By Yoichi Shimatsu
Exclusive to Rense
5-29-25

Intro – Donald Trump is a hard-driving business mogul known to 'bite off more than he can chew’ – which sometimes results in choking on a bone as happened during his infamous brawl with the Jersey mob during chaotic construction of his Atlantic City casino. The scandalous lesson then was 'be cautious about who you go to bed with' (let’s not go any further with that!). This time around on Friday, May 23, the Trumpster waltzed straight into another booby trap, or trap for boobs, by fronting for the so-called 'mini-reactor' investment scam, which in the recent past involved and badly burned the likes of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. It has since been picked up by an even weirder personality by the name of Sam Altman, zombie boss of the ‘nonprofit' ChatGPT and his illiterate product OpenAI.

There’s nothing artificial about intelligence because it takes persistent human effort, worldly experience and faith in miracles to distill truth or at least the facts from a chaotic and deceptive universe, the worst case being of course a corrupt and money-grubbing human society, a pit of half-truths, bald-faced lies and rip-offs. Investor beware! BTW, one of the more recent big losers in the mini-nuclear investor scam is Mike Kratsios, director of the White House office of science and tech, a name to remember. As a veteran of the independent on-site investigation into the Fukushima TEPCO nuke meltdowns – the causes linked with U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama – I have solid reasons to be skeptical of nuclear hoopla and illicit international dealings related to radioactive fuel...

Press Conference Or Media Circus?

Technology has refused to be kind to a Trump team that has been confronted with a mysterious helicopter crash with a passenger airliner, relentless bombing campaigns in Israel and Ukraine, an age-fatigued Air Force One, rusty bridges across the nation’s rivers, plus homes blasted by tornadoes and power outages in several states. In what appeared to be a desperate gesture to restore public confidence in the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and sinking stock markets, the President put on a brave face in the televised White House event to boast about the near-term future of mini-nuclear power plants that promise to provide an endless energy boost for AI data centers across America. This sort of high-tech hype was reminiscent of the hoopla for NASA back in the good old days before that space shuttle exploded and dropped radioactive debris across Texas, after killing the entire crew. How are these two programs similar? Both were/are based on flawed technologies, little lies and humongous deception – a waste of taxpayer money.

Steinbeck’s adage that “the best laid plans of mice and men can go awry” is cautionary advice when it comes to picking high tech winners and losers, especially when the power source is nuclear or 'mini-nuke', as you will. The whiz teams with the Atomic Energy Agency (after the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) have always presented a bright future of clean atomic power for the modern world – at least until the meltdowns at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Who’s next? Sobriety is painful after a binge of intoxication – “Gee whiz, the solution to the electricity bill is: Nukes!” And then the bill for the scam arrives to your mailbox.

My impression of presidential hyping of futuristic small nuclear power generators is that Trump was a bit ill and in need of cheer at a moment at a time when much of his hopes have been dashed, including plans for a suspension of combat between Ukraine and Russia, peaceful resolution of the Gaza-Israel conflict, open hostile resistance from liberal judges, violent tornadoes, Harvard’s elitist arrogance toward federal authority, and a string of idiotic children’s movies at the end of school year. Yeah, it’s been a bad start to summer-time driving. Get back to real work, Elon! It seems nobody believes in American greatness anymore as shown in voyeur fatigue for the final chapter of Top Gun – Tom, grow up and stop with the cosmetics. The once proud USA is sinking under a sour mood while awaiting the end of cheap imports of sexy clothing and foreign booze. The end of shopping is nigh, sigh!

These are bad times, indeed. Therefore, Americans need hoopla and firecrackers to revive national optimism in our tradition of daring innovation and fearless laughter at imposing risks. Donald did his best to cheer us with the promise of abundant power for our internet chat and Facebook aka idle pastimes. Inviting a few of the newest tech entrepreneurs involved in artificial intelligence (AI), the president unveiled a program of support for mini-nuclear power plants to charge up a whole lot of data centers across this info-nation. Whoopy! Happy daze are here again! Unfortunately, Trump’s grandstanding for a data-rich future went over like a lead balloon. The American public has shown zero enthusiasm for AI, as opposed to say, made-in-China TikTok – the latter an ideal medium for influencers, narcissists and vendors of cheap clothing now unaffordable due to tariffs. How sad, how bad can it get? Just wait and see what mini-nukes will bring to your front door.

While Trump is usually a great salesman, this time around he failed to realize that he’s flogging a defective product that nobody really wants other than diehard fans of OpenAI. How many of those are there? Hint to Sam: If you want to attract millions of eyeballs invest in super-sick kiddie porn instead, dummy! There’s a lot of pervs out there now lingering around public schools – and perhaps you can offer some fine examples of your favorite daydreams. Meanwhile, what little faith that I might have had in AI was dashed when looking up the new Pope’s past in Peru during the savage Sendero Luminosa rebellion. All that AI came up was drivel about anonymous bad guys with no particular targets lingering on some unnamed streets in a Peruvian town, a total waste of two minutes! History according to AI – garbage in, garbage out. Now let us bow to foreign gods of enlightenment!

A Burnt-Out Power Source

The lack of a public clamor for radioactive generators at nearby Walmart parking lots fails to strike a happy note with Gen ABC (after Gen-Z, the alphabet goes back to the beginning). What our great leader failed to comprehend is that average Americans - indeed normal people everywhere - do not want to hear about “the benefits of nuclear energy” - not after Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima and in California the closure of leaking reactors at San Onofre that were poisoning the sea lions. How many Americans on cold winter nights wish to shovel uranium into their fireplaces?

Your citizen of average intelligence does not want to die earlier than necessary - or worse suffer years of hospitalization - due to radioactivity exposure. There are several radioactive hot zones in the USA and neighboring Canada. Here in New Mexico, the atomic waste from Oppenheimer’s Trinity Site caused so many strange symptoms and deaths of local rancher families that the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) and the boys at Los Alamos ordered a fleet of dump trucks to secretly move and dump the radioactive sand in the town of Estancia (where I cannot get access to my family’s tract there, now under a hot hill). As for military-related nuke waste, armed with a dosimeter one can easily locate small dump sites where hot particles are buried at every current and decommissioned military base. No, military veterans are not just dying from war wounds but from radioactivity exposure during the most vulnerable years of their lives. Right now, massive tonnage of nuke waste is starting to be trucked from the Idaho national lab along your highways to New Mexico for burial in someone’s backyard. Meanwhile, the adjoining Navajo nation in eastern Arizona is again being subjected to uranium-particle dust along the highways off trucks heading to processing centers for nuclear-reactor fuel and, indeed, warheads.

Where the hell’s been the compensation for the unwitting civilian and military victims, Mister President – when is that Executive Order to be signed? I am reminded of the daughter of a rancher friend, who had to suffer the scraping of her hipbone to remove radioactive particles left by Oppenheimer and crew. What is necessary is a dump-truck parade to deliver nuclear waste to the doors of the White House, Congress and the Pentagon, eh? That’s called ‘equality' or the American Way, a nation where 'the little people' are treated with more respect than money-grubbing crooks and contractors!

Nuclear is and shall be a hard sell, even for our ultimate salesman, more difficult than selling that sour murderous clown Zelensky to the angry Russians. So the message for Trump boils down to this: For happy days to be back again, you have to sell something that brings happiness rather than undeserving painful early mass death. And saying AI data centers and mini-nuclear reactors in the same breath is indeed the kiss of death. Now let’s discuss the one known case of a “mini-nuclear reactor” exploding - despite all the promises that such mishaps never occur in self-contained units. Aside from that astonishing blast, how many prototype mini-nuke generators have been dismantled and the radioactive waste dumped in somebody’s backyard or inside a national park?

Nuclear Scam

The concept is to build small reactors - portable enough to move to different construction or energy-user sites - to provide portable off-grid electrical power to factories, military bases and even universities - power hungry batards. To that list add Sam Altman’s energy-starved AI data centers. The first blow against Trump’s capitalist enthusiasm is that the 'new efficient small reactors' are horribly cost ineffective. A simplified accounting is: $4,700 per kilowatt from small reactors versus $1,800 for the same power output from existing and older model gas-fired plants. Oh, we environmentalists are horrified at the thought of fossil fuel! Turn on your nukes instead! Any homeowner, business operator, shopping center or drug store willing to pay double-plus to turn the lights on and ring the cash register should voice serious market-based objections to filling the pockets of those proven financial losers Altman and Katsos, Gates and Buffett. Whether the Trump Organization gets a piece of the taxpayer action as a kickback is another good question.

So, the smart advice to Don is: Don’t take these numbers to 'Shark Tank' or you’ll be booted from the studio or fed to the sharks circling the dock. Which brings up a slightly disturbing question: Who in hell on your staff urged you, El President Numero Uno, to host those nuclear nerds? That was a bad call, to say the least, and worst of all, an endorsement of business fraud, which is more than another setback for the White House. Next time, before making a similar gaffe, be sure to phone me for cold, hard advice on what not to do. Wake up - coffee’s on!

The other disadvantage of new nukes is the risk of radioactivity releases and potential explosions from the dodgy design of the tube reactor, which stands about 16 feet tall and is attached by pipe to a pool (tank) of coolant water. So what happens when you run radioactive heated air replete with nuclear particles through cold water? The water starts to boil, unless you add a coolant system - meaning inevitable release of radioactivity into the air that humans and animals breathe. A real-life example of a mini-nuke disaster, which I stumbled on in Arizona, is discussed farther on.

So what is the president risking by aggressively promoting an obvious techno-scam? The crime of being an accessory to fraud, much like the NuScale micro-reactor from the Kenwood Group, which the SEC in 2011 determined to be a Ponzi scheme. As for other similar projects, 8 cities (in Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah) have more recently pulled out of the small-reactor projects of the Carbon Free Power Project. If that CFPP serves as any indicator, the secret promoter of a nuke-revival is Dooson Enerbility based in Changwan, South Korea. So atop financial suicide, there’s the question of foreign influence - which will double kill investors. (BTW, I wrote an article on the visit to Korea’s military-industrial complex by a young Donald and his uncle John Trump, a scientist who served as the inheritor of the Nicola Tesla research papers). What an odd name and abuse of the English language – why not go instead with Energetic Hillbillies?

A Vision Of Hell

The one known nuclear radioactivity disaster involving mini-reactors occurred at the Vatican Observatory atop Mount Graham (the highest peak in Arizona) in the year 2000 (during the COVID outbreak). On an investigative visit to seek the causes of that emergency shutdown, I checked the claim that the huge scopes relied on a power cable that ran next to the steep roadside. Stopping frequently on the drive up, I discovered to my surprise the absence of such a cable. My suspicion was aroused. The entry gate to the telescopes – just 15 more meters above my feet - was ‘protected' by a lock and an armed guard. Noticing a strange itchiness on my arms as I’d earlier experienced in Fukushima, I took my dosimeter out of the glove box and strolled a few meters down the roadway. The device buzzed furiously, indicating life-threatening levels of radioactivity. The conclusion was obvious: A small nuclear reactor had melted down, exploded, cutting the observatory’s power supply and forcing the closure.

My interest in this mission had been piqued by the ‘Lucifer' binocular observatory, since according to my religious upbringing the Archangel Michael had battled with that ambitious evil rebel and knocked him down into the deepest pit of Hell. Nowadays, prompted by memories of that mountain discovery in Arizona, my curiosity has been revived by the discovery that the recently installed Pope Leo 14th, Robert Prevost, had an interest in astronomy. His more than 2-decade assignment in Peru put him into a choice location for accessing data from the Jicamara radio telescope near the capital Lima and to access the telescope arrays in nearby Chile. His university Villanova has been the intellectual center of leading Augustinian order astronomers. So are we on track to commune with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds? Oh, now I start to get it – the prophesized last Pope.

After taking on nuclear fiascos including Chernobyl fallout over Scandinavia, the Fukushima disaster, nuclear leakage along the California coast from the damaged San Onofre reactors, I wanted to take a break from this news beat before dying from radioactive spasms. So, of course, I took on the task of researching the mysterious closure of the Vatican Observatory atop Mount Graham in eastern Arizona. One of the observatories was (bizarrely) named ‘Lucifer' - a deep space viewer with twin telescopes that looked like dark eyes – meaning I was not being paranoid.

So, the pure logical conclusion was that the closure of the observatories was caused by a nuclear blast, actually a meltdown at a mini-nuclear reactor, like the ones being palmed off to the public at the recent White House event. Oh, small reactors are completely safe? The truth is outed. The Mount Graham/Vatican Observatory closure served as clear proof of the serious risks of radioactive releases from small nuclear power units and the potential for mini-reactor meltdowns - and proof indeed that there’s no such thing as a safe nuke, no matter how small in scale.

To add to the paranoia, the new Pope’s official name is Leo, which translates as ‘Lion’... an odd name for a cleric considering the grisly beast-vs-Christian ‘entertainment' inside the Roman Coliseum. The Beast plus Lucifer - one and the same. 'Come together, right now!' Why would the Vatican theologian-astronomers be searching for the Devil? For moral guidance? Is it because they believe God is dead?

Well, not for me, an absurdly old-fashioned optimist about God, Jesus and the saints and those three ladies - their exemplary faithfulness being the only path to salvation for us otherwise hopeless sinners. Yet so much of mythology is based on space observation, sightings that include the constellation Leo, the lion of August, the month of shooting stars aka fireballs in the night sky. And yet, one of the sightings that once appeared in the darkness of a cold winter night was a moving star that halted over the town of Bethlehem, as witnessed by the heroes of my youthful life in the Indio desert - the three Magi, astronomer-astrologers, healers and teachers. Puny humans, little more than wild apes, we are left gazing up at glittering sparks in the night sky, wondering what comes next, when after all we mortals can hardly tell the difference between demons and angels. Holy Night or cosmic warfare? Time will tell soon enough. Meanwhile, let’s hope to still be around on the crusader battlefield instead of being among the first wave poisoned by a ridiculous mini-reactor pumping power for quick access to TikTok. So let’s look at it from another angle: The clock is ticking down here, on Ground Zero.