Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,
The final components of ITER's central solenoid magnet -- a 59-foot, 3,000-tonne superconducting system 15 years in the making -- have arrived in France, clearing a major path toward first plasma.
ITER will never supply electricity to the grid; it exists purely as a research tool, and at €22 billion and counting, it's still years from achieving its primary milestone.
A wave of well-funded private fusion startups is on track to hit the same technical benchmarks as ITER faster and more cheaply -- raising real questions about the megaproject's relevance even as it celebrates progress.
The world's biggest nuclear fusion experiment just got one huge step closer to completion. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in Cadarache, France just received the final shipment of necessary components to assemble the giant magnet at the heart of the reactor. The central solenoid magnet, developed in the United States at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is a critical component of the massive experimental site, which is cooperatively funded and operated by a coalition of seven major world economies: China, the European Union (EU), India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
The central solenoid is awe-inspiring in its size as well as its capabilities.
"The central solenoid is 18 meters (59 feet) tall and 4.25 meters (14 feet) wide, composed of six individual modules," Interesting Engineering reported earlier this week.
"Each module weighs more than 122.5 tonnes (135 tons) and is wound from 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) of niobium-tin superconducting cable."
And this is just one component of a jaw-droppingly massive apparatus that represents "the grandest scientific experiment in the world". ITER's tokamak (the donut-shaped device designed to confine plasma with ultra-powerful magnets) measures a kilometer in length. The solenoid magnet as its core is therefore almost inconceivably powerful, and it's just one part of a much bigger and more impressive system. "This component belongs to a magnetic system weighing 3,000 tonnes (3,300 tons) that interacts with nine vacuum vessel sectors," Interesting Engineering goes on to say.
This beating heat of ITER has been 15 years in the making, with each individual module requiring a two-year process for fabrication and testing. ITER will never produce power to supply to the energy grid, but will serve as one of the most important – if not the most important – research projects on Earth to solve the puzzle of creating commercial nuclear fusion, the holy grail of clean energy. Nuclear fusion is the energetic process that powers our own sun. Replicating that process here on Earth could essentially provide limitless clean energy. It's a potentially long-lasting, ultra-efficient energy source that leaves behind zero greenhouse gases and zero hazardous radioactive waste, unlike nuclear fission.
But the scale of ITER, and the unprecedented nature of its goals, has led to increasingly long timelines and a ballooning budget for the slow-moving megaproject. While the delivery of the solenoid marks a major milestone, ITER is still years away from achieving first plasma, around €22 billion and nearly two decades after breaking ground.
ITER is still relevant, and will hopefully bring us invaluable scientific findings that would be impossible without its grand scale and budget. But the megaproject is facing increasing competition from smaller and more dexterous fusion ventures. Various other projects are on track to beat ITER to its mapped goalposts, and much more inexpensively.
The race for nuclear fusion is increasingly going private as investors start to recognize the technology as a matter of when, and not if. Interest from the tech sector is also ramping up as Silicon Valley scrambles to find a panacea to the energy monster that the AI boom has unleashed. As a result, a lot of deep-pocketed entities are now focused on fusion like never before.
"If you know how to build a fusion power plant, you can have unlimited energy anywhere and forever. It's hard to overstate what a big deal that will be," Bill Gates wrote in an October essay.
"The availability and affordability of electricity is a huge limiting factor for virtually every sector of the economy today. Removing those limits could be as transformative as the invention of the steam engine before the Industrial Revolution."
A new rush of Wall Street-backed fusion startups is already answering this call to arms, rapidly changing the scientific and economic landscape for nuclear fusion research everywhere. But ITER's backers argue that its looming obsolescence is a sign of the project's success rather than its failure, indicating that its achievements and high profile have inspired the current flood of private investing dollars into fusion research and development. And, if nothing else, ITER now stands as a vanishingly rare symbol of international cooperation for global interests, rather than nationalized and protectionist energy agendas.
Tyler Durden Fri, 05/08/2026 - 06:30The SOC Investment Group is a union-aligned shareholder advocacy organization formerly known as CtW Investment Group. It works with union-sponsored pension funds to mount pressure campaigns against public companies.
SOC's latest pressure campaign appears to target Elon Musk's SpaceX in an attempt to delay or derail the upcoming IPO.
The union-affiliated pension fund adviser, linked to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) - a labor union that has supported the left-wing, billionaire-funded "No Kings" protest against President Trump...
... has asked regulators to review the accuracy and reliability of SpaceX's financials, ensure auditor independence, and examine accounting around transactions with other Elon Musk-linked companies, including xAI and Tesla.
The InfluenceWatch database via Capital Research Center shows SOC's ties with lefty unions...
To note, SOC is weirdly obsessed with unhinged globalist ESG investment activism that damaged the U.S. economy during the Biden-Harris regime years.
SOC warned that investors could be exposed to SpaceX, whose valuation may decline once its financial disclosures are independently reviewed. Oddly enough, SOC is not a SpaceX shareholder but has previously pushed governance pressure campaigns at major companies, including Tesla.
"We are specifically concerned that SpaceX's IPO will expose numerous investors, many unwillingly, to a company whose value may decline once its financial disclosures can be independently assessed and verified," the letter said.
SpaceX is preparing to go public in less than two months, and SOC's letter to regulators appears intended to create regulatory friction with the SEC over what could become the largest IPO in history. The timing is very notable.
A successful SpaceX IPO at a multi-trillion-dollar valuation could dramatically expand Elon Musk's wealth and power, potentially transforming him into the world's first trillionaire.
From an information and political warfare lens, SOC's pressure campaign should be viewed less as a SpaceX governance issue and more as part of a broader left-wing operation against Musk's corporate empire.
Tyler Durden Fri, 05/08/2026 - 05:45Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
Childcare workers across Wales are being trained to spot and report “racist incidents” by toddlers under fresh guidance endorsed by government ministers and bankrolled with taxpayer cash.
The push, which includes lessons on “white privilege,” turns playgroups and nurseries into surveillance hubs for the state’s ‘anti-racism’ agenda — even when the alleged offenders are barely out of nappies.
The initiative has received over £1.3 million in taxpayer funding via the Welsh Government.
🔴 Welsh nurseries have been advised to report children for “racist incidents” in hate crime guidance backed by the Labour government.
The taxpayer-funded guidance has been circulated in order to make nurseries, play groups, and childminders “anti-racist” environments.
🔗:… pic.twitter.com/FcL6M0Jw3n
The guidance comes from Diversity and Anti-Racist Professional Learning (DARPL), based at Cardiff Metropolitan University.
It has been circulated to more than 300 nurseries, playgroups and childminders.
Staff are ludicrously told to assess whether a child’s behaviour could amount to a hate crime and, if so, contact police on 999 or 101.
Welsh nurseries told to report ‘racist' toddlers to POLICE under Labour-backed guidancehttps://t.co/Mfkhj0TayO
— GB News (@GBNEWS) May 6, 2026The document also pushes workers to audit their resources for “diversity,” discuss skin colour and race with very young children, and create “anti-racist” environments from the cradle.
The toolkit explicitly frames even child-to-child incidents in toddlers as potential “racist incidents” requiring formal logging and possible police involvement.
Critics rightly call it Orwellian madness — toddlers lack the cognitive development to hold racist beliefs, yet the state now demands they be policed as miniature thought criminals.
This latest outrage fits a clear and disturbing pattern of UK authorities targeting children with woke, pro-migration and Islam-compliant ideology while stamping down on any pushback.
Here are just some of the recent examples:
Local authorities warned schools that kids’ artwork risked violating Islamic blasphemy rules — a staggering concession to foreign religious law over British freedom of expression.
State schools are feeding children propaganda that frames illegal Channel crossings as something to celebrate rather than challenge.
The government instructed teachers to monitor and report any “anti-Muslim hostility,” turning classrooms into surveillance states for wrongthink.
A taxpayer-funded Prevent-style game literally flags children who question open borders as potential extremists.
Parents of a child who questioned why he had to celebrate Ramadan in school when he is not a Muslim were sent a letter informing them of the ‘racist’ incident.
Together these stories paint a grim picture: British children are being systematically stripped of innocence, taught to view their own heritage and skin colour as problematic, and conditioned to accept mass migration, Islam’s sensitivities and woke dogmas without question.
Questioning any of it risks being labelled a bigot, an extremist or, in the case of toddlers, a “racist” warranting a police report.
This is not education. It is ideological grooming funded by your taxes and enforced by a Labour government that has lost touch with reality — and with the British public.
Parents are right to be furious. The only answer is to push back hard before an entire generation is lost to this madness. Childhood should be about play, wonder and discovery — not state-mandated guilt sessions and police reports for playground squabbles.
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.
Tyler Durden Fri, 05/08/2026 - 05:00In a rare outbreak of sanity from the continent that perfected kicking the can, officials on NATO’s eastern front are openly admitting what Brussels and Frankfurt have spent years denying: you can’t fund a permanent war footing with infinite borrowing and hope the bond market never notices.
Estonia’s outgoing ECB rate hawk Madis Muller dropped the red pill in parliament Thursday, bluntly telling lawmakers that jacking up budget deficits to pay for the defense surge is no long-term solution. “These higher defense expenditures are not temporary,” he warned. The message: the party is ending, and the tab is about to get ugly.
Next door in Latvia, Finance Minister Arvils Aseradens echoed the warning, calling for “every possible instrument” to secure sustainable funding. He even threw support behind Canadian PM Mark Carney’s pet idea of a multilateral defense bank, because nothing says fiscal responsibility like creating yet another supranational borrowing vehicle to paper over the cracks.
Both Baltic states, sitting on the razor’s edge with Moscow, not to mention sharing a border with the Russian bear, have massively ramped up military outlays in recent years. Their spending has exploded even as existing social welfare commitments continue to balloon budgets already teetering under the weight of Europe’s sacred model. Welcome to the European conundrum in 2026: you need guns to deter Russia, but the welfare state can’t be touched, and nobody wants to tell voters the truth about taxes.
The broader picture across the continent is grim. European nations are scrambling to square exploding public debt with an unfunded defense boom while somehow still pretending they can keep the lights on for Ukraine’s war effort. The math simply does not add up.
Estonia’s Debt Trajectory: From Poster Child to Problem Child
Estonia, the euro-area’s former fiscal hawk with just 1.3 million people, now finds itself in the crosshairs. Its debt-to-GDP ratio remains a relatively modest 24%, but that’s changing fast. Public debt is projected to more than double: from €10 billion ($11.8 billion) in 2025 to €21 billion by 2030. The IMF has already raised concerns, and Fitch downgraded the country’s sovereign rating back in 2023 as investors began pricing in geopolitical risk and demanding higher yields.
On Thursday, Estonia’s central bank doubled down on its earlier warnings: act now while you still have the luxury of being one of the EU’s least indebted nations. Because that window is closing fast.
Tallinn’s much-touted “defense tax” introduced in 2024? Already watered down and nowhere near enough to cover the actual sums required.
This is the inevitable endpoint of Europe’s post-2022 panic: politicians who spent decades hollowing out defense budgets in favor of green deals, migration costs, and generous entitlements suddenly discover they need actual military capability. Rather than make hard choices — cut elsewhere, raise taxes transparently, or rethink open-ended commitments — the default instinct is to borrow more and hope the ECB or some new “defense bank” magically makes the numbers work.
Spoiler: it won’t.
The Baltics are simply saying out loud what markets have been whispering for months. Permanent defense hikes require permanent revenue, not more creative accounting and supranational debt vehicles. Europe’s eastern flank is learning the hard way that you cannot deter Russia with PowerPoint slides and growing interest payments.
The real question now isn’t whether Europe will boost defense spending, it will and will then quietly shuffle most of the funds into various green (and not so green) grifts under the guise of an "existential threat." It’s who ultimately pays - and whether the bond vigilantes will wait patiently for the answer. Given the trajectory, the real question is when does the emperor's nudity finally get confirmed.
Tyler Durden Fri, 05/08/2026 - 04:15Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,
Hungary has returned money and valuables belonging to Ukrainian state-owned bank Oschadbank after authorities seized the shipment earlier this year while it was being transported from Austria to Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the return on Telegram on Wednesday, saying the assets had been seized by Hungarian special services in March, a move he claimed had been unjustified.
“Today, the funds and valuables of Oschadbank, seized by Hungarian special services in March of this year, were returned,” Zelensky wrote.
“I thank Hungary for the constructive and civilized step,” he added.
The shipment, which reportedly included cash and gold belonging to Oschadbank’s Ukrainian branch, was stopped by Hungarian authorities during a period of high tension between Budapest and Kyiv.
Hungarian officials said at the time that the bank workers involved were suspected of money laundering.
The Ukrainians were later released, but the authorities retained the seized assets until now.
The incident occurred during Hungary’s parliamentary election campaign last month, when Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had made criticism of Ukraine a central part of his political messaging.
His government was also locked in a dispute with Kyiv over the interruption of Russian oil supplies through Ukraine to Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline.
Orbán, who had long clashed with Ukraine and its European backers over sanctions, aid, and energy policy, was defeated in April’s election.
Péter Magyar, the leader of the Tisza party, will now succeed him, and the new Hungarian parliament is expected to be sworn in on Saturday.
The return of the Oschadbank assets follows a broader easing of tensions between Budapest and Kyiv.
Despite multiple claims from Ukraine during the election campaign that the Druzhba pipeline could not simply resume due to damage inflicted by Russian shelling, Kyiv promptly resumed the flow of oil to Hungary and Slovakia shortly after Orbán’s election defeat.
At the same time, Budapest stopped blocking final approval of a €90 billion European Union loan to Ukraine.
Tyler Durden Fri, 05/08/2026 - 03:30