12 February – Webinar The Big Push: New Nuclear Projects in Canada
Thursday, February 12, 7 pm Eastern | 2nd of 4 sessions in the 2026 Nuclear Waste Online webinar series
Join a webinar on the push for new nuclear generation in Canada. Go to Northwatch.org to register or use the registration link https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZfWOf1GITqSRIZX8CB-A9w
From construction underway for not-so-small “Small Modular Reactors” at the Darlington site to plans for new mega-reactors at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, Peace River and now Wesleyville, the nuclear industry is running a seeming juggernaut nuclear expansion campaign and governments are on nuclear spending sprees. Join this session to hear about nuclear expansion plans in Canada, from New Brunswick to Alberta.
This is the second in a four part webinar series.Join every Thursday in February. Go to Northwatch.org to register and for details of all four sessions.
A Nuclear Renaissance for Scotland?
“They of course don’t want to talk about the European Power Reactor (EPR) configuration being installed at astronomical cost at Hinkley C. This project is forecast to cost around £45 billion when it finally comes online sometime next decade.”
They misleadingly present them as cheap, clean and ‘green’ – yet this is as far from the truth as it was 70 years ago when it was promised that nuclear energy would be ‘too cheap to meter’
By Mike Small, 5th February 2026, https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2026/02/05/a-nuclear-renaissance-for-scotland/
At an exciting launch in Glasgow tonight where Sam Richards (CEO Britain Remade. Ex No10) will lay out his plans for new nuclear power in Scotland:
“Looking forward to speaking at the launch of this later. A nuclear renaissance is taking place across the world and Scotland shouldn’t be left behind.”
Tonight will see the launch of something called ‘Scotland for Nuclear Energy’ with support from groups like ‘Nuclear for Scotland‘, which has no information about itself on its own website, and Home | Minerva Health Physics Ltd which ‘are a dedicated team of experts in radiation protection and radioactive waste management’, and the North Highland Chamber of Commerce. Home – Caithness Chamber of Commerce
The launch was nicely timed in the week when it was revealed that the UK Govt has buried “almost 200 containers” of radioactive material underground in Scotland.
*
Today Britain Remade announced: “Today we’re part of the launch of Scotland For Nuclear Energy – a coalition of communities, businesses and campaigners calling on the Scottish Government to lift the ban on new nuclear power in Scotland.”
It’s not clear exactly who the ‘communities’ are, but maybe that will become clearer at the launch.
According to ‘Britain Remade’: “We are not affiliated with, or part of, any political party.”
But Sam Richards is the Director of the network of conservative environmentalists and caucus of green Conservative MPs, and was the Special Advisor to the PM on Energy & Environment (2019-2022). He’s a Boris SPAD. And Jeremy Driver (Head of Campaigns), is a former Lloyds Banker and Parliamentary Assistant to Ann Soubry. Sam Dumitriu is Head of Policy at Britain Remade who formerly worked at the Adam Smith Institute. Jason Brown is Head of Communications for Britain Remade, a former No. 10 media Special Adviser and Ben Houchen’s comms Adviser.
These are Tory SPADS working on their own campaign to support new nuclear in Scotland: Lift The Ban On New Scottish Nuclear Power.
Jeremy and Sam are a bit shy about the costs of nuclear power, and so they should be. Anas Sarwar and Labour energy minister Michael Shanks are enthusiastic. But, as John Proctor has pointed out, they too aren’t very up front about costs.
Proctor writes [I spent decades in energy. Here are the problems with UK nuclear plans]:
“They of course don’t want to talk about the European Power Reactor (EPR) configuration being installed at astronomical cost at Hinkley C. This project is forecast to cost around £45 billion when it finally comes online sometime next decade.”
“It is not easy to get a proper sense of this sum, but it might surprise people to realise that this is the equivalent of paying £1 million every single day for 120 years – and this is just the construction cost. We have not even started talking about operational costs, asset management and asset decommissioning.”
Remake Britain, or Scotland for Nuclear Energy (it’s not entirely clear if they are one and the same thing) are great at PR, managing to create this fantastic puff piece by Paris Gourtsoyannis on the BBC ‘News’ channel: The nuclear power station at the centre of the political divide in Scotland.
They’ve also managed to somehow try and re-create the ‘Nuclear Power No Thanks’ badge from the 1970s with a super-cringey ‘Nuclear Power Aye Cheers’ slogan.
SCRAM (Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace) have issued a rebuttal to all this astroturfing.
Pete Roche, spokesperson for SCRAM said: “As renewable energy-rich Scotland heads towards an election, it is all too predictable that nuclear lobbyists are again arguing that Scotland needs new nuclear power stations. They misleadingly present them as cheap, clean and ‘green’ – yet this is as far from the truth as it was 70 years ago when it was promised that nuclear energy would be ‘too cheap to meter’
“An energy system built around renewables is already happening. Meeting all our needs this way is not just possible, but it’s quicker and cheaper without the costly distraction of new nuclear. Low-cost renewable energy combined with storage, flexible power to balance the grid and smart local energy systems will make the best use of our incredible renewable resources and engineering know-how. Why dilute that by backing eye-wateringly expensive nuclear power stations?”
“The highly skilled nuclear workforce will be kept busy for decades in decommissioning the sites at Torness, Hunterston, Chapelcross and Dounreay – and completing a sustainable renewable energy system is already bringing huge demand for skilled energy professionals. The renewables sector is the future, and where the focus for skills must remain.”
”A 100% renewable-based energy system will be cheaper, better for jobs and energy security, and be truly green and sustainable. We hope the information we have provided will be useful to all political parties and voters, and help to balance out the misleading propaganda of the nuclear PR machine.”
One of the other myths that SCRAM is keen to dispel is the notion that new nuclear power is a solution to climate change. They state:
“Nuclear power stations are not resilient to climate change. They are usually on the coast where sea levels are rising and storm surges could threaten installations. They require large quantities of water to keep cool and avert meltdowns. [see Nuclear Energy isn’t a Safe Bet in a Warming World – Here’s Why, by Paul Dorfman, The Conversation https://theconversation.com/nuclear-energy-isnt-a-safe-bet-in-a-warming-world-heres-why-163371 ]
“Using nuclear plants to address climate change involves unacceptable risks. Risks include the possibility of serious accidents; an unsolved radioactive waste problem; the environmental damage caused by uranium mining, yet another nuclear target for terrorists or in armed conflict and increased nuclear weapons proliferation. Renewable energy risks none of these.”
“Tackling climate change is urgent, so requires the fastest and cheapest solutions. We must spend our limited resources as effectively, quickly and fairly as possible. Amory B. Lovins, adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, explains that saving the most carbon per pound, as quickly as possible, requires not just energy generation that doesn’t burn fossil fuels, but also generation that is deployable with the least cost and time. That rules out nuclear energy as an answer to climate change. In fact, nuclear worsens climate change by spending valuable resources on a solution which is much too slow and too costly.” [see Why Nuclear Power Is Bad for Your Wallet and the Climate].
There is no case for new nuclear in Scotland.
These front groups and astroturf projects are attempting to paper over the cracks about Britain’s ageing and decrepit nuclear programme [Revealed: 585 cracks in Torness nuclear reactor ]. They are a costly clandestine distraction which threatens to undermine the urgent need to shift to clean energy and decarbonise the economy.
Sorrowful day for peace largely ignored thruout America
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, 7 Feb 26
The New Start Treaty between Russia and US expires today and America largely yawned. Big story on mainstream news? Faggedaboudit. Ask the person on the street about New Start and he might mutter something about giving disadvantaged kids free comprehensive early childhood education. Wait, wait…that’s Head Start.
Nope, New Start is the 16 year old treaty Obama signed with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on February 8, 2010. It caps the number of nuclear warheads each side can deploy at 1,550 and limits the number of deployed and non-deployed strategic launchers to 800. Still enough for either side to incinerate us all, but prevents a senseless arms race and symbolic of the critical need to reduce nuclear tensions.
But limited US Russian nuclear arsenals go back 54 years as 2010 Russian New Start signer Medvedev reminded us yesterday. “That’s it. For the first time since 1972, Russia (the former USSR) and the US have no treaty limiting strategic nuclear forces. SALT 1, SALT 2, START I, START II, SORT, New START – All in the past, winter is coming.”
President Trump rebuffed Russian President Putin’s offer to extend the limits for another year for sensible diplomacy to negotiate a new treaty.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio used the lame excuse that any new treaty must include China. But with a nuclear arsenal a pittance of the two nuclear giants, China demurred saying any treaty involving China must include US Russian nuclear stockpiles reduced to China’s level. Rubio knew his requirement was a poison pill deal breaker for any new extension of New Start.
Dumping nuclear agreements is nothing new for Trump. He left office in January 20, 2021 ignoring New Start’s eminent expiration. Successor Biden promptly renewed New Start for 5 years, exactly 5 years ago today. This time Trump has succeeded in letting it expire on his watch.
This gives Trump a trifecta in dumping critically needed nuclear agreements. In August 2019 Trump withdrew from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that banned all land-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km. . In November 2020, just before leaving office, Trump withdrew from the 2002 Open Skies Treaty which allowed the US and Russia to conduct short-notice, unarmed reconnaissance flights over each other’s territory to monitor military activities.
The only positive glimmer to put on Trump’s refusal to extend New Start, even for a measly year to negotiate a long term agreement? Trump has no more nuclear agreements to withdraw from in the last sorrowful 3 years of his second term.
This January the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock, symbolic of approaching global catastrophe, to 85 seconds to Midnight, the closest in its 79 year history. With Trump president, the Bulletin might want to quickly reconvene for another gander at our march toward world annihilation. Next January, none of us might around to hear the 2027 announcement.
The US Keeps Openly Admitting It Deliberately Caused The Iran Protests
Caitlin Johnstone, Feb 06, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-us-keeps-openly-admitting-it?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=187080859&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Speaking before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explicitly stated that the US deliberately caused a financial crisis in Iran with the goal of fomenting civil unrest in the country.
Asked by Senator Katie Britt what more the US can be doing to place pressure on the Ayatollah and Iran, Bessent explained that the Treasury Department has implemented a “strategy” designed to undermine the Iranian currency which crashed the economy and sparked the violent protests we’ve seen throughout the country.
“One thing we could do at Treasury, and what we have done, is created a dollar shortage in the country,” Bessent said. “At a speech at the Economic Club in March I outlined the strategy. It came to a swift and I would say grand culmination in December when one of the largest banks in Iran went under. There was a run on the bank, the central bank had to print money, the Iranian currency went into free fall, inflation exploded, and hence we have seen the Iranian people out on the street.”
This is not the first time Bessent has made these admissions. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, the treasury secretary said the following:
“President Trump ordered Treasury and our OFAC division, Office of Foreign Asset Control, to put maximum pressure on Iran. And it’s worked, because in December, their economy collapsed. We saw a major bank go under; the central bank has started to print money. There is dollar shortage. They are not able to get imports, and this is why the people took to the street. So, this is economic statecraft, no shots fired, and things are moving in a very positive way here.”
Following these remarks, Jeffrey Sachs and Sybil Farres wrote the following for Common Dreams:
“What Secretary Bessent describes is of course not ‘economic statecraft’ in a traditional sense. It is war conducted by economic means, all designed to produce an economic crisis and social unrest leading to a fall of the government. This is proudly hailed as ‘economic statecraft.’
“The human suffering caused by outright war and crushing economic sanctions is not so different as one might think. Economic collapse produces shortages of food, medicine, and fuel, while also destroying savings, pensions, wages, and public services. Deliberate economic collapse drives people into poverty, malnutrition, and premature death, just as outright war does.”
Bessent laid out these plans in advance at the Economic Club of New York back in March of last year, saying the following:
“Last month, the White House announced its maximum pressure campaign on Iran designed to collapse its already buckling economy. The Iranian economy is in disarray; 35% official inflation, has a currency that has depreciated 60% in the last 12 months, and an ongoing energy crisis. I know a few things about currency devaluations, and if I were an Iranian, I would get all of my money out of the Rial now.
“This precarious state exists before our Maximum Pressure campaign, designed to collapse Iranian oil exports from the current 1.5–1.6, million barrels per day, back to the trickle they were when President Trump left office.
“Iran has developed a complex shadow network of financial facilitators and black-market oil shippers via a ghost fleet to sell oil, petrochemical and other commodities to finance its exports and generate hard currency.
“As such, we have elevated a sanctions campaign against this export infrastructure, targeting all stages of Iran’s oil supply chain. We have coupled this with vigorous government engagement and private sector outreach.
“We will close off Iran’s access to the international financial system by targeting regional parties that facilitate the transfer of its revenues. Treasury is prepared to engage in frank discussions with these countries. We are going to shut down Iran’s oil sector and drone manufacturing capabilities.
“We have predetermined benchmarks and timelines. Making Iran Broke Again will mark the beginning of our updated sanctions policy. Watch this space.”
The US has been orchestrating plans to foment unrest in Iran by causing economic strife for years. In 2019 Trump’s previous secretary of state Mike Pompeo openly acknowledged that the goal of Washington’s economic warfare against Iran was to make the population so miserable that they “change the government”, cheerfully citing the “economic distress” the nation had been placed under by US sanctions.
As unrest tore through Iran last month, Trump egged protesters on and encouraged them to escalate, saying “To all Iranian patriots, keep protesting, take over your institutions, if possible, and save the name of the killers and the abusers that are abusing you,” adding, “all I say to them is help is on its way.”
Deliberately trying to ignite a civil war in a country by immiserating its population so severely that they start attacking their own government out of sheer desperation is one of the most evil things you can possibly imagine. But under the western empire it’s just another day. They’re doing it in Iran, and they’ve also aggressively ramped up efforts to do it in Cuba, where the government has just announced it will be rationing oil as the US moves to strangle the island nation into regime change.
A lot of attention is going into the Epstein files right now, and understandably so. But it’s worth noting that nothing in them is as depraved and abusive as what our rulers are doing right out in the open.
Comments on the Deep Geological Repository (DGR) for Canada’s Used Nuclear Fuel Project December 2025 APM-REP-05000-0211.
D. M. LeNeveu, Feb. 4 2026
The project scope of the DRG at the Revell site is for disposal of up to 5.9 million used fuel bundles to cover the expected inventory from Canada’s reactors by the end of 2026. However used fuel from ongoing reactor operation in Canada into the far future can be deposited in the DGR pending approval from host communities and applicable regulators. The Project is expected to last over 160 years. It is recognized that a viable disposal method for all nuclear wastes from reactors is necessary for the continuation of the use of nuclear energy in Canada. Thus the disposal of used fuel from Canada’s reactors in the DGR into the far future is almost certain.
What is grossly missing is a comprehensive analysis of the continuation of nuclear energy in comparison to other energy sources particularly the potentially much less costly options of renewable energy. A comprehensive long term lifecycle cost benefit analysis is required for all potential power sources. All life cycle costs for nuclear energy must be comprehensively determined including the cost of new reactor builds, existing reactor refurbishment, all waste management costs into the far future including all existing and future high, intermediate and low level waste management costs plus reactor decommissioning costs. This analysis must include all legacy waste and decommissioning costs such as from Chalk River, Whiteshell, Point Lepreau, and Gentilly as these are embedded costs of the nuclear industry. All past and continuing costs for nuclear research such as at AECL, CNL and any other government funded nuclear research for nuclear power must be included. The cost of operating the DGR for 160 years must be included. These reactor and renewable costs should be expressed in a cost per GW-hour per year. As well, the overall past and future costs including legacy costs must be quantified.
Renewable energy is often dismissed based on intermittency of wind or solar. It is essential that any cost comparison include a nation wide power grid that can be used to transfer renewable power over large enough distances to secure continuous renewable sources that would diminish the intermittency issue. Large distance transfers of hydro power used as reliable back up should be included in the cost estimates.
- Such a cost benefit analysis must be done by an independent qualified agency and certainly not OPG or advocates of nuclear power. Such a comprehensive study of all costs associated with nuclear power in Canada will almost assuredly demonstrate that nuclear power is not viable in terms of cost comparison to renewable energy. As such the planned DGR must then be restricted only to current nuclear waste and wastes following from closure of all current reactors. Implicit is the required shut down of nuclear energy in Canada.
An extensive national energy cost benefit analysis is not planned but absolutely essential to determine the scope of the DGR. All plans for the DGR should be suspended until such an analysis is done.
- For the Seaborn Panel assessment of the disposal of high level nuclear waste in Canada circa 1998, a comprehensive probabilistic risk assessment was completed entailing years of dedicated research and data gathering and computational analysis. Vault, geosphere, and biosphere models were developed based on years of research to quantify the probabilistic dose consequence risk of a generic DGR. No such comprehensive probabilistic risk has been required for the Revell site DRG.
For the Seaborn assessment, extensive borehole, seismic and geological data and analysis was used to develop a three dimensional geosphere model including all fracture zones for an example site at the underground research laboratory at the Whiteshell research Centre. The groundwater flow in the example geosphere model including the fracture zones and surface discharge was evaluated using detailed computational finite element analysis. Such an analysis is not documented in the description of the Revell site assessment.
Research is required on the mineralization present and the geochemical conditions at the Revell site to determine site specific data required for radionuclide sorption on fracture surfaces and radionuclide solubility.
Extensive site specific data is required for an updated biosphere model for the Revell site. - Detailed research and modeling was done to determine corrosion, pitting and initial defects in for the copper coated waste container design for the Seaborn assessment. The geometry and thickness of the containers has changed for the Revell site requiring an updated container defect analysis. Detailed computational modeling was done for the Seaborn assessment to determine the required vault design to ensure the temperature around the waste containers would not exceed 100 C, the limit for no damage to the clay based buffer around the containers. Changes in container geometry and vault design for the Revell site necessitates new thermal analysis. The copper coating for the Revell design is significantly thinner than for the Seaborn assessment. Comprehensive new research must be documented to determine modes of Revell DRG container failure including size, number, and timing of pinhole defects from failure mechanisms including initial defects. This information must be incorporated into an updated vault model.
- No comprehensive detailed data gathering and analysis requiring years of dedicated research comparable to the Seaborn assessment has been done for the Revell site. Why should detailed analysis have been required for a generic analysis but not for an actual site that will be implemented? It is likely that the cost and time frame for a comprehensive probabilistic risk assessment of radionuclide dose consequence would be beyond the level the government and industry is willing to expend. Instead mainly generic arguments will be used which are basically expert-opinion and hand-waving without the comprehensive site specific expensive time consuming data and analysis required to do a meaningful impact assessment. A multi-year detailed comprehensive data gathering, model development and probabilistic risk assessment similar to the Seaborn assessment is required for a meaningful impact assessment of the Revell site. Instead the Revell site development has degenerated into mainly an engineering and design exercise with vague, poorly supported claims and tables about minimal effects to the environment.
- A neglected issue is neutron activation in used fuel nuclear waste containers. The OPG reactor site used fuel containers are helium filled preventing neutron activation of nitrogen in air to carbon 14. However activation of chlorine in structural components would create highly mobile and difficult to detect long lived chlorine 36. Other radionuclides such as cobalt 60 would also be neutron activated.
- Used fuel waste containers in concrete silos such as at Whiteshell are air filled. Thus carbon 14 would be activated from neutron radiation emanating from used fuel in such storage containers.
Neutron activation both from short lived spontaneous fission of curium isotopes and long term alpha-n reactions must be considered.
Carbon 14, chlorine 36 and other activation products would be transferred from waste storage and transport containers to the DRG waste containers.
The long term DGR waste container would be air filled. Significant amounts of carbon 14, chlorine 36 and other activation products would accumulate in these containers over thousands of years in the DGR despite the gradual decrease in the long term alpha-n neutron radiation from used fuel. Activation products would be rapidly released following DGR container failure. This potential risk from neutron activation has been neglected and must be adequately quantified and reported. - Transfer of used fuel from transportation containers to the DGR container in hot cells at Used Fuel Packaging Plant at the DGR site could result in significant surface contamination of the DRG container assemblage. The DRG container assemblage is to include an exterior clay based buffer layer that would be impossible to decontaminate. Surface contamination of carbon 14, tritium, and other volatile radionuclides such as cesium 137 and iodine 129 present in large amounts in used fuel are known to occur from off gassing deposition. Both airborne and surface contamination is liable to spread to DGR container assemblages and throughout the DGR during the required remote transport of the container assemblages.
Carbon 14, tritium, and iodine 129 are difficult to detect beta emitters. There is no documented contamination measurement and control measures in the documentation for the DGR.
Measurements have been made of significant amounts of airborne tritium and carbon 14 of gassing in low and intermediate level waste storage buildings at OPG reactor sites. Ventilation stack measurements at NPD and Whiteshell detect significant emissions of carbon 14, tritium and beta/gamma particulate long after reactor shutdown and removal of used fuel. Such measurements establish that extensive surface contamination and off gassing from used fuel occur, and would be expected at the DGR.
Ventilation stack measurements from the DGR hot cells and general areas are liable to record stack releases. Such stack releases are usually neglected as being far below derived release limits based on very large environmental air dilution of the stack releases. It must be realized that such stack releases of radionuclides are measures of widespread significant contamination throughout all ventilated areas.
The operational hazard from such widespread contamination that could endanger DGR workers has been neglected. Contamination would continually accumulate over impossible to clean DRG surfaces over the 160 or more operational lifetime. Contamination of the buffer material and exterior of DGR containers would lead to direct unquantified release of radionuclides outside the copper coated containers upon emplacement. Operational measures to adequately control and measure such airborne and surface contamination in the DGR may not be possible rendering the entire DGR operation unfeasible.
The waste container assemblage within the DGR will require remote handling and emplacement due to the high radiation fields around the containers. Any failure of the remote emplacement system would likely require manual intervention exposing workers to potentially unacceptably high radiation dose.
A realistic full scale hot cell transfer and contamination measurement is required to quantify operational hazard and determine adequate contamination control measures if at all feasible. This test must be made over many container transfers to measure accumulation of contamination.
Decontamination of the interior of hot cells following each transport container transfer is not possible for the millions of used fuel bundles that must be transferred. This consideration alone indicates that widespread contamination spread throughout the DGR is unavoidable. Determination must be made for radiation protection during recovery from failed remote emplacement. The full scale test should include a mock up of recovery from failed waste container emplacement in a disposal environment with actual dose exposure measurements.
A comprehensive operational test including testing of feasibility of recovery from failed remote disposal and determination of accumulation of surface and airborne contamination must be done before any site approval and further site development and characterization.
Will soaring electricity rates kill Ontario’s nuclear expansion?
At $20.9-billion, the Darlington SMRs are expected to cost nearly as much as larger reactors that would have generated far more power. The government is betting that the economic benefits will be worth it: by building the first-ever BWRX-300 reactor, it hopes to win export opportunities for Ontario-based nuclear suppliers.
Future plans include what would be two of the largest nuclear plants on Earth, which will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. And while the IESO holds competitive procurements for other forms of generation including natural gas, wind and solar, nuclear plants are exempted from that requirement………… “There’s no real competition and there’s no real incentive for them to deliver that power at the cheapest cost “
Matthew McClearn, The Globe and Mail, Feb 5, 2026
The Ontario government’s plans to more than double the capacity of the province’s fleet of nuclear power reactors is sprawling in its ambition – and has a price tag to match.
Last May, Energy Minister Stephen Lecce stood alongside Premier Doug Ford to announce that the government would spend $20.9-billion to build four new small modular reactors in Clarington, Ont. In November, they approved a $26.8-billion overhaul of four old reactors at Ontario Power Generation’s Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, just east of Toronto.
Ontario’s electricity rates shot up 29 per cent in November, driven in part by rising nuclear generation costs. Further hikes are virtually certain: Ontario Power Generation (OPG) recently filed a rate application before the Ontario Energy Board, which it says will lay the foundation for the province’s energy supply over the next quarter century. The utility seeks roughly a doubling of the payments it receives for the electricity generated by its nuclear power plants. If granted, monthly bills would increase by an average of $3.50 each year for the next five years.
What comes next, though, promises to be even more expensive.
The Ford government asserts that Ontario will need roughly 18,000 additional megawatts of nuclear capacity by mid-century. (Ontario’s existing Darlington, Bruce and Pickering stations represent about 12,000 megawatts.) They’re ready to embark on what they describe as “the largest expansion of nuclear energy on the continent,” which includes plans for two of the largest nuclear plants on Earth. They could easily cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
This aspect of Ontario’s nuclear ambitions – the cost, and how residents and businesses will pay – is rarely discussed by provincial officials, and then only in vague terms. But the Ford government has long insisted that it can do it all while keeping electricity costs down. Critics – particularly those favoring renewable generation – have warned for years that this nuclear-focused approach would eventually lead to steep rate hikes.
“Ontario is on a track to more expensive energy in the future,” said David Pickup, manager of electricity at the Pembina Institute, an energy thinktank.
In a presentation in late January, Jack Gibbons, chair of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, said Mr. Ford’s plans would see 75 per cent of Ontario’s electricity produced by nuclear power by 2050.
“If his nuclear projects proceed, our electricity rates will rise dramatically,” he predicted.
The Ford government came to power in 2018 riding a wave of dissatisfaction with the energy policies of its Liberal predecessors, which also led to surging power bills. Have Mr. Lecce and Mr. Ford similarly miscalculated?
Surging rates
Ontario’s Nov. 1 rate hike of 29 per cent was likely the largest on the continent last year. In the past year, Maine and New Jersey experienced increases of 25.5 per cent and 21 per cent, respectively, according to data published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The U.S. national average was just 6.6 per cent.
OEB spokesperson Tom Miller attributed Ontario’s rate increase partly to unexpectedly high nuclear generation last year, including from a refurbished reactor at Darlington that returned to service five months earlier than expected.
The November hike was almost entirely offset by an accompanying increase in the Ontario Energy Rebate, a provincial subsidy the government uses to lower residential electricity bills. But those subsidies will cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, competing with other priorities.
For now, Ontarians’ rates still compare favorably to some provinces, including Nova Scotia, and also U.S. states around the Great Lakes. But the higher payments sought by OPG, if approved, would endure for years.
Traditionally, OPG recovered its costs for projects once they began generating electricity – a common practice worldwide. But nuclear plants can take a decade or two to construct and therefore tend to rack up sizeable interest charges, adding to their final tab.
Last year the government amended the Ontario Energy Board Act to allow OPG to immediately begin recouping some costs associated with building the small modular reactors (SMRs) and refurbishing Pickering.
“The intended effect is to smooth out the cost over time, rather than massive jumps from one year to the next,” explained Brendan Frank, who heads policy development and analysis at Clean Prosperity, a clean energy thinktank.
The Association of Major Power Consumers of Ontario, which represents major industrial electricity users, accepts the charges.
“It’s a legitimate ask from the generators,” said Brad Duguid, the organization’s president. “They have preliminary costs that they’re incurring, and they need to have a way to pay for that.”
Nonetheless, similar regulatory changes elsewhere in North America led to misfortune. In the U.S., a practice known as Construction Work in Progress was introduced in South Carolina and Georgia, which obligated ratepayers in those states to pay up front for the only new nuclear plants built in the U.S. since the 1980s. The South Carolina plant was never finished, and the Georgia plant came in well over budget and many years late, contributing to major rate increases in both states.
Another factor driving up rates in Ontario are refurbished reactors returning to service. Including Pickering, Ontario has decided to refurbish 14 reactors, at a cost of several billions of dollars each. OPG is wrapping up an overhaul of its Darlington plant while Bruce Power’s is scheduled to run until 2033.
Refurbishments enjoy broad political support. One reason is that Ontario’s nuclear industry employs tens of thousands of people. At a press conference held in November to announce the Pickering refurbishment, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy turned to the unionized workers behind him and assured them: “You folks are gonna be working for a long time. By the way, you’ve got job security…I can guarantee you that we’ll have the nuclear industry’s back all the way through for the next 50 years.”
Local economic benefits are central to Mr. Lecce’s enthusiasm for nuclear, as is energy security.
“The alternative is either a dirty source of power,” he said, “or it is leveraging procurements or materials that are often made in China.
“When I think about President Trump’s attack on the country and his ongoing antagonistic approach to allies and historic friends of the U.S. like Canada, it only reaffirms to me that we are on the right path.”
An expensive future
How much of a premium are Ontarians prepared to pay?
At $20.9-billion, the Darlington SMRs are expected to cost nearly as much as larger reactors that would have generated far more power. The government is betting that the economic benefits will be worth it: by building the first-ever BWRX-300 reactor, it hopes to win export opportunities for Ontario-based nuclear suppliers.
Nuclear plants worldwide have routinely suffered serious delays and cost overruns during construction, and one in nine is never completed. Mr. Lecce exudes confidence that OPG can repeat its performance with the Darlington refurbishment.
Mr. Lecce emphasized that his government is pursuing an “all-of-the-above” approach. The province’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has awarded contracts to natural gas and battery storage projects, which are to come online in 2028. But the slogan obscures the fact that the government’s plans would see Ontario lean even more heavily on reactors than it has in the past.
And while the IESO holds competitive procurements for other forms of generation including natural gas, wind and solar, nuclear plants are exempted from that requirement.
Said Mr. Pickup: “There’s no real competition and there’s no real incentive for them to deliver that power at the cheapest cost – unlike these competitive procurements, where if they don’t come in at low cost, they won’t win and they won’t get built.”
The Ford government supports Bruce Power’s proposal to build four large new reactors at its plant in Kincardine, Ont., adding up to 4,800 megawatts to what is often described as the world’s largest nuclear power plant. Known as Bruce C, it could be Canada’s first large-scale nuclear build in more than 30 years. The government has agreed to pay for most of the impact assessment, a benefit few other private power producers enjoy.
Simultaneously, OPG has begun planning an even larger plant at Wesleyville, the site of a partly-constructed oil-fired facility near Port Hope. Wesleyville’s capacity could be as high as 10,000 megawatts, enough to seize the Bruce’s crown as the world’s largest nuclear plant.
Nuclear plants take at least a decade, often two or more, to plan and build. This long lead time, accompanied by their huge output of electricity, requires governments to make big bets about future demand.
Mr. Lecce has placed his. He expects 21 million people will live in Ontario by mid-century, up from 16 million currently. He anticipates mass-adoption of electric vehicles, new data centres and massive investment in Ontario’s industry, including electrification of steel mills.
“We need 65 per cent more power at least, 90 per cent at the high,” Mr. Lecce said. “The province is going to be investing in energy generation, one way or another.”
But many EV projects announced in the past few years have stalled or been cancelled outright. U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to curtail automotive imports into his country has led automakers to lower production in Ontario, and the future of other power-intensive industries such as steel are similarly unclear.
The path not taken
The Ford government’s nuclear expansion plots the opposite course to that taken by most other jurisdictions globally.
According to the International Energy Agency, renewables (particularly solar) are growing faster than any other major energy source, and will continue to do so in all scenarios it has presented – even accounting for continuing hostility from the Trump administration.
“Renewables and storage have come down massively” in cost over the last 15 years, Mr. Pickup said. “Cost reductions have been 80 to 90 per cent, so renewables aren’t just competitive, they’re much cheaper.”
Mr. Ford resolutely opposed wind generation when he first assumed office; his government sought to halt construction of two partly-constructed wind farms, much as Mr. Trump now attacks offshore wind projects.
Mr. Ford’s antipathy toward renewables appears to have softened since then. Nonetheless, the IESO expects renewables will supply roughly the same proportion of Ontario’s electricity 25 years from now as they do today.
Mr. Pickup said the Pembina Institute doesn’t think Ontario should throw out its nuclear plans entirely, only that it should moderate its ambitions considerably in favor of alternatives, particularly renewables and energy storage.
“Nuclear comes in as expensive today,” he said. “It’s going to be relatively more expensive tomorrow.”
Mr. Gibbons, of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, asserted that the cost of new nuclear capacity is between two and eight times more expensive than wind and solar generation.
“If we build new nuclear stations, our electricity rates will rise. If we actually want to lower our electricity bills, we need to invest in the lower cost options.”
But renewables have their own shortcomings and hidden costs. Unlike nuclear plants, wind and solar facilities provide electricity only intermittently, the amount of which is largely determined by environmental conditions like wind speed and daylight. And they require additional transmission infrastructure to connect to the grid, not to mention lots of land.
Europe feels the impact of weeks of wet weather and freezing cold.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated in Spain, Portugal and
Morocco after Storm Leonardo caused widespread flooding. Emergency services
and the military have been helping rescue people from their homes with
residents who remain warned to leave immediately. The Portuguese government
have extended a state of emergency due to what it describes as the
“devastating crisis” caused by a wave of storms. Saturday will see the
arrival of Storm Marta which will bring more rain to the region.
BBC 6th Feb 2026, https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/cwy8450qkwwo
Ontario’s Nuclear Rate Shock Reveals a Deeper Affordability Problem
Michael Barnard, Clean Technica, 4 Feb 26
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has asked the Ontario Energy Board to approve a sharp increase in regulated nuclear payment amounts, including a year over year jump of more than 40% in 2027. The weighted average regulated payment amount rises from about $78/MWh in 2026 to roughly $110/MWh in 2027, driven by the nuclear payment amount increasing from around $111/MWh to about $207/MWh, almost doubling. For a typical household, this does not mean a 40% increase in the electricity bill. OPG’s own consumer impact analysis shows an increase of roughly $8 per month on a typical bill of about $142, or around 5.6%, mostly because a lot fewer MWh are being delivered at the much higher price. The difference between those two figures is the starting point for understanding what is happening and why it matters for affordability and system design.
An electricity bill is a bundle of charges layered together. Generation is only one part of what households pay. Transmission, local distribution, system operations, and regulatory charges make up a large share of the total. Nuclear sits inside the generation portion, and OPG’s regulated nuclear sits inside nuclear. When the regulated payment amount for OPG’s nuclear fleet rises sharply, the overall bill moves much less because the other layers do not change at the same rate. This does not make the nuclear increase less real. It means the effect is diluted across a broader bill structure.
Importantly, the more Ontario is electrified with good demand management and batteries smoothing peaks, the more that the additional costs of transmission, local distribution, system operations, and regulatory charges are spread across more units of electricity, lowering their portion of the final bill. Expensive nuclear begins to dominate bills in that scenario causing higher rates than necessary, just as inexpensive renewables would lower rates.
Ontario’s nuclear system also has an important institutional split that needs to be clear early.
There are two major nuclear operators. OPG is publicly owned and regulated on a cost of
service basis. The other, Bruce Power, is privately owned and operates under a long term
contractual structure with more exposure to performance and market discipline. The current
rate application applies only to the public operator’s regulated nuclear fleet. System wide
visuals and energy flows, however, reflect the combined output of both operators. Keeping that
distinction clear avoids confusion when comparing rate case numbers to province wide
generation totals.
What is increasing in this application is not spending that OPG failed to anticipate. It is the
amount the regulator allows OPG to recover in a given year under cost of service regulation.
The revenue requirement includes operating and maintenance costs, depreciation of capital
already spent, return of capital, return on capital, taxes, and nuclear liability accruals. These
costs were planned, forecast, and approved years ago. The regulatory question is not whether
OPG expected them, but how and when they are recovered from ratepayers. A large increase in
a payment amount can occur even when nothing unexpected has happened on the ground.
The key mechanical driver of the 2027 spike is a drop in output from OPG’s nuclear fleet, not a
sudden surge in total nuclear spending. OPG’s filing shows production from its regulated
nuclear facilities falling to roughly 18.7TWh in 2027, compared with values in the high 20s or
low 30s TWh in surrounding years. This reflects planned refurbishment outages at Darlington
combined with conservative assumptions about Pickering availability as those units operate
under life extension conditions. Nuclear plants are expensive to own and relatively inexpensive
to operate, while still having costs of operations above the cost of new wind and solar. When
nuclear reactors are offline, most costs continue while output falls. Fixed costs are spread over
fewer kWh under the regulatory structure, and the $/MWh figure rises quickly.
This is why outages matter so much in a nuclear heavy system. A large portion of Ontario’s
electricity comes from a small number of very large units. When one or more of those units is
offline, there are limited alternatives ready to scale up at the same cost. Gas generation can fill
gaps, but that introduces fuel price exposure and emissions. Imports can help at the margin,
but intertie capacity is finite. The result is that nuclear outages show up as price volatility even
when total system costs remain within expected ranges…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The decision to pursue small modular reactors adds another layer to this picture. The SMRs at
Darlington are being developed by the publicly owned utility, OPG, under a cost of service
framework. Development and early construction costs are already flowing into the nuclear
revenue requirement, even though the units won’t be producing electricity for years, likely
many more years than the current schedule projection. Ratepayers are paying financing and
development costs today, with much larger construction and depreciation costs to come later
in the decade.
The contrast with the private nuclear operator, Bruce Power, is instructive. The private
operator has chosen to focus on refurbishing existing large reactors rather than building SMRs.
That choice reflects exposure to cost, schedule, and performance risk. First of a kind nuclear
projects have long lead times, uncertain costs, and limited flexibility. In addition to first of a
kind risks, the SMR reactor designs, operations and fuel cycle are completely unfamiliar to
Ontario’s nuclear operators. Ontario has no nuclear reactor construction experience left, as the
last reactor was turned on a generation ago, so there are no master builders and experienced
teams. Ontario knows how to run existing nuclear and occasionally refurbish the CANDU fleet,
but that’s it. Without guaranteed cost recovery, private capital won’t proceed under those
realities. In Ontario, the reason SMRs are moving forward is that risk can be socialized to
Ontarians through regulation and the current Administration refuses to accept the global
lessons on renewables, not that SMRs are the lowest cost or most flexible option.
This distinction matters for rates. When SMR costs rise above current projections, and they will,
those overruns will flow into rate base if deemed “prudent” by the regulators. That increases
depreciation, return of capital, and return on capital for decades, and Ontario ratepayers or
taxpayers will be paying those costs. Overruns also raise financing costs during construction,
which affects rates before any electricity is delivered. If delays accompany overruns, fixed costs
are spread over fewer kWh for longer, worsening the same denominator problem seen in the
2027 refurbishment year, but stretched across many years.
It’s worth pointing out that Ontario still carries the legacy financial burden of the massive
nuclear build-out undertaken by Ontario Hydro in the 1970s and 1980s, and that burden has
persisted for decades. When Ontario Hydro was reorganized in 1999, its assets were valued at
roughly $39.6 billion while its long-term debt was about $26.2 billion, with a large portion of
that debt tied directly to nuclear construction, cost overruns, and related liabilities.
Much of that stranded debt was transferred to the Ontario Electrical Financial Corporation to
manage and service, rather than being absorbed by investors, and it has been paid down only
gradually over the years. As of 2024, that successor entity still carried about $12.1 billion in
debt originally associated with the old nuclear program, and it was paying roughly $626 million
in interest charges in that year alone. That debt does not mature until 2050, which means
Ontario taxpayers and ratepayers will continue servicing obligations from past nuclear build
projects well into the middle of this century. Current discussions about new, expensive and
untried SMRs should be occurring in context of that still very high debt that Ontario taxpayers
and ratepayers are funding.
It is also important to separate refurbishment from new nuclear. Refurbishment creates short
term price volatility because of outages, but the assets already exist and return to service,
assuming refurbishment goes well. New nuclear creates long term cost commitments. In OPG’s
own filings, the Darlington New Nuclear Program already accounts for hundreds of millions of
dollars per year in revenue requirement. By the end of the decade, new nuclear is likely to
represent roughly one quarter to one third of the incremental increase in nuclear costs. These
commitments are locked in early and recovered over decades. Extending the life of nuclear
reactors instead of more aggressively ramping up wind and solar is a trade off, and at present
Ontario is making the decision to refurbish very old reactors, with the intent of running them to
ages no nuclear reactor in the world has ever seen. This doesn’t mean geriatric nuclear reactors
will necessarily be unsafe, but they get increasingly expensive to maintain, operate and
refurbish………………………………………………………………https://cleantechnica.com/2026/02/02/ontarios-nuclear-rate-shock-reveals-a-deeper-affordability-problem/#google_vignette
Decommissioning of Gentilly 1
Ken Collier, 7 Feb 26
As in many industrial projects, many of the hazards come to be known only after the project is well under way or, very often, completed and discontinued. Gentilly 1 is one of those projects. Like others, the Gentilly 1 detritus presents grave dangers to living things as the building, equipment and supplies are taken apart. Complete public review of the decommissioning of Gentilly 1 is required, in my view. It should not be skipped or sidestepped in any way.
Notice of the project was posted on the website of the federal impact assessment agency, but it bears scant resemblance to formal and complete impact assessments, and the public is instructed to send comments to the private consortium, rather than to the federal authorities responsible for making the decision.
To cite Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR): “Heavily contaminated radioactive concrete and steel would be trucked over public roads and bridges, through many Quebec and Ontario communities, to the Chalk River site just across the Ottawa River from Quebec.”
How Flexibility, Not Nuclear, Can Secure Ontario’s Electricity Future
Michael Barnard, Clean Technica, 6 Feb 26
Ontario is moving forward with planning for an entirely new nuclear generation site in Port Hope, 100 km east of Toronto, at a moment when its electricity system is already one of the most nuclear-heavy in the world. Nuclear power today provides roughly 55% of Ontario’s electricity, with hydro adding another 25%. Wind, solar, batteries, and demand-side resources together account for a much smaller share, having been cut off at the knees in 2018 when the provincial conservative party took power and summarily cut 758 contracts for renewable generation. Advancing a new site signals how the province understands its future electricity challenge. It reflects an expectation that Ontario will require another large block of firm, always-available capacity to remain reliable as demand grows, particularly during the most constrained hours of the year.
Ontario’s electricity planners, primarily through the Independent Electricity System Operator, frame the case for new nuclear around long-term reliability rather than annual energy supply. Their planning outlook projects electricity demand rising by about 65–75% by 2050—a low energy value not aligned with actual climate or competitiveness goals—with a projected winter peak reaching roughly 36–37 GW. Summer peaks are also expected to rise, but they remain slightly lower, in the range of about 35–36 GW by mid-century. The winter peak, not the summer peak, is treated as the binding constraint, and it is that single cold, dark evening hour that underpins the justification for new nuclear capacity.
This framing matters because of how nuclear is treated in planning models. Nuclear plants supply energy year-round, but the decision to build new nuclear capacity is driven mainly by how much firm capacity planners believe is needed to meet future peak demand. Nuclear units are counted as fully available during peak hours, even though they operate continuously, do not follow demand and are not available when down for maintenance, refueling or refurbishment for months or years. From a reliability perspective, this approach is understandable. System operators are rewarded for avoiding shortages and penalized heavily for blackouts, while overbuilding capacity carries fewer immediate consequences………………………….
The distinction between energy growth and peak growth is critical here. Energy demand, measured in TWh, reflects how much electricity the system produces over a year. Peak demand, measured in GW, reflects the single hardest hour the system must meet. Nuclear plants are not built to follow peaks, but they are sized to peaks. If peaks remain sharp and high, nuclear looks attractive in planning models. If peaks flatten or decline due to significant system component flexiblity, the value of adding large, inflexible, always-on generation falls quickly, even if total energy demand continues to rise.
Electrification without flexibility is genuinely concerning, and planners are right to worry about it……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Ontario does not lack clean electricity. It lacks a planning framework that fully reflects how electricity systems are changing, why winter peaks appear hard only under outdated assumptions, and how firm capacity is actually used in a flexible, digitized grid. The choice facing the province is not between reliability and decarbonization, but between building infrastructure sized for a winter peak that no longer needs to exist and building a system designed to avoid creating that peak in the first place. https://cleantechnica.com/2026/02/06/how-flexibility-not-nuclear-can-secure-ontarios-electricity-future/
Britain courts private cash to fund ‘golden age’ of nuclear-powered AI.
SMR trials are on the horizon, but commercial viability is not expected until the 2030s.
Things get a little hazy over the question of any financial support.
Framework aims to lure investors into powering the compute boom
Dan Robinson, Thu 5 Feb 2026,
https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/05/uk_private_finance_smr/
The British government today launched the Advanced Nuclear Framework to attract private investment in next-generation nuclear technology for factories and datacenters.
The framework aims to accelerate development of advanced modular reactors to power the AI infrastructure boom and provide [?]clean energy for economic growth.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) will create a “pipeline” of projects meeting readiness criteria, offering a “concierge-style” service to help the developers navigate UK planning, regulations, and secure private investment.
DESNZ says emerging nuclear technologies like small modular reactors (SMRs) can be prefabricated in factories, enabling faster, cheaper assembly using skilled jobs across multiple regions. These reactors can provide [?] clean energy to the grid or directly to industrial users, it claims. SMRs, as Reg readers likely know, are newfangled designs with a power capacity of up to about 300 MW per unit, about a third of the generating capacity of traditional atomic reactors.
However, the novelty of these designs means they probably won’t be pumping out the megawatts any time soon. As Omdia principal analyst Alan Howard told us last year, SMR trials are on the horizon, but commercial viability is not expected until the 2030s.
Howard was commenting on the announcement of the UK’s first SMR plant last November, which being built at Wylfa on Anglesey, an island off the coast of Wales.
DESNZ also points to plans for X-Energy and Centrica to build 12 advanced modular reactors in Hartlepool, while Holtec, EDF, and Tritax aim to build SMRs at a former coal-fired power station site at Cottam in Nottinghamshire.
Lord Patrick Vallance, Minister for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear, claimed advanced nuclear technology could revolutionize the power and AI datacenter industries, delivering [?]clean energy and more jobs.
“We are seizing the opportunity to become a frontrunner in this space as part of our golden age of nuclear, creating the conditions for the industry to flourish,” he said.
The British government today launched the Advanced Nuclear Framework to attract private investment in next-generation nuclear technology for factories and datacenters.
The framework aims to accelerate development of advanced modular reactors to power the AI infrastructure boom and provide clean energy for economic growth.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) will create a “pipeline” of projects meeting readiness criteria, offering a “concierge-style” service to help the developers navigate UK planning, regulations, and secure private investment.
DESNZ says emerging nuclear technologies like small modular reactors (SMRs) can be prefabricated in factories, enabling faster, cheaper assembly using skilled jobs across multiple regions. These reactors can provide clean energy to the grid or directly to industrial users, it claims.
SMRs, as Reg readers likely know, are newfangled designs with a power capacity of up to about 300 MW per unit, about a third of the generating capacity of traditional atomic reactors.
However, the novelty of these designs means they probably won’t be pumping out the megawatts any time soon. As Omdia principal analyst Alan Howard told us last year, SMR trials are on the horizon, but commercial viability is not expected until the 2030s.
Howard was commenting on the announcement of the UK’s first SMR plant last November, which being built at Wylfa on Anglesey, an island off the coast of Wales.
DESNZ also points to plans for X-Energy and Centrica to build 12 advanced modular reactors in Hartlepool, while Holtec, EDF, and Tritax aim to build SMRs at a former coal-fired power station site at Cottam in Nottinghamshire.
Lord Patrick Vallance, Minister for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear, claimed advanced nuclear technology could revolutionize the power and AI datacenter industries, delivering [?]clean energy and more jobs.
“We are seizing the opportunity to become a frontrunner in this space as part of our golden age of nuclear, creating the conditions for the industry to flourish,” he said.
The AI datacenter focus reflects the government’s ambitions for UK AI leadership. It is encouraging a rash of datacenter projects to house AI infrastructure, which is notoriously hot and hungry. One of many reports published last year estimated that global datacenter electricity use is set to more than double by 2030 thanks to AI.
Interested parties will be able to use the Advanced Nuclear Framework to submit proposals to join the pipeline from March. These will then be assessed by Great British Energy-Nuclear, the government-owned atomic energy company.
Things get a little hazy over the question of any financial support. Successful applicants get government endorsement “in principle,” and while they will be expected to secure private finance, the government says it is open to discussions on what may be needed to help get projects off the ground.
Developers will also be able to approach the National Wealth Fund, which can act as a “catalytic investor” for projects that meet their criteria.
The UK isn’t alone in looking to revitalize nuclear power. The US is also encouraging new builds and the development of advanced technologies, and it appears the Trump administration is prepared to overlook safety precautions to speed things along.
US and Russia negotiating New START deal – Axios.
The issue was reportedly discussed on the sidelines of the Ukraine peace talks in Abu Dhabi
5 Feb, 2026 , https://www.rt.com/news/632065-us-russia-negotiate-new-start/
Moscow and Washington are working on a deal to continue the New START nuclear reduction treaty, Axios reported on Thursday, citing three sources familiar with the issue. The strategic arms control agreement officially expired on February 5.
Signed in 2010, the treaty put caps on the number of strategic nuclear warheads and launchers that can be deployed and establishes monitoring mechanisms for both Russian and American arsenals. It was initially set to expire in 2021 but was extended for five years at the time.
According to Axios, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff discussed the issue with the Russian delegation on the sidelines of the Ukraine peace talks in Abu Dhabi. “We agreed with Russia to operate in good faith and to start a discussion about ways it could be updated,” a US official told the media outlet. Another source claimed that the sides had agreed to observe the treaty’s terms for at least six months as the talks on a potential new deal would be ongoing.
Earlier on Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow suggested sticking to the treaty’s provisions for another year but its initiative “remained unanswered.” Russia will “keep its responsible attentive approach in the field of strategic stability [and] nuclear weapons” but will be always “primarily guided by its national interests,” he said.
The UN also called the treaty expiration “a grave moment for international peace and security.” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that “the risk of a nuclear weapon being used is the highest in decades” as he urged Moscow and Washington to negotiate a successor framework.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had earlier proposed to his US counterpart Donald Trump a one-year extension of the treaty but the American president said that he wanted a “better” agreement that includes China.
On Thursday, Peskov said that China considers joining the talks on a new treaty “pointless” since its nuclear arsenal is incompatible with that of Russia and the US. “We respect this position,” the Kremlin spokesman said.
Looking to Blame Anyone But Israel for Youth’s Anti-Israel Turn
Ari Paul, February 5, 2026, https://fair.org/home/looking-to-blame-anyone-but-israel-for-youths-anti-israel-turn/
Younger Americans are turning against Israel. “On both the left and the right, young Americans are growing more skeptical of offering unconditional US support to Israel,” Politico (9/29/25) reported. Brookings (8/6/25) ran the headline “Support for Israel Continues to Deteriorate, Especially Among Democrats and Young People.” According to the Forward (11/21/25), “Younger Jews are more than twice as likely to identify as anti-Zionist than the overall population.
Pro-Israel media are looking for blame. It’s often easy to paint youth opinion that is out of sync with official state policy as emotionally driven social justice warriorism, the result of hearts not yet hardened by life’s cold realities. The Zionist media narrative is looking for the culprits who have apparently miseducated our youth, turning them not just into Israel critics, but Jew haters.
‘Panicked’ by young people
At the Atlantic (12/15/25), Yair Rosenberg wrote a piece headlined “The More I’m Around Young People, the More Panicked I Am,’” with the subhead, “Anti-Jewish prejudice isn’t a partisan divide—it’s a generational one.” To his credit, Rosenberg starts off reporting on very real instances of antisemitism, but then watch carefully what he does in the middle:
Young people also tend to be more critical of Israel than their elders, leading a minority to excuse or even perpetuate anti-Jewish acts in America in the name of Palestine. These critics are likely to consume anti-Israel content on their social-media apps of choice. The platforms then funnel some of those users toward antisemitic material—a sort of algorithmic escalator that ends up radicalizing a percentage of them.
In the first sentence, the only evidence Rosenberg cites is a link to his own article (Atlantic, 5/22/25) about how “Elias Rodriguez allegedly shot and killed two people as they were exiting an event at the Capital Jewish Museum,” with the headline “A Dangerous Disguise for Antisemitism.” Rosenberg said the “assailant used the Palestinian struggle as a pretext to harm Jews.”
But as I have previously written (FAIR.org, 5/29/25), much of the media framed this attack as antisemitic without any factual basis. While there was plenty of evidence that the act was political, with Rodiguez’s manifesto denouncing Israel as a “genocidal apartheid state,” there wasn’t any evidence that the attacker held antisemitic views, or targeted the event because of the faith of the victims. If someone obsessed with Saudi Arabia’s aggression in Yemen killed two Muslim workers at the Saudi embassy, that would certainly be anti-Saudi political violence, but not necessarily anti-Muslim terror.
‘Sewer of filth and lies’
Rosenberg doesn’t quite say that today’s young critics of Israel are necessarily antisemites, but argues that by putting anti-Israel content on social media, they’re helping to drive traffic to actual antisemitism. This is a framing that lets Elon Musk—who famously gave a Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s second inauguration—off the hook for overseeing the rise of this antisemitic content on X (CNN, 9/29/25).
Politico (9/29/25) cites Israel’s “latest moves to launch a ground offensive in Gaza City…and deny evidence of widespread famine” as reasons for the country’s loss of support among young people.
Younger Americans are turning against Israel. “On both the left and the right, young Americans are growing more skeptical of offering unconditional US support to Israel,” Politico (9/29/25) reported. Brookings (8/6/25) ran the headline “Support for Israel Continues to Deteriorate, Especially Among Democrats and Young People.” According to the Forward (11/21/25), “Younger Jews are more than twice as likely to identify as anti-Zionist than the overall population.”
Pro-Israel media are looking for blame. It’s often easy to paint youth opinion that is out of sync with official state policy as emotionally driven social justice warriorism, the result of hearts not yet hardened by life’s cold realities. The Zionist media narrative is looking for the culprits who have apparently miseducated our youth, turning them not just into Israel critics, but Jew haters.
‘Panicked’ by young people
“Younger Americans…are likely to trust and get their news from lightly moderated social-media platforms,” writes Yair Rosenberg (Atlantic, 12/15/25), “which often advantage the extreme opinions, conspiracy theories, and conflict-stoking content that drive engagement.”
At the Atlantic (12/15/25), Yair Rosenberg wrote a piece headlined “The More I’m Around Young People, the More Panicked I Am,’” with the subhead, “Anti-Jewish prejudice isn’t a partisan divide—it’s a generational one.” To his credit, Rosenberg starts off reporting on very real instances of antisemitism, but then watch carefully what he does in the middle:
Young people also tend to be more critical of Israel than their elders, leading a minority to excuse or even perpetuate anti-Jewish acts in America in the name of Palestine. These critics are likely to consume anti-Israel content on their social-media apps of choice. The platforms then funnel some of those users toward antisemitic material—a sort of algorithmic escalator that ends up radicalizing a percentage of them.
In the first sentence, the only evidence Rosenberg cites is a link to his own article (Atlantic, 5/22/25) about how “Elias Rodriguez allegedly shot and killed two people as they were exiting an event at the Capital Jewish Museum,” with the headline “A Dangerous Disguise for Antisemitism.” Rosenberg said the “assailant used the Palestinian struggle as a pretext to harm Jews.”
But as I have previously written (FAIR.org, 5/29/25), much of the media framed this attack as antisemitic without any factual basis. While there was plenty of evidence that the act was political, with Rodiguez’s manifesto denouncing Israel as a “genocidal apartheid state,” there wasn’t any evidence that the attacker held antisemitic views, or targeted the event because of the faith of the victims. If someone obsessed with Saudi Arabia’s aggression in Yemen killed two Muslim workers at the Saudi embassy, that would certainly be anti-Saudi political violence, but not necessarily anti-Muslim terror.
‘Sewer of filth and lies’
The root of the antisemitism problem at X is not criticism of Israeli war crimes (FAIR.org, 1/23/25).
Rosenberg doesn’t quite say that today’s young critics of Israel are necessarily antisemites, but argues that by putting anti-Israel content on social media, they’re helping to drive traffic to actual antisemitism. This is a framing that lets Elon Musk—who famously gave a Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s second inauguration—off the hook for overseeing the rise of this antisemitic content on X (CNN, 9/29/25).
Nor does he recognize that Meta is aggressively policing against criticism of Israel, even as it ends efforts to proactively screen out hate speech like antisemitism (Washington Post, 2/25/25). Last year, Meta announced “that it will expand its policies to classify the misuse of the term ‘Zionist’ as a proxy for ‘Jews’ as antisemitic and Tier 1 hate speech” (World Jewish Congress, 6/9/24). Al Jazeera (10/24/24) also reported on “testimonies of routine deletion of Palestine-related posts and a deep-seated pro-Israel bias” at Meta.
Rosenberg is rightly concerned that there are too many far-right extremists promoting white nationalism and antisemitism on social media networks (Wired, 5/2/24; PBS, 8/13/24), and these corporate regimes are too tolerant of such activity on their sites. But Rosenberg manages to twist this into an argument that young people need to shut up about Gaza.
Of course, many people are upset about anti-Israel content on social media not because it leads to antisemitism, but because it’s anti-Israel: The reason for the shift in youth opinion isn’t Israel’s behavior, the argument goes, but social media’s influence. Hillary Clinton blames youth criticism of Israel on TikTok (Hollywood Reporter, 12/2/25). The Australian (12/12/25) wrote: “Young people live now on social media. And social media is an unregulated sewer of lies and filth.” The Israeli government has reportedly recruited social media personalities and public relations firms to tell its version of the story (Jerusalem Post, 10/3/25; Al Jazeera, 10/30/25).
‘Brainwashed’ into opposing sex pests
The issue of this generational divide is the center of a piece at Free Press (12/17/25) by Olivia Reingold, called “The Jewish Parents Who Raised Mamdani Voters.” For the unacquainted, Free Press was bought by Paramount (10/6/25), now controlled by oligarch David Ellison, thus turning the once-marginal publication into the closest thing the right has to the New Yorker. (The acquisition also elevated Free Press co-founder Bari Weiss, noted right-wing pundit, to CBS News editor-in-chief.)
Free Press quoted one parent in particular, Sagra Maceira de Rosen, whose bio describes her as “chair of SIO Global, an investment and advisory firm working with private equity and investment.” She said she was “horrified” that Mamdani won the election. What’s worse for her was that her grown child campaigned for him. “I fear that kids I care for—my children—are brainwashed.”
Parents looked for answers. Reingold reported:
They wondered if they should have parented differently. Did their children get enough Jewish education? Were they brainwashed by their elite private schools? Where did they go wrong?
“Maybe I failed in the sense that the kids didn’t go to Israel enough,” a 63-year-old physician in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, told me. He said his daughter, a civil rights attorney, holds anti-Zionist views and refused to vote for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo due to his alleged sexual harassment. “It would’ve been better if they went more, just to see the lies they’re being told.”
It’s not clear if the doctor or Reingold knows what they’re saying here. Jewish kids need to 1) go to Israel to get indoctrinated and 2) stop being appalled by sexual harassment. These issues are more connected than one might think, as a Jewish Currents (4/18/18) investigation by Lilith executive editor Sarah Seltzer found widespread problems of sexual violence within Birthright, the program offering young Jews free guided trips to Israel.
Lacking ‘a capacity for critical thinking’
Another parent, Lisa Fields Lewis, lamented that her grown children liked Mamdani:
Lewis was raised by an Israeli mother; her father survived Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She said the rise of Mamdani awakened a “generational trauma” in her. Now, she can’t shake the feeling that history is repeating itself. And kids don’t seem to realize just how dangerous Mamdani’s views are, Lewis said.
With Mamdani set to be sworn in just after midnight on January 1, Lewis doesn’t know if their relationship can return to normal any time soon. “I feel sad,” Lewis said. “I feel envious of my friends whose kids are proud Zionists, or at least have the capacity for critical thinking.”
It’s not FAIR’s job to comment on others’ parenting skills, but Lewis just told the world she thinks her children don’t have a “capacity for critical thinking”; the tension in this household might have to do with a lack of respect, rather than just differing politics. What’s really dangerous here is that the author doesn’t challenge the absurd suggestion that “Mamdani’s promise of providing free buses and righting the city’s widening income gap” is the first step in sending the Jews to the camps.
By what measure does the Free Press think Mamdani is dangerous for Jews? It pointed out that he “has consistently denied Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state,” saying instead that “Israel should exist ‘with equal rights for all’—a bar the nation already meets.”
Reingold can’t decide what she wants here: a Jewish state or a state that doesn’t discriminate. Maintaining the former requires preventing the latter, as Palestinians that have been under Israeli control for nearly 60 years need to be denied the right to vote in Israeli elections. Jews from anywhere in the world have a “right to return” to Israel, but non-Jewish refugees from pre-1948 Palestine do not. A number of human rights groups, including an Israeli one, have found that the legal separation of peoples in Israel proper and the Occupied Territories amounts to apartheid (B’Tselem, 1/12/21; Human Rights Watch, 4/27/21).
Reingold went on, “More recently, the mayor-elect has caught flack for his controversial appointments to his transition committees, which include fringe anti-Zionist rabbis.” Again, there’s nothing here that represents antisemitism–instead, there’s inclusion of Jews. The problem is that Mamdani is close to clergy whose politics don’t align with the Weiss editorial regime. To put things into perspective, Mamdani won a third of the city’s Jewish vote (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11/5/25)—not a majority, but not exactly a “fringe” either.
‘A problem of disobedient children’
These pieces spend a lot of ink displaying anxiety for this generational divide, but never really ask why it exists. If they did that, they might find out that while many in the older generation could indulge the fantasy that a pre-Netanyahu Israel was engaged in a peace process, when mainstream Israeli leaders paid lip service to the idea of a two-state solution, younger Jews only know a place of extreme bellicosity.
Any voter in their 20s doesn’t remember the Oslo Accords or Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with Yasser Arafat (Conversation, 9/12/23). Instead, what they know is a country that has mostly been under the control of the right-wing Likud party and its extremist allies, an anti-democratic slide into authoritarianism (Haaretz, 10/30/25; Committee to Protect Journalists, 12/11/25), government corruption (New York Times, 11/30/25), settlement expansion (UN News, 9/29/25), alliances with the European far right (CNN, 3/26/25; Foreign Policy, 5/9/25) and several lopsided wars against Gaza.
But neither the Atlantic nor the Free Press can say this. The answer can’t be that Israel’s actions against Palestinians and its decaying political system are turning people off. No, the problem is that young people are led astray by social media and distance from real education.
“While Israel’s actions have always been structured by apartheid and ethnic cleansing, the scale and the visibility of its structural violence has been placed at the center of American political discourse,” said Benjamin Balthaser, author of Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left. “Americans, not just Jews, are compelled to respond.”
He added, “That the Free Press sees this as a problem of disobedient children or a lack of Torah school is not unlike Hillary Clinton blaming outrage at Israel on TikTok videos and social media.
ISIS vs IDF. Selective justice and the fall of Australian law
by Andrew Brown | Feb 4, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/isis-vs-idf-selective-justice-and-the-collapse-of-australian-law/
Australians who went to fight for ISIS were prosecuted, their families vilified, while former IDF soldiers fighting for Israel walk freely among us. Andrew Brown reports on the double standards.
Australians like to believe our justice system is governed by principle, and crimes judged by what was done, not by who did them. We like a comforting story about ourselves. That justice is served, and accountability painful but even-handed. We tell it often. We believe it when it suits us.
That story collapses the moment it is tested.
After the Brereton Report, Australia demonstrated what accountability looks like when it chooses to take law seriously. Entire Australian Defence Force platoons were investigated. Whole units placed under suspicion. Soldiers interrogated repeatedly. Careers frozen. Medals questioned. Command structures dismantled. Hundreds of millions of public dollars spent. One soldier charged. Many others left suspended indefinitely, their lives stalled in legal limbo.
This pursuit of accountability was not timid or symbolic. It did not flinch at rank, reputation, or heroism. Australia went after its returning heroes, including Victoria Cross recipients, and some of the most decorated units in its military history. It did so publicly and without fear or favour.
“No medal or mythology placed anyone beyond scrutiny.”
Australia wanted the world to see that it would investigate its own forces, not just individuals but units and chains of command, even when it was humiliating and politically costly.
Soldiers going overseas
When Australians travelled to join ISIS, the response was faster and harsher. Passports cancelled. Homes raided. Surveillance expanded. Citizenship stripping powers deployed. Wives treated as accomplices. Children framed as future threats. Suspicion alone was often enough to trigger punishment. Due process became optional.
If Australians fought for Russia against Ukraine, arrests would follow. Prosecutions under foreign incursion and war crimes laws. Media outrage before the luggage carousel stopped turning. The word traitor would appear instantly.
That is the standard Australia claims to uphold.
Gaza
Now consider Gaza. What is occurring is not chaotic warfare. It is a civilian catastrophe with a measurable pattern. Credible casualty analyses based on hospital records, death registries, and independent verification show that approximately 84% of those killed are civilians and around 33% are children. Not combatants miscounted. Not teenagers caught in crossfire. Children.
By comparison, in Ukraine, children account for around 0.3% of casualties. That is a difference of more than one hundredfold.This is not incidental harm. It is demographic concentration.
The destruction follows the same logic. Entire residential districts have been levelled. Homes, schools, universities, bakeries, water infrastructure, and sewage systems have been systematically destroyed. This is not damage caused by fighting around civilians.
“It is the removal of the conditions required for civilian life to continue.”
Hospitals have been a central target. Gaza’s major medical complexes were besieged, raided, and rendered inoperable. Electricity was cut. Fuel was denied. Oxygen supplies ran out. Patients died untreated on floors. Premature infants were left in incubators without power. Medical staff were detained directly from wards and operating theatres, taken without charge, many remaining in detention months later.
This is not collateral damage. It is the dismantling of a healthcare system in real time.
Human rights atrocity
Mass detention has accompanied the physical destruction. Thousands of Palestinians have been taken without charge or access to legal counsel. Human rights organisations have documented beatings, starvation, stress positions, and sexual abuse in detention. Medical professionals and journalists were not spared. They were targeted.
Journalists have been killed at a rate unmatched in any modern conflict. Aid workers have been killed despite operating in clearly marked vehicles and facilities. Among them was Australian humanitarian Zomi Frankcom, killed during a coordinated strike on an aid convoy.
And then there is Hind Rajab.
A six-year-old girl was trapped in a car after her family was shot dead. She called emergency services. Her voice was recorded. An ambulance was dispatched to rescue her. The ambulance was destroyed. Hind was later found dead alongside the paramedics sent to save her.
There was no firefight. No exchange of fire. No ambiguity.
Doctors from Australia, the United States, and Canada who worked in Gaza later testified publicly to treating repeated waves of children with gunshot wounds consistent with sniper fire. Identical entry wounds to heads and chests. These were not anecdotes.
They were clinical observations recorded by trained professionals.
The crime scene
This is why the language of genocide is no longer rhetorical. It is legal. The International Court of Justice has found a plausible risk of genocide and ordered provisional measures. The International Criminal Court is pursuing accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity arising from Israeli actions.
What is unfolding in Gaza is not a tragedy without authorship.
It is a crime scene.
Australia has chosen silence.
That silence is no longer ignorance. At the National Press Club, senior human rights lawyer Chris Sidoti warned that Australians who served in Gaza may face criminal liability if genocide or war crimes are established. He was explicit. Genocide does not require pulling a trigger. Assistance, facilitation, or knowing contribution can be enough.
“The government did not contest the law. It did nothing.”
The government did not contest the law. It did nothing.
No Australian Federal Police task force. No examination of units or command chains. No transparency. No framework for investigating potential complicity in genocide or war crimes under Australian law.
Instead, indulgence.
An estimated 1,000 former or current Israeli Defence Force soldiers now live freely in Australia. They stroll through Caulfield, Bondi, Dover Heights, and Double Bay. They drink lattes in Sydney cafes. They enjoy suburban normality without scrutiny, while Gaza remains a ledger of rubble, amputations, mass graves, and dead children.And the indulgence does not stop at inaction. It now edges toward empowerment.
NSW Premier Chris Minns has publicly canvassed expanding armed community protection roles, including the involvement of current or former Israeli soldiers in guarding Jewish institutions in Australia. The stated aim is protection against antisemitism. That aim is legitimate. The implications are not.
Policing and the authorised use of force are public functions. They exist because weapons in civilian life require training, oversight, accountability, and law. When governments contemplate arming individuals with recent service in a foreign military now under investigation for genocide, the issue becomes immediate and domestic.
Run the test honestly.
ISIS vs IDF
If ISIS returnees sought to bear arms in public under the guise of community protection, the state would answer with handcuffs and prison, not consent. The request itself would be treated as evidence of danger.
That this proposal can be entertained for one category of foreign fighter while unthinkable for another exposes the fiction at the heart of Australia’s claim to equal justice. The law has not changed. Only who it is prepared to protect has.
“This is not neutrality. It’s policy.”
Australia destroyed careers investigating its own soldiers. It went after its most decorated units without fear or favour. It acted ruthlessly against ISIS recruits. It would move instantly if Australians fought for Russia.
When Australians fight in Gaza under the Israeli flag, amid credible allegations of genocide now before international courts, the state looks away.
“That is not restraint, but complicity.”
History will remember this as the moment Australia blinded its own law, allowing returning IDF soldiers to pass unexamined and exposing fairness before the law as a deliberate lie.
Impact Assessment of the Planned Dismantling of the Core of the Gentilly-1 reactor.
To: The Honourable Julie Aviva Dabrusin, Minister of Environment and Climate Change
From: The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR)
Re: Impact assessment of the final dismantling of the Gentilly-1 nuclear reactor
Date: July 5 2026
Reference Number 90092
Cc Impact Assessment Agency of Canada
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories \
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
The final dismantling of the most radioactive portions of the Gentilly-1 nuclear reactor, proposed by the licensee Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), will mark the first time that a CANDU power reactor has ever been fully decommissioned – that is, demolished.
This project is not designated for a full panel review under the Impact Assessment Act (IAA) but you, Minister Dabrusin, have the power to so designate it under the terms of the Act.
The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility urges you to do so for the reasons stated below.
(1) When it comes to post-fission radioactivity (human made), the long-lived radioactive decommissioning waste from the core area of a nuclear reactor is second only in radiotoxicity and longevity to the high-level radioactive waste (irradiated nuclear fuel) that has already been designated for a full panel review under IAA at the initiative of NWMO, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. The deadline for initial comments on the NWMO Deep Geological Repository project (DGR) for used nuclear fuel was yesterday, February 4, 2026. [Our comments: www.ccnr.org/GE_IAAC_NWMO_comments_2026.pdf ]
(2) Fully dismantling a nuclear reactor core is a demanding and hazardous undertaking, resulting in voluminous intermediate level radioactive wastes. The highly radioactive steel and concrete structures – fuel channels, calandria tubes, tube sheet, thermal shield, calandria vessel, biological shield, reactor vault, and more – need to be carefully disassembled, using robotic equipment and perhaps underwater cutting techniques with plasma torches. Such methods are described in a 1984 article published by the Canadian Nuclear Society and linked below, on the detailed advanced methods required for dismantling Gentilly-1.
Gentilly-1 Reactor Dismantling Proposal, by Hubert S. Vogt
Reactor and Fuel Handling Engineering Department
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited – CANDU Operation
Published by the Canadian Nuclear Society in the
Proceedings of the 5th Annual Congress
(3) Dismantling the reactor core will create large amounts of radioactive dust and debris some of which will almost certainly be disseminated into the atmosphere, or flushed into the nearby St. Lawrence River, or added to the existing contamination of the soil and subsoil (including groundwater) at the Gentilly site. It is worth noting that, during the Bruce refurbishment operations in 2009, over 500 workers – local tradesmen, mainly – suffered bodily contamination by inhaling radioactive airborne dust containing plutonium and other alpha emitters (i.e. americium) for a period of more than two weeks. The workers were told that respirators were not required. The radioactivity in the air went undetected for two and a half weeks because neither Bruce managers nor CNSC officers on site took the precaution to have the air sampled and tested.
(4) Once disassembled, the bulky and highly radioactive structural components of Gentilly-1 will have to be reduced in volume by cutting, grinding or blasting. Radioactive dust control and radioactive runoff prevention may be only partially effective. Then the multitudinous radioactive fragments must be packaged, and either (a) stored on site or (b) removed and transported over public roads and bridges, probably to Chalk River. The Chalk River site is already overburdened with high-level, intermediate-level, and low-level radioactive wastes of almost all imaginable varieties. Toxic waste dumping at Chalk River is contrary to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the federal government’s “duty to consult”, since Keboawek First Nation and other Indigenous rights-holders in the area have not given their free, prior, informed consent to either the storage or disposal of these toxic wastes on their unceded territory. A panel review could weigh the options of temporary on-site storage versus immediate relocation. Since there is as yet no final destination for intermediate level wastes, moving those wastes two or three times rather than once (when a final destination exists) will be costlier and riskier. Hence on-site storage is attractive.
(5) The decommissioning waste must be isolated from the environment of living things for thousands of years. The metallic fragments contain such long-lived radioactive species as nickel-59, with a 76,000 year half-life, and niobium-94, with a 20,000 year half-life. The concrete fragments also contain long-lived radioactive species like chlorine-36, with a 301,000 year half-life. Such radioactive waste materials are created during the fission process; they were never found in nature before 1940. NWMO has recommended that such intermediate-level decommissioning waste requires a Deep Underground Repository (DGR) not unlike that proposed for used nuclear fuel. CCNR believes that it is only logical and entirely responsible to call for a panel review of this, the first full decommissioning project for a nuclear power reactor in Canada. The lessons learned will have important ramifications for all of Canada’s power reactors as they will all have to be dismantled at some time. This is not “business as usual”.
Read more: Impact Assessment of the Planned Dismantling of the Core of the Gentilly-1 reactor.(6) Demolition of buildings is often a messy business, but demolition of a nuclear reactor core is further complicated by the fact that everything is so highly radioactive, therefore posing a long-term threat to the health and safety of humans and the environment. A panel review by the Assessment Agency is surely the least we can do in the pubic interest.
(7) To the best of our understanding, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) is a private contractor managed by an American-led consortium of multinational corporations, whose work is paid for by Canadian taxpayers through the transfer of billions of dollars to CNL from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, a crown corporation wholly owned by the Canadian government. As CNL is a contractor, paid to do a job by AECL, CCNR does not feel assured that the best interests of Quebec or of Canada will automatically be fully served by CNL, as it is not accountable to the electorate. When the job involves demolishing, segmenting, fragmenting, packaging and transporting dangerous radioactive materials, involving persistent radiological toxins, we feel that a thorough public review by means of a comprehensive impact assessment, coupled with the involvement and oversight of accountable federal and provincial public agencies is required to ensure that the radioactive inventory is verified and documented, that no corners are cut and no presumptions go unchallenged. The International Atomic Energy Agency strongly advises that before any reactor decommissioning work is done, there has to be a very precise and accurate characterisation of the radioactive inventory –
all radionuclides accounted for, all becquerel counts recorded, and all relevant physical/chemical/biological properties carefully noted. We have seen no such documentation, but we believe it is essential to make such documentation publicly available before final decommissioning work begins, and to preserve such records for future generations so that they can inform themselves about the radioactive legacy we are leaving them. A panel review could help to ensure that we do not bequeath a radioactive legacy that is devoid of useful information, a perfect recipe for amnesia.
(8) The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) is federally incorporated as a not-for-profit organization, whose official name in French is le Regroupement pour la surveillance du nucléaire (RSN). CCNR/RSN is a member of le Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie (ROEÉ). The ROEÈ has also filed comments on this dossier, linked below, with 10 recommendations. We endorse the ROEÉ submission and all of its recommendations. The ROEÉ submission is en français www.ccnr.org/IAAC_ROEE_G1_2026.pdf and here is a link to an English translation
www.ccnr.org/IAAC_ROEE_G1_e_2026.pdf .
Yours very truly,
Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., President,
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
1 This Month
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com/
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
12 February – Webinar The Big Push: New Nuclear Projects in Canada
Thursday, February 12, 7 pm Eastern | 2nd of 4 sessions in the 2026 Nuclear Waste Online webinar series.
Join a webinar on the push for new nuclear generation in Canada. Go to Northwatch.org to register or use the registration link https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZfWOf1GITqSRIZX8CB-A9w
-
Archives
- February 2026 (76)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (258)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
- March 2025 (319)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 