Nuclear Power – Page 2

November 2, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nuclear Power is Now Trump Power…What Could Go Wrong?

By Harvey Wasserman and Karl Grossman

**Energy Democracy in Trumptopia. Photo:**
**empoweringamerica.org/cartoons/**

Donald Trump is now the ultimate face of the U.S. nuclear power industry. What could go wrong?

If you are advocating atomic energy in any form, you are promoting The Donald’s latest and largest fiscal fleecing of the American people. It mirrors his mega swindles in crypto and so much more — except this time with apocalyptic impact.

It’s a hyper-push for nuclear power. As The New York Times this week headlined the “Climate Forward” column of Claire Brown: “Trump’s plans for nuclear power lurch ahead.”

Her July 7th piece began: “President Trump wants to quadruple nuclear power production in the United States by 2050. To get there, developers would need to build about a hundred times as much nuclear capacity in the next 25 years as they did in the past 25. In recent weeks, a series of government announcements have nudged the country a bit closer to that goal.”

It continued: “Nuclear power has broad bipartisan support in Congress, and many climate experts have embraced it as a low-emissions source of energy. Other experts remain opposed, arguing that it is too expensive or that the safety risks are too high.”

Through its Truth Social front, the Trump Family has bought a major interest in TAE Technologies, a $6 billion California-based plunge into nuclear fusion.

To serve that investment, Trump is scamming his presidency to funnel billions of public dollars into a “Peaceful Atom” from which he expects to personally profit. Right now, he’s pushing through Congress a $17.5 billion interest-free slush fund to promote more U.S. reactor construction.

Similar handouts from George W. Bush and Barack Obama fed two new nuclear power reactors in Georgia. Originally promised at around $15 billion, they fired up last year seven years late and nearly $25 billion over budget. Their most recently reported price tag approaches $40 billion. Their output will never compete with renewables. They’ll bleed Peach State mega-cash as long as they operate.

Two abandoned nuclear reactors in South Carolina blew $9 billion outright. The double debacle bankrupted Westinghouse, once the world’s leading reactor producer.

Meanwhile Trump pushes so-called Small Modular Reactors, hyped to power data centers that produce his beloved crypto. Projected to operate around 2030, SMR cultists hope their juice might (at best) cost a mere three times the proven cost of solar panels, and four or more times that of currently operating onshore wind turbines.

But despite Trump’s frantic efforts to kill it, the real-world transition to green “Solartopian” renewables may be underway. Epic advances in battery technology essentially eliminate any need for the base-line power nuclear produces when they don’t break down or blow up. California’s battery capacity is now seven times as large as the maximum output that can be produced by the state’s last two hyper-expensive Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors.

Those dangerously decrepit reactors are surrounded by at least a dozen earthquake faults. They sit just 45 miles from the San Andreas Fault.

In 2013, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission site inspector Dr. Michael Peck warned that Diablo might not withstand a credible quake from the seismic faults surrounding it. Peck’s warning was ignored.Now he is gone from the commission. In the Trump era, no such report could be written in the first place.

In 2018, California adopted a comprehensive plan to shut Diablo Canyon and to phase-in renewables. The transition was hugely accelerated by massive advances that have dropped battery prices while expanding their capabilities. Through at least part of most days now, California gets 100% of its electricity from renewables, much of it coming from solar panels in the Central Valley.

But “green” Governor Gavin Newsom is trashing the transition. In 2022, he handed Diablo’s owner, PG&E, billions in Trump-style grift while promoting his own run for the White House. As a result, California’s electric rates are now the highest in the continental U.S.

Meanwhile, Trump attacks the green competition with billions of public dollars to buy out leases from wind and solar projects, which threaten to produce electricity far cheaper than his beloved nukes. With the epic spread of cheap batteries (which are also fueling a global boom in electric vehicles) more than 80% of the world’s newly installed electric generating capacity now comes from renewables. All of Trump’s mob-style assaults in the U.S. are being challenged in court and by the grassroots. But the global market push remains unrelenting.

Despite the growing danger as they deteriorate from age and maladministration, atomic reactors have been federally shielded from accident insurance requirements since 1957. Amidst escalating safety concerns, Congress has extended the liability exemption to SMRs, meant to power thousands of the crypto-loving data centers now being vehemently opposed by grassroots citizens throughout the U.S.

Last year Trump became the first U.S. president to fire a chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The U.S. Supreme Court has now confirmed the royal prerogative of a sitting president to fire any regulatory official. In the wake of Musk’s DOGE purge of at least 100 technical experts at the NRC, Trump is now sole arbiter of health and safety regulations, which are now in terrifying free fall at the 94 licensed U.S. nuclear reactors.

Trump also wants to put new reactors on military reservations, shredding residual NRC restraints through the even looser Department of Energy regulations.

Two operating reactors at North Anna in Virginia, and one in Perry in Ohio have already been significantly damaged by earthquakes (Perry twice). With neither accident insurance nor credible safety regulation, Trump/Nukes Inc. is a sitting duck for terror attacks. Russian drones have already damaged reactors and fuel storage sites at Ukraine’s Zaporizhia complex and at Chernobyl. Others have been under fire.

Trump has infamously launched outright war on Iran’s nuclear weapons production. But as in Ukraine, a single drone could turn any of the world’s 400-plus reactors into a radioactive weapon of mass destruction, plunging us into an economic, ecological, and health abyss from which we might never recover.

Meanwhile, an industry that hypes itself as “climate friendly” burns at 500 to 600 degrees Fahrenheit. In France, the U.S., and elsewhere, commercial reactors super-heat lakes and rivers that can no longer cool them, while boiling billions of marine organisms.

Seven decades after the first commercial reactor opened in Pennsylvania, The Donald is the undisputed self-dealing face of the “Peaceful Atom.”

He’s its top investor. He rules the shell of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He’s the presidential purveyor of taxpayer grift, and chief hit man aiming to kill the renewable competition.

⸺ Harvey Wasserman wrote Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth and co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition at www.electionprotection2024.org. Karl Grossman is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power, and Power Crazy. He hosts the TV program Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman (www.envirovideo.com) They wrote this piece for Counterpunch.

November 2, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Eleven State Attorneys General Oppose Trump’s Drastic Overhaul of Nuclear Power Regulation

From the office of Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown

A coalition of 11 state attorneys general took action at the end of August to oppose two U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) proposals, which are part of a dangerous wholesale revision of its long-standing regulations. In comments submitted to the NRC, the attorneys general argue that the monumental changes the NRC has proposed threaten to put public health and safety at risk.

The AG coalition joined thousands of angry citizens who wrote to the NRC condemning the proposed deregulation.

The coalition filed comments opposing two proposed NRC rule changes. The first includes sweeping changes to radiation exposure standards and oversight with serious impacts on state programs and worker and public safety. The proposal would increase levels of radiation ⸺ from power reactors, radioactive waste canisters and dump sites, medical devices and treatments, uranium mining and fuel fabrication facilities, etc. ⸺ to which workers and the public could legally be exposed, and would reduce monitoring and reporting requirements. The NRC’s proposal would also eliminate the science-backed “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” standard for allowable radioactive pollution. The NRC has not provided a scientific basis for abandoning this internationally recognized, long-standing protection, the group said.

In their August 31 comment letter, the attorneys general argue that the NRC failed to support its proposals with evidence, failed to propose or consider alternative approaches to achieve its stated goals, and failed to allow the public or the states adequate time to comprehend and meaningfully review the unprecedented volume of proposed regulatory changes the NRC has introduced this year.

The coalition also submitted comments opposing a second NRC proposal that could allow large parts of nuclear power reactors to be built without environmental review or community engagement in the decision-making process.

The attorneys general argue that several other provisions in the proposed rule create unwarranted risks to public safety and amount to the NRC abdicating its oversight role and safety mandate.

The coalition notes that the proposed changes have the potential to negatively impact communities with preexisting environmental justice concerns. The attorneys general assert that, if finalized, the proposed rule would violate the Administrative Procedure Act and fail to comply with the Atomic Energy Act and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Last month, a coalition of attorneys general jointly submitted a comment letter opposing the NRC’s proposal to revise its NEPA regulations. That proposal would unlawfully fast-track nuclear reactor construction by ignoring foreseeable environmental impacts and limiting public participation. The attorneys general argued that, if finalized, the proposed rule would also violate the Administrative Procedure Act and fail to comply with NEPA.

Submitting the August 31 comment letters were the attorneys general of Maryland, California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.

November 2, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Questions Emerge over Infant Health near Diablo Canyon Nuclear Site

By Ella Heydenfeldt, The Independent, May 7, 2026

Edited for space by Nukewatch Staff

A recent Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health analysis found higher cancer mortality rates in U.S. counties located closer to nuclear reactors, while a nonprofit-led report questioned whether decades of Diablo Canyon’s operation may be tied to worsening infant health in surrounding San Luis Obispo [S.L.O.] County. Federal regulators and health officials, however, maintain that radiation exposure from the site is too low to pose a measurable risk.

San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace members argue continued operation of the two pressurized water reactors poses unnecessary risks and costs. They point to roughly $700 million in state support, the growing accumulation of radioactive waste, the negative effects on sea life from the reactors’ once-through cooling system, and their discharge of heated seawater into the ocean.

**San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace has been opposing dangers posed by Diablo Canyon and nuclear reactors, nuclear weapons, and rad waste since 1969. Photo: Mothers for Peace.**

Declining Infant Health: Correlation or Causation?

On April 29 Radiation and Public Health Project epidemiologist Joseph Mangano presented an analysis of state data showing San Luis Obispo County’s infant health and mortality have been negatively impacted since reactor startup.

Based on publicly available health statistics, the report — “Local Newborn Health Declined As California Nuclear Plant Operates” — states that infant mortality has shifted from a healthy 16-22 percent below the state average in 1968, which is the year reactor construction started and such record-keeping began, to 14 percent below average after Diablo Canyon went into operation in 1985, to about one percent above average today. (Statewide, infant mortality declined from roughly 21 deaths per 1,000 births in 1968 to about 5 per 1,000.) Premature births and birth defects followed similar patterns, with one category of defects reported at 114 percent above the state average.

“One does not find causation through epidemiology,” Mangano said. His report does not establish that emissions from Diablo Canyon caused the changes. But, “the Harvard study changed everything,” Mangano added.

That 2026 study examined nationwide data from 2000-2018 and found that counties closer to nuclear reactors, including S.L.O., had a “robust and consistent” higher rate of cancer mortality, even after adjusting for socioeconomic, demographic, and environmental factors. The association was strongest among older adult men with the most common form of cancer being lung cancer. The researchers emphasized that the study — the first this century to analyze nuclear reactor proximity and cancer deaths across affected counties — do not establish causation, did not measure radiation exposure directly, and pointed to the need for further study.

The Radioactive Tooth Fairy

For reactor operator PG&E, “Diablo Canyon, as with all nuclear [reactors] power plants in the U.S., is regulated and monitored by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has found our operations meet all safety and security performance objectives,” stated Carina Corral, head of communications for the power company.

Corral added, “PG&E does not consider this report credible. Mr. Mangano has launched similar false claims in the past, also debunked by medical experts, including those at the S.L.O. County Public Health Department as ‘fundamentally flawed.’”

Looking specifically at individual radiation exposure differs from the Harvard analysis and Mangano’s report, which rely on large-scale population and mortality data. This difference of approach complicates the effort to understand the effect of nuclear power plants on health, if any.

Mangano argues that observable shifts in public health data, combined with evidence of radioactive exposure, are enough to warrant concern and further investigation. Regulators and many scientists maintain that without clear causal evidence, the risks remain unproven.

Jean Yamamura contributed reporting to this story.

November 2, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Roll Up, Roll Up, Get Your Plutonium Here!

By Linda Pentz Gunter

Edited by Nukewatch Staff for space

In yet another alarming development coming from the White House, private corporations proposing risky, untested startup reactors are to be given access to plutonium, the most toxic material known to science and the fore trigger in nuclear bombs.

A May 27 exposé in The New York Times revealed that the Trump administration is proposing to allow private entities access to Cold War-era leftover plutonium in order to convert it into fuel for risky new reactor designs that have yet to pass any kind of rigorous safety analysis.

The move marks a dangerous commercialization of plutonium and would treat plutonium like a commodity with value, instead of as a long-lived lethal waste. One of the first companies to benefit is Oklo, on whose board the current Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, used to sit and whose stock rose on the announcement.

The other companies involved, according to reporting in The Times, are Standard Nuclear, Exodys Energy, SHINE Technologies, and Flibe Energy. The plutonium would come from a surplus stockpile of dismantled nuclear warheads. Previous efforts to use plutonium as reactor fuel [in South Carolina] collapsed due to extreme expense and technical challenges.

Oklo, and its European partner, Newcleo — a nuclear “innovation” company registered in France — claim they can produce reactor fuel from surplus plutonium faster than waiting for new fuel production to get up and running in the United States. This, argues Ed Lyman, a senior scientist in the Global Security Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists, is simply nonsense.

“The idea that plutonium could actually be used more quickly than uranium fuel is absurd because of the complexity, and the attention to safety and security that a plutonium fuel facility would require,” Lyman said, speaking during a recent Capitol Hill briefing on the risks and unaffordability of new nuclear projects.

Given its sole use as the key component of thermonuclear bombs, any use of plutonium, especially in the private sector, would require extreme security measures. Placing plutonium material in the hands of private multinational corporations not only sets a dangerous precedent but, “raises serious weapons proliferation concerns, makes little economic sense, and may adversely affect the nation’s defense posture,” wrote three Democratic members of Congress — Don Beyer of Virginia, John Garamendi of California, and Ed Markey of Massachusetts — in a letter last September to the Department of Energy.

“Taking plutonium, surplus plutonium, and handing it to industry for fuel,” said longtime nuclear nonproliferation policy expert Sharon Squassoni, represents an ominous crossover from the civil into the military nuclear sector. “In terms of the military-versus-civilian line blurring, why is that so important? Because if it’s not civilian, you don’t [get] Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulation,” she said during remarks alongside Lyman and others during the Capitol Hill briefing. That is, the new startup reactors will be able to avoid all safety regulations imposed on today’s reactors by the U.S. NRC.

The plan to build a factory to fabricate a fuel blend known as mixed-oxide, or MOX, at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, South Carolina — using uranium and surplus plutonium — eventually collapsed, partially due to the ever-ballooning price tag, which reached $50 billion before the project was abandoned.

Part of the extreme costs were due to the myriad technical challenges and the fact that … no existing U.S. reactors at the time were designed to do so.

Reprocessing itself is a highly expensive and polluting procedure, resulting in greater volumes of radioactive waste — much of it released into the environment — even as it reduces the levels of radioactivity within the waste. As a result of reprocessing at the Sellafield site in the UK, the Irish Sea is now considered the most radioactive sea in the world, due to the site’s liquid radioactive discharges.

A MOX fuel fabrication facility was under construction at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina for years before being abandoned after wasting $50 billion.

“Trying to convert this material into reactor fuel is insanity. It would entail trying to repeat the disastrous MOX fuel program and hoping for a different result,” Edwin Lyman, told Reuters last August.

More than 20 years ago, the now closed Nuclear Control Institute (NCI), for which Lyman used to work, called out the dangers of using plutonium in the commercial sector.

The NCI warned then of what would become the intolerably high costs of making MOX, writing: “The MOX approach would take decades to complete, require billions of taxpayers dollars in subsidies to electrical utility companies, and promote plutonium fuel industries in other countries.”

“Converting warhead plutonium into fuel for generating electricity would stimulate commerce in this extremely toxic, weapons-usable material,” the institute said, adding, “Fifteen pounds of plutonium is enough for one atomic bomb. A few specks of it inhaled into the lungs cause cancer. Commerce in many tons of plutonium raises risks of theft by terrorists and outlaw states, and of aggravating the consequences of reactor accidents.”

— Linda Pentz Gunter is Executive Director of Beyond Nuclear, writes for Capitol Hill Citizen, edits Beyond Nuclear International, and is the author of No To Nuclear: Why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress, and Provokes War (Pluto Press 2026).

November 2, 2026 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Japan’s Waste Dispersal from Triple Meltdown: Not Just Tritium

By John LaForge

Radioactive cooling water, contaminated after being used to cool melted uranium and plutonium fuel inside three destroyed reactors is being dispersed to the Pacific Ocean by Tepco, the owner of the world’s only triple meltdown disaster site: Fukushima-Daiichi in Japan. In addition, large amounts of groundwater and rainwater, that continuously pour into the wrecked reactors through earthquake-caused cracks in foundations, also become contaminated and require storage and treatment. After limited decontamination, the wastewater is allowed to add to oceanic pollution even in the face of international criticism, protest, and several national bans on the importation of Japanese seafood from the region.

The Citizens Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo (CNIC) reported last summer, in its “Nuke Info Tokyo” #232, that many radioactive materials contaminate the wastewater being sent into the Pacific.

While Fukushima’s owner Tepco, Japan’s government, and the corporate media regularly claim that tritium is the only radioactive Fukushima waste that is in the wastewater being dispersed, the chart (at right) records other highly radioactive materials in the wastewater, and total amounts through the end of 2025.

The total amount of nuclides released other than tritium were calculated from their residual concentrations in the treated water and the total amount of the treated water released. By December 2025, a total of 133,321 cubic meters (639 barrels) of wastewater had been dumped, containing an estimated total of about 31.2 trillion becquerels of tritium.

What does “MBq” mean? “MBq” stands for mega-becquerel or one-million becquerels. A measure of ionizing radiation, one becquerel is one atomic disintegration per second.

Tepco has estimated that it has dumped 2,633 million (2.6 trillion) becquerels of radioactive carbon-14 into the Pacific Ocean, along with all the tritium and other radioactive elements.
Carbon-14 has a radioactive half-life of 5,730 years. After one half-life (5,730 years), 50% of the carbon-14 remains. Scientists say it takes ten half-lives for radioactive material to decay. So, all the carbon-14 being poured into the Pacific from Fukushima will remain there, contaminating sea life and the food web, for about 57,000 years.

Japan’s Radioactive Waste Discharge Makes Others Bear the Cost

By Chen Xiang

Japan has now completed 20 rounds of discharge, releasing roughly 157,000 tonnes of nuclear-contaminated water in total.

A simulation study by a research team at Tsinghua University [in Beijing] previously showed that after entering the ocean, contaminated water could spread across most of the North Pacific and reach the coast of North America in about 1,200 days, or roughly 3.3 years.

By the start of this latest discharge, nearly three years have passed since Japan began releasing the water, and trace amounts of radionuclides such as tritium and carbon-14 have been detected in many areas of the North Pacific.

The discharge poses long-term, latent, and cumulative risks, with potential ecological and health impacts that warrant close attention. It is not an acute health hazard with immediate effects; its negative impacts may continue to accumulate and spread imperceptibly over an extended period.

The Comprehensive Report on the Safety Review of the ALPS-Treated Water … released by the International Atomic Energy Agency on July 4, 2023, noted that the ALPS “does not remove all radioactive material. Small amounts of different radionuclides remain in the water (although they are well below regulatory limits) even after treatment, and tritium is not removed by the ALPS system at all.”

These residual radioactive substances could potentially accumulate through marine food chains, or food web, and eventually enter the human food supply, posing continuing risks to the health of people living along the North Pacific coast, or who consume seafood products from there, over the coming decades.

It is therefore clear that short-term monitoring results meeting safety standards do not guarantee absolute safety, nor can they justify Japan’s reckless discharge of nuclear-contaminated water…. People in Pacific coastal countries should not be forced to bear the health and ecological consequences of Japan’s nuclear accident.

Japan’s unilateral decision to discharge nuclear-contaminated water into the ocean constitutes a serious violation of international law…. Japan has seriously violated its obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to protect and preserve the marine environment.

International rules lack binding corrective mechanisms and are unable to effectively halt Japan’s discharge of nuclear-contaminated water. As a result, Japan has been able to shift the costs of managing its nuclear accident and its ecological consequences onto the rest of the world.

— The author, an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Japanese Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, wrote this for People’s Daily.

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