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$80 Billion U.S. Gov’t Deal with Westinghouse for Ten New Reactors

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Westinghouse’s project in South Carolina that cost taxpayers $9 billion and generated no electricity – shutting down construction after bankrupting the company. Now, riding the coattails of the White House and Big Tech’s “nuclear renaissance,” Westinghouse is trying to forget its failed reactor project. Photo: FITS News

In October, the U.S. government signed on to an $80 billion deal with Westinghouse Electric Company to construct ten new large nuclear reactors. The plan hopes to see all ten reactor projects break ground by 2030 featuring the Westinghouse AP1000 design. The deal is sweetened for the U.S. through the promise of a 20% stake in Westinghouse after the company doles out an initial $17.5 billion to private shareholders. AI, Big Tech, and the military-industrial complex are all behind this administration’s push to bring the U.S. to the “forefront of the nuclear renaissance” — as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick put it. — Trading View, Oct. 28, 2025

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Global Majority of Countries Now Signed onto UN Nuclear Ban Treaty

As of September 26, Kyrgyzstan has signed, and Ghana has ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), raising the number of states that have acceded, signed, or ratified the treaty to a global majority. Now, 99 out of 197 eligible states have taken legal action under the treaty. This is a key milestone for what is still a young treaty which was adopted by the UN just over 8 years ago and only entered into force 5 years ago. The TPNW outlaws nuclear weapons and all activities associated with them, including production, possession, testing, threats or use. As we know from the evidence from the United States’ nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago, the effects of nuclear weapons are uniquely cruel and inhumane because of the indiscriminate, lasting, intergenerational harm they cause. The fact that a global majority of states now respect and heed the treaty sends a strong signal to the nuclear-armed states and their allies which support the use of nuclear weapons in their military strategies that they are the minority and increasingly regarded by the international community as irresponsible actors threatening global security. — ICAN Sept. 26, 2025. This article was originally published by ICAN, and has been shortened for space.

ICAN - International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

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Wisconsin Reactors Approved to Run Until 80 Years Old

Point Beach Reactor, on Lake Michigan, in Wisconsin. In September, the two reactors on site were awarded license extensions to run until 2050 and 2053. Photo: reddit

On September 29, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced the much-delayed approval of the license renewals for Point Beach nuclear reactors, units 1 and 2. They are located in Manitowoc County near Two Rivers, Wisc. on the shore of Lake Michigan. The license renewal included a generic Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) without addressing current and future climate impacts at the Point Beach site in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act, as pointed out in a lawsuit filed by several non-profit organizations. A public pressure campaign by Physicians for Social Responsibility-Wisconsin and other groups, including Nukewatch, raised serious concerns with aging at the facility and the daily release of 915 million gallons of heated water into Lake Michigan. In 2013, the NRC designated Point Beach unit 2 as one of the most embrittled reactors in the country. Being one of the most likely to crack did not stop the renewal of the license. NextEra submitted an updated EIS in April 2025, and five months later Point Beach units 1 and 2 were licensed to operate through 2050 and 2053, respectively, when they will reach their 80th birthday. — Fox 11 TV, Sept. 29; Physicians for Social Responsibility-WI, Apr. 14, 2025

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Plans for Unlawful New Mexico Radioactive Waste Dump Terminated

Many are celebrating the termination of Holtec International’s proposal “to construct and operate the world’s largest high-level radioactive waste dump,” according to Beyond Nuclear, part of a coalition that led the fight against the so-called “consolidated interim storage facility (CISF).” For eight years, this grassroots coalition battled the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and took its complaints against CISFs to federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. Among the major victories won through the coalition’s hard work, decades of Holtec’s planned shipments of highly radioactive waste will no longer be moving across the country by barge, road, or rail. Beyond Nuclear’s Kevin Kamps said temporary dumps “automatically double transport risks, as irradiated fuel would have to be transferred from interim storage to a permanent disposal site someday.” Under the federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act, temporary storage dumps are only permitted after a permanent repository is operational. — New Mexico Political Report, Oct. 14; Beyond Nuclear press release, Oct. 13, 2025

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President Calls for Nuclear Weapons Tests, Energy Secretary Hits Breaks

After Russia said October 26 that it had tested a new nuclear-powered cruise missile and a large torpedo which are nuclear-capable weapons, Donald Trump confusedly announced that the United States would “immediately” begin nuclear weapons testing. This least-informed president in U.S. history mistook Russian weapons systems tests for nuclear warhead detonations ⸺ which the United States suspended thirty-three years ago, in 1992. Energy Secretary Chris Wright went on Fox News “Sunday Briefing” November 2 to correct his boss saying, “And so he hears announcements … and I think he wants to communicate….” Then, because Trump knows nothing about nuclear weapons (he said the Defense Department tests nuclear weapons), Sec. Wright corrected the error, and explained, “I think the tests we’re talking about right now are system tests. These are not nuclear explosions. … So you’re testing all the other parts of a nuclear weapon.” A restart of explosive, underground warhead blasts at the Nevada Test Site outside Las Vegas would require months or years of rehab, training, and preparation. Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told The Washington Post the government was unable to restart testing right away and that it “would need at least 36 months to resume contained nuclear tests underground at the former test site in Nevada.” — The Washington Post Nov. 2, and Oct. 29, 2025

Nuclear testing is not a path to security and peace - Greenpeace ...

Photo: Greenpeace.org

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