S8 Ep111: 1/2 Henry Sokolski states that Saudi Crown Prince MBS's goal is to obtain a bomb option, and while the new US-Saudi agreement does not include assistance with nuclear fuel production, a reactor still provides the necessary "cover" used by countries like I
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
2/2 Henry Sokolski states that Saudi Crown Prince MBS's goal is to obtain a bomb option, and while the new US-Saudi agreement does not include assistance with nuclear fuel production, a reactor still provides the necessary "cover" used by countries like Iran. MBS has made clear he will acquire a bomb if Iran does, regardless of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Sokolski also discusses the US military's Janus program for small reactors, initially conceived for vulnerable front-line bases but pushed back to remote areas like Alaska and the lower 48 due to concerns about drones and vulnerability. Finally, the US may be moving toward nuclear socialism—government ownership of commercial reactors, potentially funded by Japan—to encourage commercialization even without secured market contracts.
1927
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batscher. This is CBSI on the world. |
| 0:05.4 | Henry Sikolsky, the executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, |
| 0:09.6 | is here with me to help me understand several stories about nuclear weapons or not |
| 0:14.1 | that are in our future or not. |
| 0:17.9 | The first is a program called the Janus program. It involves U.S. military policy about |
| 0:24.7 | nuclear energy near the front line or associated with deployment of American military. |
| 0:32.8 | It's a puzzler. Henry, a very good evening to you. What is Janus? |
| 0:37.2 | Janus is the follow on to a program |
| 0:39.5 | called Paley, an army effort to make reactors small enough and transportable enough to put them |
| 0:48.4 | on bases. Originally, the idea was to put them on bases like those that we had at the front line of battle in Afghanistan |
| 0:55.7 | that needed lots of gasoline to fuel the tanks and the cheeps and everything else. |
| 1:02.3 | And the argument was, well, what do we electrify everything and just have a small reactor? |
| 1:06.7 | We deliver it to the front line. |
| 1:08.7 | Then we don't have to have a vulnerable logistics trail of many hundreds of miles that gets blown up. |
| 1:15.0 | Well, it didn't take long for the Army looking at that to say, well, you know, the other side now has drones. |
| 1:22.2 | This means you don't put a reactor on the front line. |
| 1:25.8 | And they kept retreating to more remote bases back from the front line. |
| 1:31.2 | Well, fast forward several years. |
| 1:34.4 | The PII program gave way to the Janus program, which has more different kinds of small reactors. |
| 1:40.5 | And they announced nine locations where they want to possibly base these. |
| 1:45.5 | Guess what? |
| 1:46.5 | None of them are near any front line of battle that's conceivable. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.