WANTED: Volunteers to host nuclear waste, forever
By Sarah Mcfarlane, Timothy Gardner and Susanna Twidale, February 6, 2026, https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/land-use-biodiversity/wanted-volunteers-host-nuclear-waste-forever-2026-02-06/
- U.S. wants campuses to host nuclear facilities and data centers
- Asks states to volunteer, permanent waste disposal a must-have
- No deep geological waste facility yet in operation worldwide
LONDON/WASHINGTON, Feb 6 (Reuters) – The Trump administration’s plan to unleash a wave of small futuristic nuclear reactors to power the AI era is falling back on an age-old strategy to dispose of the highly toxic waste: bury it at the bottom of a very deep hole.
But there’s a problem. There is no very deep hole, and the stockpile of some 100,000 tons of radioactive waste being stored temporarily at nuclear plants and other sites across the United States keeps getting bigger.
To resolve this quandary, the U.S. administration is now dangling a radioactive carrot.
States are being asked to volunteer to host a permanent geological repository for spent fuel as part of a campus of facilities including new nuclear reactors, waste reprocessing, uranium enrichment and data centers, according to a proposal published by the Department of Energy (DOE) last week.
Its request for information (RFI) marks a big shift in policy. The plan to boost nuclear energy is now combined with a requirement to find a permanent home for waste and puts decisions in the hands of local communities – decisions worth tens of billions of dollars in investment and thousands of jobs, according to a spokesperson for the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy.
“By combining this all together in a package, it’s a matter of big carrots being placed alongside a waste facility which is less desirable,” said Lake Barrett, a former official at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the DOE. States including Utah and Tennessee have already expressed interest in nuclear energy investments, he said.
The nuclear office said the request had generated interest but did not comment on individual states, which have 60 days to respond. Officials in Utah and Tennessee did not respond to requests for comment.
President Donald Trump wants to quadruple U.S. nuclear power capacity, opens new tab to 400 gigawatts by 2050 as electricity demand surges for the first time in decades thanks to the boom in data centers driving artificial intelligence and the electrification of transport.
In 2025, the DOE picked 11 new advanced nuclear test reactor designs for fast-track licensing and aims to have three pilots built by July 4 this year.
However, public acceptance of nuclear energy hinges partly on the promise of burying nuclear waste deep underground, according to studies by the U.S. and British governments as well as the European Commission.
“A complete nuclear strategy must include safe, durable pathways for final disposition, and that remains a required element of the RFI,” the Office of Nuclear Energy spokesperson said.
Previous efforts to find a solution have run into strong local opposition.
The DOE started looking for a permanent waste facility in 1983 and settled on Nevada’s Yucca Mountain in 1987. But former President Barack Obama halted funding in 2010 due to opposition from Nevada lawmakers worried about safety and the effect on casinos and hotels – with nearly $15 billion already spent.
NEW REACTOR DESIGNS
To accelerate the deployment of nuclear power, countries including the United States, Britain, Canada, China and Sweden are championing so-called small modular reactors (SMRs).
The appeal of SMRs lies in the idea they can be mostly prefabricated in factories, making them faster and cheaper to assemble than the larger reactors already in use.
But none of the new SMR designs are expected to solve the waste problem. Experts say designers are not compelled to consider waste at inception, beyond a plan for how it will be managed.
“This rush to create new designs without thinking about the full system bodes really poorly for effective regulatory oversight and having a well-run, safe, and reliable waste management program over the long term,” said Seth Tuler, associate professor at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and previously on the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.
Most of the new SMRs are expected to produce similar volumes of waste, or even more, per unit of electricity than today’s large reactors, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
SMRs can also be sited in areas lacking the infrastructure needed for larger plants, raising the prospect of many more nuclear sites which could become interim waste dumps too. And in the United States, “interim” can mean more than century after a reactor closes, according to the U.S. nuclear power regulator.
Reuters contacted the nine companies behind the 11 SMR designs backed by the DOE’s fast-track programme. Some said nuclear waste was an issue for the operators of the reactors, and the government.
Others said they hoped technological advances in the coming decades would improve prospects for reprocessing fuel, although they agreed a permanent repository was still needed.
The prospect of a new wave of nuclear reactors, has rekindled interest in reprocessing spent fuel whereby uranium and plutonium are separated out and, in some instances, reused.
“Modern technologies, particularly advanced recycling and reprocessing, can dramatically shrink the volume of nuclear material requiring disposal,” the spokesperson for the nuclear energy office said. “At the same time, reprocessing does not eliminate the requirement for permanent disposal.”
Nuclear security experts, however, questioned whether reprocessing would be included in any of the new campuses.
“Every time it’s been attempted, it’s failed, it creates security and proliferation risks, the costs are enormous, and it complicates waste management,” said former DOE official Ross Matzkin-Bridger. He said the few countries reprocessing fuel were recycling between zero to 2%, far below the 90% promised.
A PERMANENT PROBLEM
For now, most waste in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Britain is stored on site indefinitely, first in spent fuel pools to cool and then in concrete and steel casks. France sends spent fuel to La Hague in Normandy for reprocessing.
The more than 90 nuclear reactors operating in the United States – the world’s biggest nuclear power producer ahead of China and France – add about 2,000 tons of waste a year to existing stockpiles, according to the DOE.
Office of Nuclear Energy data shows that as of the end of 2024, U.S. taxpayers have paid utility companies $11.1 billion to compensate them for storing spent fuel, some of which can remain harmful to humans for hundreds of thousands of years.
Scotland’s Dounreay site, where the last reactor closed in 1994, has repeatedly extended its decommissioning period and budget due to complications handling waste, according to the British government, in an early sign of the issues the industry faces as older plants shut down.
Vast vaults are being stocked with low-level radioactive waste in large metal containers as Dounreay, once at the cutting edge of Britain’s nuclear industry, is dismantled.
Ever since the first commercial nuclear plant went online 70 years ago in England, the consensus has been that burying the most toxic waste deep underground is the safest option but there is still no repository in operation anywhere in the world.
Getting a repository up and running is a slow process. Governments need community buy-in and geological studies are required to determine the flow of groundwater and the stability of the rock up to 1,000 metres (1,090 yards) underground.
Finland has made the most progress and is close to opening the world’s first permanent nuclear repository in Olkiluoto – having also kicked off the process way back in 1983.
Posiva, the Finnish company behind the project, began transferring test canisters more than four hundred meters below ground in 2024. It told Reuters its goal is to start commercial operations this year, though it is waiting for the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority to approve the operating licence, which will be followed by technical checks.
Once up and running, separate underground tunnels will be filled with canisters made of copper and iron housing the waste, and then sealed forever.
Sweden began constructing its permanent repository in January 2025, aiming to have it running by the late 2030s. Canada has agreed a site in Ontario which it aims to be operational by the late 2040s. Switzerland and France have chosen sites too and hope to have their repositories open from about 2050. Britain is shooting for the late 2050s, but has yet to settle on a location.
Pending the construction of a permanent repository somewhere in the country, high-level waste from nuclear sites such as Dounreay is sent for storage at Sellafield in England.
Some decommissioned nuclear sites, including Dounreay, are also being promoted as locations for data centers, as they’re hooked up to the power grid already and won’t need to wait for a connection.
But the clean-up there has a way to go. Irradiated nuclear fuel was flushed into the sea decades ago and a “minor” radioactive fragment was found on a local beach as recently as January.
The last “significant” particle was found in April and fishing is banned within a 2 kilometer (1.25 mile) radius of Dounreay’s outlet pipe because of radioactive particles on the seabed.
Last year, Britain extended the time frame for the Dounreay clean-up from 2033 to the 2070s.
Reporting by Sarah McFarlane and Susanna Twidale in London, Timothy Gardner in Washington; Visual Production by Morgan Coates; Editing by David Clarke
Leading Papers Call for Destroying Iran to Save It
Gregory Shupak, February 10, 2026, https://fair.org/home/leading-papers-call-for-destroying-iran-to-save-it/
The United States has no right to wage war on Iran, or to have a say who governs the country. The opinion pages of the New York Times and Washington Post, however, are offering facile humanitarian arguments for the US to escalate its attacks on Iran. These are based on the nonsensical assumption that the US wants to help brighten Iranians’ futures.
In two editorials addressing the possibility of the US undertaking a bombing and shooting war on Iran, the Washington Post expressed no opposition to such policies and endorsed economic warfare as well.
Crediting Trump with “the wisdom of distinguishing between an authoritarian regime and the people who suffer under its rule,” the first Post editorial (1/2/26) approvingly quoted Trump’s Truth Social promise (1/2/26) to Iranian protesters that the US “will come to their rescue…. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
For the Post, the problem was not that Trump was threatening to bomb a sovereign state, but that “airstrikes are, at best, a temporary solution”:
If the administration wants this time to be different, it will need to oversee a patient, sustained campaign of maximum pressure against the government…. The optimal strategy is to economically squeeze the regime as hard as possible at this moment of maximum vulnerability. More stringent enforcement of existing oil sanctions would go a long way…. Western financial controls are actually working quite well.
Thus, the paper offers advice on how to integrate bombing Iran into a broader effort to overthrow the country’s government in a hybrid war. Central to that project are the sanctions with which the Post is so thoroughly impressed. Such measures have “squeeze[d] the regime” by, for example, decimating “the government’s primary source of revenue, oil exports, limiting the state’s ability to provide for millions of impoverished Iranians through social safety nets” (CNN, 10/19/25).
That the US continues to apply the sanctions, knowing that they have these effects, demonstrates that it has no interest in, as the Post put it, “free[ing]” Iranians “from bondage.”
‘Always more room for sanctions’
The second Washington Post editorial (1/23/26) expressed disappointment that, despite “mass killings” and the “most repressive crackdown in decades,” “Trump has ratcheted back his earlier rhetoric.” It emphasized that “the regime is now mocking Trump for backing down.” The paper offered advice for the president:
Airstrikes alone won’t bring down the regime—or make it behave like a normal country. But Israel and the US have shown in recent years that bombing can cause significant tactical setbacks. And there is always more room for sanctions pressure….
The president cannot maintain effective deterrence by turning the other cheek [in response to Iranians who have taunted him]. How he responds is just as important as how quickly he does it.
The implication is that, to deter Iran’s government from killing Iranians, the US needs to kill Iranians. After all, bombing campaigns come with “mass killings” of their own: The US/Israeli aggression against Iran last June killed more than 1,000 Iranians, most of them civilians.
Meanwhile, those sanctions the paper wants to use to deter the Iranian government from “harm[ing] its own people” do quite a bit of damage in their own right, often causing “low-income citizens’ food consumption” to “deteriorate due to sanctions”—a rather novel approach to harm reduction.
Bombing other countries, depriving them of food—is this what it means to “behave like a normal country”?
‘Too depraved’ for reform
Over its own pro–regime change piece, the New York Times editorial board headline (1/14/26) declared: “Iran’s Murderous Regime Is Irredeemable.”
“The Khamenei regime is too depraved to be reformed,” the editors wrote, spending the majority of the piece building its case to that effect before turning to solutions. For the Times, these start “with a unified expression of solidarity with the protesters,” and quickly move to punitive measures against the Iranian government:
The world can also extend the sanctions it has imposed on Iran. The Trump administration this week announced new tariffs on any countries that do business with Iran, and other democracies should impose their own economic penalties.
For the authors, “deprav[ity]” needs to be resisted by Washington and its partners, who have demonstrated their moral superiority with their presumably depravity-free sanctions. These have, as Germany’s DW (11/23/25) reported, “caused medical shortages that hit [Iran’s] most vulnerable citizens hardest,” preventing the country from being able “to purchase special medicines—like those required by cancer patients.”
The Times also supported US military violence against Iran—if with somewhat more restraint than the Post, asking Trump to “move much more judiciously than he typically does.” The Times wants him to seek “approval from Congress before any military operation,” and make “clear its limitations and goals.” The paper warned Trump not to attack “without adequate preparation and resources”:
Above all, he should avoid the lack of strategic discipline and illegal actions that have defined the Venezuela campaign. He should ask which policies have the best chance of undermining the regime’s violent repression and creating the conditions for a democratic transition.
One glaring problem with suggesting that a US “military operation” should be based on “policies [that] have the best chance of…creating the conditions for a democratic transition” is that very recent precedents show that US wars don’t bring about democracy, and are not intended to do so; instead, such wars bring about social collapse.
Consider, for example, US interventions in Libya and Syria. In both cases, the US backed decidedly nondemocratic forces (Jacobin, 9/2/13; Harper’s, 1/16) and, as one might expect, neither war resulted in democracy. In Libya’s case, the outcome has been slavery and state collapse (In These Times, 8/18/20). In Syria, the new, unelected government is implicated in sectarian mass murder (FAIR.org, 6/2/25).
If DHS killed Pretti, why not bomb Iran?
There are no grounds for believing that the US would chart a different course if it bombs Iran again. But that hasn’t stopped other Times contributors from suggesting that the US should conduct a war in Iran—for the good of Iranians, of course.
Times columnist Bret Stephens (1/27/26) worried about the “risk” posed by “the example of a US president who urged protesters to go in the streets and said help was on the way, only to betray them through inaction.”
Invoking the DHS’s killing of Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti, Stephens urged “thoughtful Americans” to encourage the same administration that killed him to exercise “the military option” in Iran:
But if Pretti’s death is a tragedy, what do we say or do in the face of the murder of thousands of Iranians? Are they, as Stalin might have said, just another statistic?
Stephens is citing people’s outrage against the US government killing a protester as a reason they should support the US government inflicting more violence against Iran. The logical corollary to that would be that if you’re opposed to Iran suppressing anti-government forces, you should therefore be in favor of Tehran launching armed attacks to defend protesters in the US.
Masih Alinejad, a US-government-funded Iranian-American journalist, wrote in the Times (1/27/26) that Trump
encouraged Iranians to intensify their mass protests, writing, “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.” That help never came, and many protesters now feel betrayed. Still, the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group has recently arrived in the Middle East. Mr. Trump has not said what he plans to do now that it is there, but it does give him the option of striking a blow against government repression.
Policy of pain
Both Stephens and Alinejad present their calls for the US to assault Iran in moral terms, suggesting that the US should demonstrate loyalty to Iranian protestors by “help[ing]” them through an armed attack on the country in which they live. Their premise is that the US is interested in enabling the Iranian population to flourish, an assertion contradicted by more than 70 years of Washington’s policy of inflicting pain on Iranians in an effort to dominate them.
That US policy has included overthrowing Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953 (NPR, 2/7/19), propping up the Shah’s brutal dictatorship for the next 26 years (BBC, 6/3/16; AP, 2/6/19), sponsoring Saddam Hussein’s invasion of the country and use of chemical weapons against it (Foreign Policy, 8/26/13), partnering with Israel in a years-long campaign of murdering Iranian scientists (Responsible Statecraft, 12/21/20), and currently maintaining—along with its allies—a sanctions regime that is associated with a substantial drop in Iranian life expectancy (Al Jazeera, 1/13/26).
If Stephens or Alinejad had evidence that the US is so radically re-orienting its conduct in the international arena, one imagines that they would want to share with their readers the proof that the Trump administration’s magnanimity is so profound that it overrides the UN Charter, and justifies America carrying out a war to “help” a country it has terrorized for decades.
Global economy must move past GDP to avoid planetary disaster, warns UN chief
António Guterres says world’s accounting systems should place true value on the environment
Matthew Taylor, Guardian.9 Feb 26
The global economy must be radically transformed to stop it rewarding pollution and waste, UN secretary general António Guterres has warned.
Speaking to the Guardian after the UN hosted a meeting of leading global economists, Guterres said humanity’s future required the urgent overhaul of the world’s “existing accounting systems” he said were driving the planet to the brink of disaster.
“We must place true value on the environment and go beyond gross domestic product as a measure of human progress and wellbeing. Let us not forget that when we destroy a forest, we are creating GDP. When we overfish, we are creating GDP.”
For decades, politicians and policymakers have prioritised growth – as measured by GDP – as the overarching economic goal.
But critics argue that endless, indiscriminate growth on a planet with finite resources is driving not only the climate and nature crisis but increasing inequality.
Guterres said: “Moving beyond gross domestic product is about measuring the things that really matter to people and their communities. GDP tells us the cost of everything, and the value of nothing. Our world is not a gigantic corporation. Financial decisions should be based on more than a snapshot of profit and loss.”
In January, the UN held a conference in Geneva titled Beyond GDP attended by senior economists from around the world – including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, leading Indian economist Kaushik Basu and equity expert Nora Lustig.
The trio are part of a group set up by Guterres that has been tasked with devising a new dashboard of measures of economic success that takes “human wellbeing, sustainability and equity” into account.
A report published by the group late last year argued that, as the world wrestled with repeated global shocks over the past two decades, the need for an economic transformation had become increasingly urgent – from the financial crash of 2008 to the Covid-19 pandemic.
It said those events were exacerbated by the “triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution” and, in addition, warned that rapid technological change was upending labour markets and exacerbating growing inequality.
Prof Basu, who co-chairs the UN group alongside Lustig, said: “Nations are so locked into the game of beating other nations in terms of the GDP metric, that the wellbeing of ordinary citizens and sustainability are getting ignored.
“If all the new income accrues to a few individuals, and the GDP grows, all citizens are expected to cheer. This is feeding hyper-nationalism, inequality and polarisation.”
Prof Lustig said GDP had never been “designed to measure human progress, yet it remains the dominant benchmark of success.”
“Economic growth can coexist with poverty, exclusion, violence, and serious violations of human rights – outcomes that remain largely invisible in conventional economic accounts … The group’s aim is not to replace GDP but to complement it, helping governments and the public assess whether development is truly improving human wellbeing, advancing equity, and safeguarding sustainability now and for future generations.”
The UN initiative follows a report published last week that said current economic models are fundamentally flawed because they failed to account of the impact of climate shocks such as extreme weather disasters and tipping points, and could crash the global economy……………………………………………………… https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/09/global-economy-transformed-humanity-future-un-chief-antonio-guterres
Bad Beginnings: The End of New START
Putin was also of the opinion that “a complete renunciation of New START’s legacy would, from many points, be a grave and short-sighted mistake”, having “adverse implications for the objectives of the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty].
11 February 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, AIM,
Future of How awful could it get? The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expired on February 5, terminating an era of arms control and imposed limits on lunatically contrived nuclear weapons programs of the United States and Russia. The New START Treaty entered into force on February 5, 2011 and initially imposed a timeline of seven years for the parties to meet the central limits on strategic offensive arms. Those limits would then be maintained for the duration of the Treaty.
Till its expiry, the countries maintained limits on the following nuclear arms and systems: 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and deployed heavy bombers capable of using nuclear armaments; 1,550 nuclear warheads on all three deployed platforms; and 800 deployed and non-deployed nuclear capable systems (ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and nuclear capable heavy bombers).
Such limits were hardly laudatory, or even exceptional. The cap of 1,550 nuclear warheads is the sort of thing that would only impress the limited crazed circle that passes for arms negotiators in this field, and the various thanocrats who populate such institutes as RAND. Such a show is merely intended for both Moscow and Washington to tell other countries with, or without nuclear weapons, that they could impose restraints on their own gluttonous conduct. Even then, New START, as with all such instruments dealing with limiting nuclear weapons, came with the intended, gaping lacunae. It failed to cover, for instance, tactical nuclear weapons, nor limit the deployment of new strategic weapon systems.
The treaty also fell into neglect with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Suspended on-site inspections never resumed after 2022. As François Diaz-Maurin of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists points out, “Russia has not shared data on its deployed strategic nuclear forces since September 2022, it suspended its treaty participation altogether in February 2023, and the United States has not published any aggregate numbers since May 2023.” New START came to increasingly look like a gentleman’s agreement being sniffed at by truculent adolescents.
In September last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin dangled the prospect of extending the treaty’s core limits for a year. At a September 22, 2025 Russian Security Council Meeting, he promised that Moscow was “prepared to continue observing the … central quantitative restrictions” stipulated in New START for twelve months provided the US acted “in similar spirit.” Following the year’s extension, “a careful assessment of the situation [and] a definite decision on whether to uphold these voluntary self-limitations” would be made. Putin was also of the opinion that “a complete renunciation of New START’s legacy would, from many points, be a grave and short-sighted mistake”, having “adverse implications for the objectives of the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty].
When word of this reached the White House, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt expressed the view that the proposal sounded “pretty good.” Two weeks later, President Donald Trump responded to a question posed by a TASS reporter that Putin’s proposal sounded “pretty like a good idea to me.” Little, however, was subsequently done. Indeed, Trump has cut the number of diplomats tasked with nuclear matters in the State Department and made public statements last October that nuclear testing might be resumed. He has also complicated arms control matters by insisting that China be added to the limitation talks, something Beijing has shown little interest in doing. In January this year, the president seemed unfussed that the international document was about to pass into the archives of diplomatic oblivion. “If it expires, it expires. We’ll do a better agreement.”
The US political establishment had been struck by a distinct lack of interest, even lethargy, on the subject. New START seemed to be yet another irritating fetter on an administration more enthused by ignoring international obligations than following them. Only a clutch of Democrats seemed to show concern in reflecting about what would follow the treaty’s expiration in House speeches given on January 14. This month, Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Ed Markey, co-chair of the Senate’s Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, held a press conference urging the Trump administration to renew the vows of fidelity to arms control agreements. “Let’s be honest. America needs another nuclear weapon about as much as Donald Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.”………………………………………………………..
The two powers most responsible for keeping nuclear weapons unforgivably attractive to those who would acquire them show promise of blotting their copybook further. There is a serious sentiment in Washington that the nuclear stockpile will and should grow. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, in a fit of gloominess, moved its metaphorical Doomsday Clock just that bit closer to “midnight,” the point where biblical calamity will be assured. It now stands at 85 seconds to midnight. Not long to go now. https://theaimn.net/bad-beginnings-the-end-of-new-start/
French nuclear modulation to rise 11% to 35 TWh – Kpler
France’s nuclear power modulation – ramping reactors up and down to meet
demand and optimise fuel usage – will likely increase by 11% to 35 TWh this
year, up from 31.5 TWh in 2025, Kpler power analyst Alessandro Armenia said
on Thursday.
Montel 5th Feb 2026, https://montelnews.com/news/0ce52b4f-c919-4c3a-abdf-1ee5a3b67f5f/french-nuclear-modulation-to-rise-11-to-35-twh-kpler
Iran offers to dilute enriched uranium in exchange for full sanctions relief
By Euronews, 09/02/2026
Iran says it could dilute its 60% uranium stockpile if “all sanctions” end, amid renewed Oman talks and uncertainty over missing nuclear material.
Tehran is prepared to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium if sanctions against Iran are lifted, the head of its atomic energy agency said on Monday following indirect talks with Washington.
Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, said the possibility of diluting 60% enriched uranium “depends on whether all sanctions would be lifted in return”, according to the official IRNA news agency.
The statement did not specify whether Eslami was referring to all international sanctions on Iran or only those imposed by the United States.
The offer comes as the whereabouts of more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium Iran possessed before last year’s conflict with Israel and the US remains unknown……………………………………………………………………………………………….
Indirect talks to resume after Oman meeting
Eslami’s statement followed indirect talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff in Oman last Friday, the first negotiations since the June conflict.
Both sides agreed to continue negotiations. However, Araghchi warned that “the mistrust that has developed is a serious challenge”.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for Iran to accept a total ban on uranium enrichment, a condition unacceptable to Tehran and far less favourable than the 2015 agreement.
Iran maintains it has a right to a civilian nuclear programme under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which 191 countries are signatories.
Western countries, led by the US, suspect the Islamic Republic is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, a claim Iran has consistently denied. https://www.euronews.com/2026/02/09/iran-offers-to-dilute-enriched-uranium-in-exchange-for-full-sanctions-relief
Nuclear weapons workers vote for strike action
David Gilyeat, South of England, BBC 10th Feb 2026
Workers that build and maintain the UK’s nuclear weapons have voted to strike over a planned restructuring of the organisation.
Prospect said the Atomic Weapons Establishment’s (AWE) staff were being “pushed to the brink by the repeated errors” of its leadership, affecting sites including Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire.
The union said in November 500 jobs were at risk, with another 750 posts recruited for. Last month it said potential redundancies had increased to 800.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it was “disappointed” by the result but was looking for a “constructive resolution”.
Prospect said 95% of staff who voted were in favour of action short of a strike, with 81% in favour of strike action.
The union has warned action could cost AWE millions of pounds at a time when the government has said it will invest £15bn in a new nuclear programme.
“This crucial investment risks being derailed if this restructure continues to cause internal chaos,” Prospect said.
But it said a “failed reorganisation could have much greater consequences for the future of the organisation”.
Prospect also accused AWE of “drip-feeding” information over weeks so full consultation with its scientists and engineers was “impossible”.
The union said the nature and timing of the industrial action would be “announced in due course”……………………….
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c743l4rr4g1o
Sizewell C opponents to appeal High Court decision.
Mariam Issimdar, BBC. Suffolk, 8 Feb 26
Opponents of Sizewell C nuclear power station have submitted an appeal against the High Court’s decision to refuse an application for a judicial review of the plant’s flood defences.
Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) launched an action in June on the basis the power station could add extra coastal defences which were not outlined in the original planning application, and they would “disrupt nearby protected areas of wildlife”.
The group appealed for the judicial review, but it was refused by a High Court judge in December.
At the time, Sizewell C said it was pleased the legal claims had been dismissed.
In a statement on Monday, the pressure group said: “TASC is determined to use every avenue open to us to ensure public scrutiny and environmental assessment of the two additional huge sea defences that Sizewell C have committed to install in an extreme sea level rise scenario.”
Development consent for the new plant near Leiston was granted in July 2022 before the government committed £14.2bn towards it last June.
In the approved plans, Sizewell C said the power station would be built on a platform 7m above the current sea level and protected by a “sea defence structure which will be more than 14m above mean sea level”.
Chris Wilson, of TASC, said: “It is a scandal if it is deemed legal that a developer, in this case Sizewell C, is allowed to pick and choose which parts of a project it wants to include in its development consent order application.”
He added that the developer, EDF Energy, knew “as far back as 2015 that two additional huge sea defences would be needed to keep the site and its 3,900 tonnes of spent fuel safe from flooding in an extreme sea level rise scenario, yet chose not to include them in their 2020 planning application – a classic example of ‘salami-slicing’.”
Sizewell C said its “sea defence will be adaptable and could be raised in future if sea level rise turns out to be greater than current predictions”.
TASC claimed the power station wanted to build two more flood barriers, 9m and 10m high, further inland.
Sizewell C previously declined to comment on the extra details of how the flood defences could be changed.
TASC argued there should be a consultation on the defences, and it approached Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, asking him to revoke or change the development consent order.
That was not accepted, so the group opted for a judicial review and argued that Miliband had breached his obligations and duties…………………. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98q5z1jez5o
£700m plan with ‘fish disco’ could save 90% of marine life, says Hinkley Point C study
Scientists find underwater acoustic project to stop fish being sucked into cooling systems could save 44 tonnes a year
Jillian Ambrose , Guardian, 10 Feb 26
Scientists have found that plans that include a “fish disco” to deter migratory marine life from the nearby Hinkley Point C nuclear reactor could help save 90% of fish from the power plant’s water intake pipes – but the measures are set to cost its developer £700m.
EDF Energy, which is building the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset, said research it commissioned from scientists at Swansea University had found that using an acoustic deterrent system helped to ward off the “vast majority” of fish it tagged for the experiment.
The part of the costly system that is informally referred to as a “fish disco”, is designed to use more than 300 underwater speakers to emit sound pulses to repel fish from the water intake pipes, which will suck in water from the River Severn to help cool Hinkley’s reactors.
EDF said it expected to spend about £700m on the full solution, or 1.5% of the total cost of building the £46bn project, which would give Britain’s first new nuclear power plant in a generation “more fish protection than any other power station in the world”.
This should help to save about 44 tonnes of fish a year – equivalent to the annual catch of a small fishing vessel. The company declined to speculate on the total cost per fish saved over the 25-year life of the reactor’s subsidy contract.
EDF has argued against the requirement to fit an acoustic deterrent in the past, instead suggesting that it could construct salt marshes to help protect marine life.
Under EDF’s subsidy contract it will earn a set return for the electricity generated by Hinkley, meaning it will need to absorb the extra cost of the fish disco rather than add it on to household bills.
The full system is expected to include special mouths fitted to the intake pipes to slow the water suction and allow fish to escape from as close as 2 metres away, and a fish recovery system which returns fish sucked into the pipes.
The scientists found that only one of its tagged twaite shad fish came within 30 metres of the test intake pipes when the speakers were turned on, compared with the 14 seen in the same area without the system turned on………………………………………….
The results of the research will be submitted for regulatory consideration and approval by the Marine Management Organisation later this year. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/10/hinkley-point-c-plan-could-save-fish-being-sucked-into-pipes-study-finds
New Mexico Environment Department Takes Necessary Action on Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Hexavalent Chromium Plume.
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, 13 Feb 26
On Tuesday, February 11th, the New Mexico Environment Department took bold actions to hold the Department of Energy (DOE) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) accountable for the release and distribution of hexavalent chromium contamination into the regional drinking water aquifer and onto Pueblo de San Ildefonso lands. The Environment Department released two administrative compliance orders, both with civil penalties, totaling over $15,775,000.00.
This Update focuses on the first Environment Department administrative compliance order, No. 26-01, which revolves around the Environment Department’s consideration of LANL’s application for a discharge permit for the extraction, treatment of the contaminated waters and injection of those waters back into the regional drinking water aquifer and the requirements to take action to protect the regional drinking water supply. https://cloud.env.nm.gov/resources/_translator.php/MjMzYzM5YTExNTJlYjUwNTA0MTQ3ZGQzNl8yMTc2NzU~.pdf
In 2015, LANL submitted an application to the Environment Department for a groundwater discharge permit to investigate the protective interim measures that could be taken to protect the regional drinking water aquifer and to characterize the hexavalent chromium plume to determine the best course of action to clean up the contamination and to stop future contamination. After a public hearing, the Environment Department issued the groundwater discharge permit, DP-1835, to LANL.
The 44-page administrative order details the steps that were taken, the obstacles that were placed in the way, and the back and forth between the parties to address the plumes.
Sixth Trump meeting with his de facto boss…good day to fire him.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL , 12 Feb , 26
President Trump’s de jure, constitutional boss is We the People. 77 302,580 of us, giving Trump 58% of the Electoral College, hired him November 5, 2024. Trump serves and reports to Us.
But during the past 13 months he’s dismissed his true boss to take orders from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Support the Israeli genocide obliterating Palestinians in Gaza with billions in weapons…check. Conspire with Netanyahu to sucker punch Iran with a sneak attack to decapitate their regime last June…check. Support Israeli provocateurs to infiltrate domestic Iranian protests to overthrow the Iranian regime last December…check.
Netanyahu is furious both his murderous Iranian regime change ventures failed. So he demanded, and of course got, his sixth sit down with Trump scheduled for today. Topic Number One? Iran, and not to make peace with Iran, likely the next and most massive attack that will finally achieve Netanyahu’s cherished dream of a decapitated, degraded Israeli rival for Middle East supremacy.
At Netanyahu’s behest Trump has moved a massive military armada into the region. Pulling back is near impossible when Trump’s boss demands he pull the trigger on senseless war that could blow up the Middle East, indeed possibly the world.
It would take a psychiatrist, maybe a team of psychiatrists, to unravel why Trump allows Netanyahu to be his real boss. It may simply be the near quarter of a billion dollars Netanyahu’s Israel Lobby has provided Trump’s campaign coffers since 2020.
Regardless, someone in the Trump orbit needs to convince Trump who his real boss is. We the People do not want our treasure supporting genocide in Gaza. Nor do we want it used to launch massive war on Iran to please Trump’s de facto boss Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump needs to usher Netanyahu into the Oval Office today and immediately announce…’You’re fired.’
Is the UK keeping up with the nuclear revival?
Steve Thomas: Since the Starmer government came to power in 2024, it has
made a series of announcements that have placed the UK at the forefront of
the so-called Nuclear Renaissance. The government talks about a “Golden Age
of Nuclear Power” in the country. However, a closer look shows that these
announcements primarily concern what the government hopes to do and what it
hopes to achieve, in the absence of new projects in the pipeline.
Currently, the burden of submitting proposals falls on the private sector.
Regarding current nuclear projects, there is one under construction,
Hinkley Point C; another, Sizewell C, for which an investment decision has
been made and construction could begin in two to three years; and a project
for three Rolls-Royce small modular reactors (SMRs) for the Wylfa site,
where an investment decision is hoped for 2029.
The Hinkley Point C project
for two French European Pressurized Reactors (EPRs, 3.2 GW) is seven years
behind schedule, is 90% over budget, and requires at least six years to
complete. The Sizewell C project is expected to be built along the lines of
the Hinkley design and was supposed to be built approximately two years
after Hinkley, so that the workforce could seamlessly transfer from Hinkley
to Sizewell.
This means it is at least nine years behind schedule. Even if
the government’s estimated completion date is met, Sizewell will not begin
generating power until 2039. The estimated cost of this plant, £40.5
billion (2024 funding), is 70% higher than the actual estimated cost of the
Hinkley Point project at the time of the Final Investment Decision.
This ridicules claims that Sizewell would be cheaper than Hinkley due to the
“expertise” built at Hinkley Point. If it goes ahead, the Wylfa project
will not begin generating power until 2035. If there are no further delays
to these projects, it will be 2040 before the UK’s nuclear capacity returns
to 2015 levels, or approximately 9 GW. In 2022, Boris Johnson’s government
set a target of “up to 24 GW” of new nuclear capacity, in addition to the
Hinkley project, to be achieved by 2050. The “up to” specification left
room for vagueness, and in fact the Starmer government has clearly not
adopted this target.
So why is it so difficult and takes so long to build
nuclear capacity? And has the UK not performed well in this regard?
Research commissioned by the UK government found that, on average,
globally, the construction of a nuclear power plant, from the investment
decision to first start-up, takes 13-17 years. Add to this the time
required to reach the final investment decision. This includes: choosing
the supplier and technology; project assessment by the national safety
regulator; identifying and verifying the suitability of the chosen site;
and defining a financial model to provide the capital, own the plant, and
purchase the energy.
This process is unlikely to take less than five years;
in fact, it could take longer. Therefore, the construction time for a
nuclear project is likely at least 20 years.
Rienergie 12th Feb 2026, https://rienergia.staffettaonline.com/articolo/35901/UK+sta+al+passo+con++la+rinascita+nucleare++++/Steve
US campaign puts case for disposal, not reprocessing, of used nuclear fuel
This article, from the the nuclear lobby’s propaganda voice – World Nuclear News – goes on later to push for nuclear reprocessing, anyway.
Reprocessing or not -it’s really becoming clear that new nuclear, and patched-up old nuclear reactors are not clean, safe, or economically viable.
WNN, 12 February 2026
The Nuclear Scaling Initiative’s Scale What Works campaign says that direct disposal of used nuclear fuel in the US is the “safest, most secure and least expensive pathway for the country” as nuclear energy capacity is expanded.
clear, straightforward direct disposal policies’ (Image: Posiva)
The initiative – which is a collaboration of the Clean Air Task Force, the EFI Foundation and the Nuclear Threat Initiative – aims to “build a new nuclear energy ecosystem that can quickly and economically scale to 50+ gigawatts of safe and secure nuclear energy globally per year by the 2030s”.
The Nuclear Scaling Initiative (NSI) Executive Director Steve Comello said: “Making smart fuel management choices today, that acknowledge that reprocessing technologies today are not economically viable and pose security and waste management risks, can drive grid reliability, innovation, and economic and national security for the United States and beyond.”
NSI, whose global advisory board is chaired by former US Secretary of State John Kerry, says that all forms of energy production produces waste, and says that in nuclear’s case, directly storing and “eventually disposing of intact spent fuel” underground “is a safe, straightforward process that uses existing expertise and infrastructure”.
Countries should learn from the reprocessing experience in the UK, Japan and France, NSI says, adding that its view is that reprocessing used fuel is “costly, complex and time-intensive, increasing energy prices for consumers and diverting resources from readily deployable technologies”.
Former Deputy Secretary of Defense and Under Secretary of Energy John Deutch said: “Reprocessing is not a reasonable option: it threatens security, is not cost-effective and will slow our ability to scale nuclear energy.”
Reprocessing of used fuel from commercial reactors has been prohibited in the USA since 1977, with all used fuel being treated as high-level waste………………………………………………………. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/us-campaign-puts-case-for-disposal-not-reprocessing-of-used-fuel
‘Green laws hold up nuclear plans — but we can’t say where’
Despite calling for a reduction in planning protections for the landscapes,
the energy department admits it can’t identify any where regulations are
a problem.
The energy department, run by Ed Miliband, has admitted that it
cannot name a single national park where regulations are holding up nuclear
projects, despite a review urging that protections for the landscapes be
reduced.
The recommendation also relied on a blogpost written by a member
of the reviewing panel, it has emerged.
Weakening or scrapping the
protected landscapes duty, which means that councils must further the
conservation aims of parks when making planning decisions, was one of the
calls of the government’s nuclear regulatory task force last year. Sir
Keir Starmer said he “fully accepted” the suggested reforms. However, a
Freedom of Information request has shown that the government holds “no
due diligence or impact assessment” about changing the protected
landscapes duty.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero conceded
that it had no list of specific national parks or national landscapes
(formerly AONBs) where a conflict exists between the duty and nuclear
development. The department also said one of the pieces of evidence
underpinning the recommendation was a blogpost written by a lawyer. That
lawyer, Mustafa Latif-Aramesh, also sits on the task force.
In an email to
John Fingleton, the economist who led the review, Latif-Aramesh appeared
unclear what the precise financial cost of the rules was to nuclear
companies. “It’s costing developers millions if not tens of
millions,” he wrote just weeks before the final report was published.
Rose O’Neill, the chief executive of the Campaign for National Parks, a
charity, said:
“This lays bare the fact that the prime minister is
considering scrapping national parks law on a recommendation that’s built
on nothing but hot air. The real shock is that the recommendation is
largely based on a single blog article written by one taskforce member.”
Barry Gardiner, a Labour MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group
for national parks and national landscapes, said: “Any suggestion that
the government might dilute its duty to protect these landscapes is not
just alarming, it represents a betrayal of Labour’s legacy in
safeguarding our countryside for the public good.”
Chris Hinchcliff, the
Labour MP who only recently had the whip restored after his rebellions on
welfare reform, said: “Our biodiversity is at breaking point. This is the
time for a rescue plan, not more backwards steps that are harmful to
nature, deeply unpopular, bad for our long-term future and will ultimately
put our national security at risk.”
Times 10th Feb 2026, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/ed-miliband-national-parks-nuclear-energy-2bcznpkzd
The complex, long-form writers – but is anybody listening?
11 February 2026 Noel Wauchope, https://theaimn.net/the-complex-long-form-writers-but-is-anybody-listening/
I sympathise with readers who have a short attention span. I myself am one of those. And nowadays, well – that’s pretty much everybody.
And yet, people keep writing long, and very long, articles. Are they wasting their time? Who actually reads these articles?
I used to think that long articles were indeed a waste of time. And in a certain sense, I was right. I came from the angle of an antinuclear activist, and for a long time, the “nuclear debate” was run by highly – informed people, who made sure to use the absolutely correct technical language – no weak slips into ordinary talk. The anti-nuclear experts generally showed their opponents that they were right up there with the jargon that only experts understood. So the ordinary peasant, the general public, including many well-educated people, “dazzled by science” couldn’t really understand the long arguments. The result was that most people were intimidated, felt they could not understand it all. which was exactly the situation that the nuclear lobby wanted.
Then along came Dr Helen Caldicott, and mucked it all up. She understood all the technical stuff, and could write about that. But she also used ordinary, understandable language. And worse – heaven forfend – she sometimes was emotional. God, she even described some nuclear propagandists as “wicked”. Personally, I thought that the term was accurate. Anyway, Dr Caldicott copped a lot of flak, including even from the anti-nuclear lobby, with their obsession about being “respectable”. How dare she be so “hysterical”. But then she couldn’t help it, having the disability of being female.
But, Dr Caldicott, with her many books, public speaking, meeting world leaders, even influencing Ronald Reagan, got her message through to people, and the “debate, has never been the same since.
So, I rejoiced at this development, which did help journalists to loosen up, and cover nuclear issues in a more readable and human way. And in shorter articles.
But now the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of being short and easily digestible, especially with the communications monster of social media. It is a sad thing that probably only old people have the time and the inclination to read long articles.
And people are missing out, because often the full story on a subject is really covered only in long articles. I have a collection of these, on a variety of topics, and I had planned to reference a number of them here. Some are very densely written, full of facts, dates, events – and therefore really informative – but still a bit of hard work to read. And some show how very complex a situation can be – how there are two sides, and maybe more than two, to a story.
So, here are examples of very informative ones:
Planet Plastic: How Big Oil and Big Soda kept a global environmental calamity a secret for decades, by Tim Dickinson.
US military action in Iran risks igniting a regional and global nuclear cascade, by Farah N. Jan.
Cumulative effects of radioactivity from Fukushima on the abundance and biodiversity of birds, by Timothy A Mousseau
Securing the nuclear nation, by Kate Brown
Very interesting are the articles which cover something in depth, showing contradictory sides, and how very complex a subject can be:
Some examples-
Betrayed: How Liberals Supported Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and Turned Against the Progressive Shah, by SL Kanthan,
The Long History Of Zionist Proposals To Ethnically Cleanse The Gaza Strip, by Mouin Rabbani.
And these can often be personal articles, about human conditions, character and integrity, leaving politics aside:
The heroes who saved the world from Chernobyl Two, by By Serhii Plokhy – also at The heroes who saved the world from Chernobyl Two.
Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule, by Ronan Farrow. Also at Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule, nuclear-news.
I hope that some people are reading long articles. Well, they must be, because some excellent movie documentaries and TV series often come up, and are derived from the written word. And perhaps many people are thus getting their longform stories in a different form. And perhaps some longform articles have a profound effect, even if it’s only on a relatively few readers.
1 This Month
19 February – VIRTUAL EVENT-Decision Time: AI and Our Nuclear Arsenal
12:45 p.m. Central / 1:45 p.m. Eastern
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