continue to be utilized. China also announced the development of a new Long March-8 rocket which will fly at the end of December. With the Long March series of 5, 6, 7 and 8, Wu said “we will be working with a whole system of new generation rockets to meet the need of the space missions

China is also making progress in its satellite department, Wu noted, which created the basic infrastructure for the Chang’e-5 mission. These include navigation satellites, communications satellites and remote-sensing satellites. “These are an important staple for our civilian space program,” Wu said, “and an important supply-side component of our  country’s development.” Wu also noted that space innovation needed science satellites, and pointed to China’s collaboration with Italy on the development of an electromagnetic satellite, which will help improve earthquake predictions.

In reflecting on the just-concluded Schiller Institute two-day conference, Helga Zepp LaRouche emphasized the significance of the question posed by Jacques Cheminade, a former candidate for President of France, in his address during the 4th panel.  Cheminade asked, “Why is there no mass movement to counter the present global crisis?”

In her review of the developments of the last week — from the ongoing battle to overturn election fraud in the U.S., the escalation of anti-Russia, anti-China actions by the same networks behind the fraudulent Russiagate, and aggressive moves to impose the Global Reset — Zepp LaRouche came back to the importance of creating a cultural Renaissance to address the systemic collapse underway.  It is crucial that we take the advice of her late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, to “Think Like Beethoven,” so that we can rise to the level of thinking needed to overcome what otherwise is a crisis which threatens the survival of humanity.  She urged people to celebrate the 250th birthday of Beethoven by listening to his music, viewing the Schiller Institute (SI) conference, and then joining the SI to move mankind into a new paradigm.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced the completion of its Phase 6 review—the last and final phase—of the Design Certification Application (DCA) for NuScale’s small modular reactor (SMR) and have issued  the Final Safety Evaluation Report (FSER).  With this final approval customers can proceed with plans to develop NuScale power plants with the understanding that the NRC has approved the safety aspects of the NuScale design.

“This is a significant milestone not only for NuScale, but also for the entire U.S. nuclear sector and the other advanced nuclear technologies that will follow. This clearly establishes the leadership of NuScale and the U.S. in the race to bring SMRs to market. The approval of NuScale’s design is an incredible accomplishment and we would like to extend our deepest thanks to the NRC for their comprehensive review, to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for its continued commitment to our successful private-public partnership to bring the country’s first SMR to market, and to the many other individuals who have dedicated countless hours to make this extraordinary moment a reality,” said NuScale Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hopkins said in a NuScale press release on August 28. “Additionally, the cost-shared funding provided by Congress over the past several years has accelerated NuScale’s advancement through the NRC Design Certification process. This is what DOE’s SMR Program was created to do, and our success is credited to strong bipartisan support from Congress.”

This  design certification  means it meets safety requirements and could be chosen by future projects seeking licensing and approval. The next step for NuScale is to obtain full certification from the regulator which will then allow a utility to reference the design when applying to build and operate a nuclear power plant anywhere in the US. Already the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems is planning to develop a 720MW plant at the Idaho National Laboratory which would use 12 of these reactors.

Once built the Nuscale reactor will be the first of its kind which can be built in serial production in a factory with the modules assembled on the site of the power plant. NuScale has signed agreements with entities in the U.S., Canada, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Jordan. Similar agreements with other entities are being negotiated.