Christina Macpherson

Why the clean energy transition needs information integrity

by Juan Pablo Medina Bickel, Dido Gompertz, Sebastian Kiecker, 25 Aug 2026,
https://www.e3g.org/news/why-the-clean-energy-transition-needs-information-integrity/

The energy transition is accelerating, with renewable energy generation continuing to break records. Yet this is taking place in an increasingly contested information environment – one in which information manipulation can shape public perceptions, political discourses and ultimately the conditions for climate action.

This matters because climate and energy policy are politically sensitive. They are particularly vulnerable to attempts to influence public opinion, as it runs counter to the interests of political and economic incumbents benefiting from the fossil fuel economy. Rapid advances in generative AI and increasingly sophisticated digital tools are also lowering the cost and increasing the scale and speed at which misleading content can be produced and distributed.

Climate disinformation deliberately seeks to obstruct or delay climate action. At a time when the cost of living dominates headlines and public concerns, climate disinformation spreads misleading narratives or falsehoods about the affordability and reliability of renewable energy, from technical claims about inefficient infrastructure design and deployment to macroeconomic arguments about excessive state support and related fiscal burdens. The influence of these claims often relies on emotional manipulation that aligns with personal beliefs. As a common tactic, disinformation seeks to erode trust in scientific climate consensus to discredit climate policy itself.

Information integrity as a key solution

Beyond countering individual pieces of mis-or dis-information we need an information environment where civil society businesses and policymakers can access, understand and trust the information they need to make decisions about the energy transition. Information integrity enables access to reliable information about climate change and action. It also aims to protect scientific consensus by strengthening communication strategies and information channels that expose and counter information manipulation.
Despite the complex challenges that climate-related information integrity faces in today’s global political environment, the agenda is increasingly moving from the margins to the mainstream.

Turning global discussion into actions

At the international level, Brazil, the United Nations and UNESCO launched the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change at the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 2024. The initiative aims to strengthen research and action addressing climate disinformation and to support more reliable information environments.

At COP30 in Belem, the Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change was launched, establishing shared commitments to address climate disinformation and promote accurate, evidence-based information. The UNFCCC has subsequently described information integrity as central to effective climate action, highlighting the importance of reliable, science-based nformation for public trust, civic engagement and informed decision-making.
This is an important shift. Alongside its impact on communications in general, information integrity is increasingly recognised as part of the enabling infrastructure for climate action.

The economics of the transition are changing the information landscape

One of the most powerful ways to strengthen the information environment is also one of the simplest: ensuring public conversation reflects the rapidly changing reality of the energy system. Clean energy is now widely recognised as the most cost-effective power source in most of the world, playing a key role in bolstering national energy security amid volatile oil and gas markets. Despite growing political and economic headwinds against renewables, the strong deployment of renewable energy provides factual arguments to counter affordability and energy-security disinformation campaigns.

This does not mean that every renewable project is cheap, that deployment is frictionless, or that legitimate concerns about grids, permitting, supply chains and financing can be dismissed. In fact, acknowledging these challenges is essential to maintaining trust. But it does mean that political discussions about the transition need to keep pace with the underlying economics

Businesses are already responding to this changing landscape, including US investors. In a recent global business leader poll, 91% of executives say renewables-powered electrification would improve energy security, while 79% say geopolitical instability has made their own business shift to electrification more urgent.

Civil society at the heart of the solution

Academics, think-tanks, and NGOs have become key partners to governments, corporates, and multilateral organisations to leverage information integrity for climate change and action.

They play a key role in monitoring and exposing falsehoods through campaigns to counter viral climate disinformation. Their work also seeks to bridge public perception gaps and serve as a preventive measure before people encounter disinformation. These include underscoring the robust scientific consensus on human-induced climate change (97%) and the often-overlooked global public support (89%) for governments to take stronger climate action.

Actions also include strategic communication, which covers the promotion of trusted messengers to bring accessible and comprehensible science to different audiences across platforms. Advertisement campaigns also provide diverse frameworks and methodologies to expose corporate greenwashing, as well as support communities in overcoming climate misinformation and endorse renewable energy projects.

Ensuring the agenda takes hold

Despite the growing momentum behind the global information integrity agenda, it is key to extend its reach beyond experts so that a resilient information environment with accessible and comprehensive scientific information guides public and political discussions. For this, information integrity should be widely recognised as a key component of the critical infrastructure supporting the clean energy transition.

Recent spaces like COP30 and the Climate Summit during the UN General Assembly High-Level Week 2025, and civil society platforms such as London Climate Action Week in 2026, have brought information integrity to the centre of the clean energy transition agenda. More of these are needed.

Advancing the information integrity and climate action agenda depends on coalitions of diplomats, policymakers, industry leaders, and civil society progressing evidence-based discussions. Such collaborations enable mutual learning and strategic partnerships to build a secure and expansive information ecosystem that supports a rapid and ambitious transition to renewables.

September 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

US Army to spend $2 bln on nuclear microreactors for bases

The Army program uses the military’s “deep pockets to provide a hidden subsidy” to nuclear companies that can’t find private-sector customers for their hypothetical and uneconomical reactors

DW Sean Sinico with AP, Reuters, August 27, 2026

The US Army has announced a plan to install what it calls nuclear microreactors at five of its bases across the country. The move would ensure the facilities’ energy independence from the rest of the electric grid.

The United States Army said Wednesday that it will award $2.2 billion (€1.7 billion) in contracts to five companies to build and operate small nuclear reactors on military bases. The program set a goal of deploying the first such reactor by the end of September 2028.

Called microreactors, developers say each of the nuclear plants would be easy to transport and provide up to 20 megawatts of power.

The reactors will adhere to all environmental and safety regulations that apply to commercial reactors, but an Army spokesperson said the reactors will be regulated by the Army rather than the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates commercial reactors.

“The whole idea here is that at the back end of this we want a commercial product,” said Jeff Waksman, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said the awards will speed up the military’s ability “to deliver safe, reliable baseload power directly to our installations.”

“We are building the energy resilience necessary to project combat power globally, without relying on potentially vulnerable external grids,” he added………………………………………………………………………

‘Hidden subsidy’ for expensive reactors, critics say

Critics of microreactors say they will be expensive compared to conventional reactors. Safety advocates point out that nuclear technology carries significant risks that other low-carbon energy sources don’t, such as the danger of accidents or targeted attacks.

The Army program uses the military’s “deep pockets to provide a hidden subsidy” to nuclear companies that can’t find private-sector customers for their hypothetical and uneconomical reactors, Alan J. Kuperman, associate professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and coordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project, told the AP news agency.

The Army’s Waksman said nobody thinks that microreactors will be lower in cost than conventional plants.

“What we are trying to do here with Janus … is to flesh out how can we get those prices down,” he said.

What will happen with the radioactive waste?

Waksman said the microreactors would safely shut down in case of a failure and that the Army wouldn’t add them to installations without being certain they are safe.

He added that the Army is working on a deal with the Energy Department to remove radioactive waste, and there won’t be any long-term storage on these installations.

Last month, five states offered to accept nuclear waste in exchange for federal support in developing nuclear energy facilities.

Trump pushing nuclear power in US

Executive orders signed by US President Donald Trump in May 2025 aimed to accelerate the development of nuclear power. Trump has called for the US to quadruple its nuclear energy production — just two new large reactors have been built from scratch in the United States in nearly 50 years. Those two reactors were completed years late and at least $17 billion over budget, AP reported.

The nation’s 94 nuclear reactors supply about 19% of U.S. electricity, compared to about 60% for fossil fuels and 21% for renewables, according to the US Energy Information Administration. https://www.dw.com/en/us-army-to-spend-2-billion-on-nuclear-microreactors-for-bases/a-78518374

September 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear regulator prepares to abandon a decades-old radiation safety rule

August 27, 2026, Geoff Brumfiel, NPR

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is preparing to change a foundational rule designed to minimize radiation exposure. The update is part of President Trump’s expansive changes to nuclear oversight, as his administration seeks to revive nuclear energy to power data centers for artificial intelligence.

Under a new proposed rule, the agency is eliminating a 50-year-old standard known as “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” (ALARA), which requires the nuclear industry to drive radiation exposure for workers and the public below the stated limits where possible. The new rule also creates a carveout for some workers to get higher exposures to radiation in special circumstances.

For some, the elimination of ALARA is overdue. “Keeping doses as low as reasonably achievable was a fair idea,” said Emily Caffrey, a radiation health physicist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. But in practice, the standard forced companies to take increasingly stringent radiation protection measures. It also created ambiguity, Caffrey said, “because what’s ‘reasonable’ to one person isn’t reasonable to another person.”

But others warn that the change could lay the groundwork for higher radiation exposures.

Since shortly after the dawn of the nuclear age, scientists have been aware of the risks of radiation exposure, and decades of data makes it clear.

“At high radiation doses, nobody’s really arguing: radiation causes cancer,” said David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University. High doses of radiation damage DNA and can cause mutations that lead to cancer. But when the dose is low, it’s much harder to determine risk because about 40% of the U.S. population develops cancer at some point in their lifetime.

“As you go down in dose, what you’re looking for is a very small increase in cancer risk over a very large background,” Brenner said. “That’s what makes it really, really hard.”

For the past 50 years or so, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has dealt with this uncertainty by requiring that the nuclear industry adhere to ALARA and keep radiation exposure as low as possible.

Then last May, President Trump signed an executive order calling for a wholesale overhaul of nuclear regulations. The order specifically called out ALARA, claiming the principle was a “flawed” understanding of radiation risks.

The NRC decided not to change its scientific model of radiation risk, known as the Linear No Threshold model, but it has proposed eliminating ALARA.

Speaking this week on the Federal News Network, NRC Chairman Ho Nieh said that ALARA is no longer working…………………………………………………

“Loosey-goosey” rules

The NRC will instead use the existing current threshold of 5 rem for a worker and 0.1 rem for the public as the upper limit for radiation exposure. A whole body CT scan is about 1 rem, according to the EPA…………………………………

The proposed NRC rule doesn’t change its other regulatory limits, but it does create some carve-outs. In particular, the industry would now be able to ask for a “planned occupational dose limit extension,” which would allow workers to receive 10 rem instead of 5 in any given year, providing their overall exposure doesn’t pass 25 rem in a five-year period………………………………

But Lyman, with the Union of Concerned Scientists, thinks that ALARA should stay. He said while it may be imperfect, its net effect has been to reduce radiation exposure to very low levels. The harms of low-dose radiation exposure are difficult to see, but Lyman says NRC’s own models suggest those harms exist.

In his opinion, the revised rule ignores that risk and is designed to desensitize the public to the dangers of radiation. “It’s trying to devalue and deemphasize the harm of ionizing radiation exposure,” he warned. https://www.npr.org/2026/08/27/nx-s1-5920368/nrc-nuclear-radiation-safety-rules-alara-update

September 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, radiation | Leave a comment

Evacuees from Fukushima nuclear meltdown reach settlement with Tepco

Aug 26, 2026, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/08/26/japan/crime-legal/tepco-fukushima-settlement/

SAPPORO – A total of 176 people who fled Fukushima Prefecture following the March 2011 nuclear disaster have reached a settlement with Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings in their damages lawsuit filed against the firm and the government.

The settlement was reached on Aug. 18 at the Sapporo High Court, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs.

All the plaintiffs withdrew their damages claims against the government. The decision came on the heels of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling, and a series of similar court decisions that followed, that the government was not liable for the nuclear accident.

The plaintiffs evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture to Hokkaido in the wake of the triple meltdown at the tsunami-stricken Fukushima No. 1 plant.

Under the settlement, Tepco apologized for the irreparable damage the plaintiffs suffered because of the accident.

The settlement amount was not disclosed. The plaintiffs’ lawyers said the sum was “not sufficient but took into account their claims to a certain extent.”

Seiichi Nakate, head of the plaintiffs, and his family evacuated from the city of Fukushima to Sapporo in 2012.

“The settlement is far from enough to make up for our indescribable suffering, but we decided (to accept it) because we cannot endure any more exhaustion,” he said.

In its March 2020 ruling, the Sapporo District Court ordered the government and Tepco to pay about ¥53 million in total to some of the plaintiffs, finding both liable for the accident. The plaintiffs, Tepco and the government all appealed the ruling.

September 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima continuing, Legal | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s Maidan Regime, Army, and People Are Not on the Same Page

Gordonhahn August 31, 2026

The recent two-day delay by Ukraine in extending state of martial law was largely the result of the need to adopt a reform of the Kiev’s brutal forced mobilization of men to fight in the beleaguered Ukrainian armed forces.

On April 27^th the Rada passed an extension of martial law and military mobilization until August 2^nd on the basis of the standard three-month term, and Zelenskiy signed the law the next day. But without redressing the population’s increasing alienation from the war effort and the regime as a result of coerced mobilization of men to fight at the front, some deputies were unprepared to pass the martial law resolution.

The violent recruitment process has included the killing and maiming of captured draft evaders, mass resistance against the mobilizers’ attempts to seize evaders, and even the use of firearms by both mobilizers and evaders resisting capture.

This has raised a firestorm of criticism, resentment, and anger teetering on the edge of open revolt among the public, forcing Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelenskiy, the government, and the Verkhovna Rada deputies to at least feign an attempt to right the situation. Even the police are now hated by the public for failing to protect citizens against the mobilizers’ violent methods and often siding with the latter. Many are asking why can not the Rada deputies, government ministers, their sons, the 120,000 police, and 100,000 mobilization center press gangs be subjected to the draft…………(Subscribers only) https://gordonhahn.substack.com/p/ukraines-maidan-regime-army-and-people

September 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Experts: How Putin’s nuclear sub could decimate Britain

Daily Mail, By FRED KELLY, FEATURE WRITER, 28 August 2026

It weighs over 10,000 tons, it is 135 metres long, and it carries half a dozen two-megaton ‘Domesday’ torpedoes capable of triggering a radioactive tsunami large enough to ‘plunge Britain to the depths of the ocean’. No wonder the world held its breath last week as Russia’s latest nuclear-armed submarine departed Severodvinsk Port to begin trials in the White Sea, 140 miles from the Finnish border.

Named after Russian explorer Yerofey Khabarov, the Khabarovsk will now undergo rigorous testing before being considered fit for active service.

The 100-strong crew as well as a team of onshore engineers will stress-test everything from mooring protocols to propulsion, steering and diving capabilities, as well as the integration of sonar and onboard computing systems. The vessel is eventually expected to travel east to join Russia’s Pacific Fleet, which itself launched a series of missile tests last week from the disputed archipelago of islands north of Japan – triggering a major diplomatic incident.

So what would the Khabarovsk role be in a future conflict? Why is Russia spending a rumoured billion dollars on this vessel when its navy already boasts at least 60 active submarines?

And it is not the only one, it is just one of a mooted trio of new nuclear-armed subs that could be unleashed on the West.

While the design of the Khabarovsk is based on Russia’s Borei-A class nuclear ballistic missile submarines that are a cornerstone of Moscow’s nuclear deterrent, it is, in fact, a bespoke ‘special purpose’ vessel in a class of its own.

Khabarovsk is the first submarine designed with a widened bow to accommodate six Poseidon nuclear torpedoes, each measuring 20 metres in length, two metres in diameter and weighing 110 tonnes each. The only other submarine capable of launching these ‘Domesday’ weapons is the RFS Belgorod, which can carry three Poseidon torpedoes, half the number of the Khabarovsk.

Russia’s ‘Unstoppable’ Torpedo Threatens Britain

Unlike traditional surface-to-air missiles which risk being intercepted in the sky, Poseidon warheads travel underwater at speeds of roughly 70 knots, 1000 metres below the waves. And thanks to an onboard nuclear reactor that propels them, they have an essentially unlimited range. They aren’t just missiles but autonomous, manoeuvrable vessels in their own right.

The idea for Poseidon torpedoes was first conceived by Soviet engineers as far back as the 1950s, though the plans were scrapped as the technology did not exist to fit the weapons with their own propulsion system.

Unlike traditional weapons, the torpedoes are designed to self-detonate before reaching their target. It is not the blast itself that is the danger, but the subsequent tsunami of radioactive water triggered by the two-megaton bombs – more than one hundred times the strength of the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

And while countless thousands would no doubt be drowned in the initial surge or killed by collapsing buildings, the after-effects of the radioactive flooding would render any land within two hundred miles uninhabitable for generations and result in the deaths of millions.

No surprise then that the Kremlin believes Poseidon torpedoes are the future of its nuclear deterrent. Indeed, Dr Richard Connolly, a military expert on Russia and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, describes Poseidon as a ‘boutique capability’ that has been designed only for the ‘very worst of scenarios’…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….https://www.dailymail.com/vertical-galleries/article-16087311/Experts-Putins-nuclear-sub-decimate-Britain.html

September 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Provoked: How Decades of American Policy Set the Stage for Catastrophe in Ukraine

In conversation with Scott Horton

Ian Proud, Aug 29, 2026

In my conversation with Scott Horton about his landmark book Provoked: How Washington Started a New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, one theme emerged with striking clarity: the Ukraine war that began in 2022 did not erupt from nowhere. It was the culmination of more than three decades of deliberate American choices.

Horton’s eight-hundred-page account is not a polemical rant but a meticulously documented timeline. Drawing on thousands of primary sources, he traces the story president by president—from George H.W. Bush through Clinton, the younger Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden.

The central argument is straightforward and devastating: successive U.S. administrations systematically dismantled the post-Cold War settlement, broke explicit assurances given to Moscow, and treated Russian security concerns with open contempt.

The most consequential early breach concerned NATO expansion.

During the negotiations over German reunification in 1990, James Baker, Helmut Kohl, Hans Dietrich Genscher, Robert Gates and others repeatedly assured Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move “one inch to the east.”

Those assurances were not casual asides. They formed the basis on which Gorbachev agreed to allow a reunified Germany to remain inside the alliance while Soviet troops were still stationed in the east.

Later State Department reviews under Warren Christopher quietly confirmed that the Russians had every reason to believe those promises were binding. Yet the Clinton administration proceeded with expansion anyway, first into Central Europe and later, under George W. Bush, into the Baltic states—leaving the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad stranded behind NATO lines.

Opposition to this course was widespread and bipartisan. With great prescience, George Kennan, the architect of containment, warned that the policy would produce a “devastating reaction” from Russia and that the very people dismissing those concerns would later claim the reaction proved their point.

Two-thirds of the Council on Foreign Relations opposed expansion. Career diplomats, military officers and even hardline hawks such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski argued that Ukraine required a special neutral status—something resembling the Cold War Finland or Austria model—precisely to avoid a catastrophic collision.

Those voices were ignored.

The pattern continued.

The 2008 Bucharest Summit promised eventual membership to Ukraine and Georgia without a membership action plan or credible security guarantees—the “worst of all worlds,” as several analysts later described it.

Color revolutions, the deliberate sidelining of the Partnership for Peace, and the refusal to implement the Minsk agreements further eroded any residual trust.

When the same cohort of officials who had driven the policy under earlier administrations returned under Biden – most notably Daniel Fried – the trajectory accelerated toward open conflict.

Horton is careful not to justify Russia’s invasion. He simply insists that calling the attack “unprovoked” is an exercise in willful blindness.

The word itself, repeated endlessly by Western governments and media, seeks to close off inquiry rather than invite it.

Horton’s book reopens that inquiry with forensic detail—names, dates, cables, memoirs—leaving readers free to draw their own conclusions.

What makes Provoked essential is precisely this refusal to operate on the short time horizon of the daily news cycle.

Most public discussion still treats either 2014 or 2022 as year zero. Horton shows that the roots stretch back to the moment the Cold War ended, when a victorious America chose (to quote the title of Professor Jonathan Haslam’s also excellent book) hubris over restraint.

The result is a tragedy that was both foreseeable and avoidable.

I am taking the book with me on holiday.

It is heavy—literally and figuratively—but the weight is justified.

Anyone who wants to understand how we arrived at the present catastrophe, rather than simply recycle the slogans of the moment, should read it.

You can see the full conversation here.

September 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, resources - print, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

‘Let’s stop being suckers for Ukraine’ – Polish MEP

Kiev “spits into our face” by glorifying Nazi collaborators behind massacres of Poles, Ewa Zajaczkowska-Hernik has said

29 Aug, 2026, https://www.rt.com/news/644805-poland-ukraine-nazi-mep/

Warsaw should stop giving Ukraine free weapons as long as it glorifies Nazi collaborators responsible for massacring Poles, a member of the European Parliament has said.

Earlier this week, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky again called upon Kiev’s foreign backers to provide more Patriot missiles, citing an acute shortage of air defense munitions amid intensifying Russian strikes on military-related targets across the country.

Polish Deputy Defense Minister Pawel Zalewski told Ukrainian media on Thursday that Warsaw was ready to cooperate with Kiev on the production of Patriot interceptors for the needs of both NATO and Zelensky’s government.

In a post on X the same day, Zajaczkowska-Hernik expressed her frustration, saying: “More missiles for Patriots for Zelensky for nothing? Let’s stop being suckers for Ukraine!”

Warsaw has provided Kiev with some $4.6 billion in military aid since February 2022, supplying tanks and warplanes, among other things, and “should have pursued a transactional policy” towards Ukraine, she argued.

“We’re handing them valuable equipment and paying off their loans for them, and they spit in our face with the Banderite pantheon of heroes – what the hell is this?!” the MEP wrote.

Relations between Warsaw and Kiev deteriorated in June after Zelensky granted an active Ukrainian commando unit the honorary title “Heroes of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army),” prompting outrage in Poland.

The UPA was the armed wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), led by Stepan Bandera, which collaborated with Nazi Germany during the early stages of its 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. UPA fighters massacred up to 100,000 ethnic Polish civilians in 1943-1944 in what is now western Ukraine, according to Polish estimates.

In recent months, the remains of two OUN co-founders – Andrey Melnik and Evgeny Konovalets – were exhumed in Europe and delivered to Ukraine to be reburied as part of a push by Zelensky to build a “Pantheon of outstanding Ukrainians.”

Warsaw warned Kiev that it will not support its bid to join the EU if it does not change its ways, while Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest state honor.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that the neo-Nazi nature of the Ukrainian government had become so visible that even the Polish authorities, who are gripped by Russophobia, cannot help but see it. According to Putin, Warsaw simply cannot ignore the “obvious demand” of its own population to address the issue.

September 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Three of four reactors at Ontario’s refurbished Darlington nuclear power plant face frequent outages.

MATTHEW MCCLEARN, The Globe and Mail, Aug 28, 2026, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ontario-darlington-nuclear-power-plant-three-reactors-out-of/

Three of four reactors at Ontario’s Darlington Nuclear Generating Station are experiencing prolonged outages, data from the Independent Electricity System Operator show, even as the province faces a further large drop in nuclear power generation in just a few weeks’ time.

Ontario Power Generation completed a $12.8-billion, decade-long refurbishment of its station in Clarington, Ont., in March. Although provincial officials have portrayed that overhaul as an unqualified success, Darlington’s units have meandered in and out of service ever since.

The most recently refurbished unit, Unit 4, suddenly stopped generating power on Aug. 1 – its third outage since returning to service. Two days later, Unit 2 abruptly stopped supplying power to the grid. Unit 3 had already been out of service for several months because of long-planned work, leaving Unit 1 as the lone operational unit.

Officials have disclosed little about the causes and implications of the outages at Units 2 and 4, nor when they might return to service. In response to questions from The Globe seeking details of the outages, OPG spokesperson Neal Kelly wrote in a statement that the two units were taken offline “to complete required maintenance.” He added that Unit 2 is expected to restart in September, and Unit 4 will follow in October.

Braeson Holland, a spokesperson for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, wrote in a statement that OPG reported the forced outages of Units 2 and 4 to its staff.

“CNSC inspectors maintain regulatory oversight of the outage work to verify that the appropriate actions are being taken. CNSC staff are satisfied that these events do not present a risk to the health and safety of persons or to the environment,” he wrote.

Representing nearly 900 megawatts of generating capacity each, Darlington’s units are the largest in Ontario. The station boasts a total generating capacity of roughly 3,500 megawatts, making it the province’s second largest, eclipsed only by the eight-reactor Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Tiverton, Ont., operated by Bruce Power.

Ontario’s third nuclear power plant, OPG’s Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, is just weeks away from shutting down. Its four operational reactors, representing 2,100 megawatts of generating capacity, are scheduled to come offline next month for their own $26.8-billion refurbishment, expected to wrap up in the mid-2030s.

Will soaring electricity rates kill Ontario’s nuclear expansion?

Michael Dodsworth, a spokesperson for the Independent Electricity System Operator, said his organization had no concerns that the outages would affect Ontario’s ability to meet electricity demand in the coming months.

“Ontario’s electricity system has remained reliable this summer thanks to our diverse supply mix, bolstered by recent investments in new generation and energy storage,” he wrote.

In a July filing to the Ontario Energy Board, OPG forecast that there would be 286 outage days at Darlington in 2026 – the most taken in any year since at least 2008. Nonetheless, the forced outages of Units 2 and 4 seem likely to push the actual total higher still.

OPG forecast planned outages totaling 512 days in 2027, including a major outage for work on Unit 2’s steam generators. The entire Darlington station will be out of service next year for nearly 46 days to allow work on its vacuum building, which is designed to suck out and condense steam from a reactor during a major accident.

Since outages of a single reactor can cost a utility $1-million or more a day in lost revenue – and because large, unexpected fluctuations in power generation can stress power grids, utilities invest considerable manpower and resources to avoiding unplanned outages, according to David Novog, a professor of engineering at McMaster University who specializes in nuclear safety and maintenance.

“Of course there’ll be unplanned outages,” he said. “But because of the value that the reactor represents on the grid and the amount of revenue it provides, it is probably one of the most looked-after assets that the government has.”

Ontario’s proposed nuclear plants could cost nearly $300-billion, study finds

However, several of this year’s outages at Darlington have been entirely unexpected. Unit 4 was officially returned to service on March 13 following a refurbishment lasting nearly three years. Since then, it has been taken offline three times with little explanation; OPG has disclosed only that the first outage was taken “to assess an operational matter unrelated to the refurbishment” and that it had completed repairs.

“When you stop and start and stop and start, that’s atypical of how we would typically choose to run the reactors,” Prof. Novog observed.

The Bruce and Darlington plants suffered many unplanned outages in their early years of operation, he added. During the years leading up to refurbishment, however, Darlington’s units were “exceptionally well-run.”

Prof. Novog said OPG should pro-actively publish more information about outages.

“When you’re not upfront with the information, it can lead to speculation and a lack of confidence,” he said.

“Without knowing the details, it’s hard to even tell whether it’s teething pain [at Darlington] or whether it is something else.”

The provincial government has said that Ontario’s nuclear projects were completed ahead of schedule and under budget, which Energy Minister Stephen Lecce repeated Tuesday at a press conference in St. Clair Township.

As the output of Ontario’s nuclear fleet has fallen because of refurbishments and outages, the province has increasingly relied on natural gas-fired plants to supply electricity. On Thursday afternoon, the 11 operational reactors provided 38.5 per cent of the province’s electricity, as compared to 31.5 per cent from gas plants, according to the Gridwatch monitoring web site.

For 2024 and 2025, the nuclear plants provided roughly half of Ontario’s power; gas plants provided less than 20 per cent.

September 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, technology | Leave a comment

Zack Polanski: Put the brakes on data centres due to climate impact

Green Party leader warns of water shortages and higher energy bills, after it was revealed that nearly 200 more centres are being built.

Times 28th Aug 2026,
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/zack-polanski-data-centres-greens-vsz2jmv0l

September 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

How to get filthy rich via Small Modular Nuclear Reactors.

30 August 2026 Noel Wauchope AIM Extra, https://theaimn.net/how-to-get-filthy-rich-via-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/

Well, I hasten to warn you that you need to be already rich, for this to work. It has already worked for some alert rich investors. What they did was – they noted the soaring share prices of small nuclear reactor companies, a soaring that was accompanied by an awful lot of media hype.

And then they noted some salient facts about those companies – for example:

OKLO – has a market cap of $8 billion, and its shares jumped more than 12% on Aug. 25 Sounds great doesn’t it? BUT:

OKLO had a net loss of $81.6 million in the second quarter this year.
It went public through a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) in 2025.
It generates no commercial energy income today.
Its first Small Modular Reactor (SMR), the Aurora Powerhouse, isn’t expected to enter commercial operation for years.
Oklo is incurring tens of millions in operating losses annually.
It is $78.6 million in debt, so interest and loan payments eat into its earnings.
OKLO is still in discussions with the regulator NRC, regarding the fuel, high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, and other supply chain issues.

Similarly, stocks of both NuScale Power, and Nano Nuclear have soared over the past year. Yet both are making little or no money, and both have suffered operational losses over this year. NuScale is now facing a class action by investors who claim that the company misrepresented the prospects for small nuclear reactors.

So – what have the smart rich investors done? Basically, they’ve gambled on these stocks being over-priced, and soon to go down. Investment strategies are not my strong point, but it seems that short selling is one hedge fund strategy. So these clever investors, noting the unsustainable rise in share prices, borrow shares and soon sell them at the inflated price, and can buy them back later as the price plunges down.

So , it’s estimated that investors made over $2 Billion over the past months by short selling shares in these three small nuclear reactor companies – OKLO, NuScale, and Nano Nuclear.

The rage for investing in SMRs is still on, as the world is gripped by the mania for AI hyperscalers. (AI hyperscalers are companies investing grotesque amounts of money in building data centres world-wide)

Neither the hyperscalers nor the small reactor companies are actually making money at present. But the hype is all-consuming.

This is the prevailing hype –

The AI Boom Is Making Nuclear Power Bankable Again – America’s nuclear power landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation, driven by the immense energy needs of artificial intelligence. Tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta are directly financing nuclear projects, committing billions to secure nearly 10 gigawatts of capacity. ………..

Almost everything tech companies are funding—Meta, Amazon, most of Google’s bets—is small modular reactors: compact designs.

Will AI kickstart a new age of nuclear power? IAEA Director General Manuel Grossi believes that the nuclear industry is destined to be the energy partner of the AI revolution. “Only nuclear energy can meet the five needs of low-carbon power generation, round-the-clock reliability, ultra-high power density, grid stability and true scalability”……………………..the IAEA is working closely with regulators and the industry to make them a viable proposition and we could soon be seeing large numbers of small reactors being deployed to meet the demand.

So- we have the Trumpian process in the USA, of the weakening of radiation and safety regulation of nuclear reactors, and of the government already funding 8 SMR companies.

With the claim that nuclear power combats climate change, with the accepted belief in the necessity for AI hyperscale, governments, academia, the corporate media, and the UN all promote this new marriage of nuclear and Big Tech. So – all the stars are aligned for the rise and rise of small nuclear reactors.

Incidentally, don’t look to the UN, the World Health Organisation (WHO)or anyone like that to cry foul. I think that most people have forgotten, if they ever knew it , but the 1959 agreement between the WHO and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) effectively prevents the WHO from criticising things nuclear.

One important part – “Whenever either organization proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement.”

And, in this time of vulnerability of nuclear sites, to war and terrorism, you wonder how Rafael Grossi, Director of the IAEA reconciles his conflicting duties, that of promoting nuclear power and of assuring of its safety.

But I digress. We are talking about money, and how to get rich through investing in small nuclear reactors. Well, that is still a goer. But perhaps you’d better be quick, as investment advisors are now dithering about the share price of commercial SMR companies, even though the Big Tech- SMR teams are apparently still booming.

However, the global nuclear lobby is now turning its attention to military microreactors, so there’s hope for future stock market gains as governments splurge tax-payers money into companies in that area.

September 1, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Christina's notes, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | 1 Comment

Expert Comment: New nuclear capacity won’t fix today’s energy problems

Dr Bettina Wittneben, Lecturer in Management at Oxford’s Saïd Business School and Associate Fellow at Pembroke College and the School of Geography and the Environment, sets out four risks that policymakers should weigh before committing to new nuclear capacity.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2026-08-20-expert-comment-new-nuclear-capacity-wont-fix-todays-energy-problems

The Fukushima nuclear disaster on 11 March 2011, triggered by a tsunami and leading to multiple reactor meltdowns, shook confidence in nuclear safety well beyond Japan. In Germany, it was a turning point: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government suspended nuclear power’s earlier lifetime extensions and ultimately pursued a phase out, with broad parliamentary support.

Fast forward to today, and in parts of Europe, nuclear power is being re-cast as the answer to decarbonisation and energy insecurity, as highlighted by the Israel/US-Iran conflict. Some German politicians went so far as to call the country’s decision to end nuclear power a mistake.

This is a useful reminder that nuclear policy is not only about engineering and economics; it is also about political legitimacy and how much risk the public is willing to accept.

But despite recent enthusiasm for nuclear power, a close examination shows that the risks of increasing nuclear capacity are high. Policy makers and the public need to consider four types of risk: climate, security, capacity and financial risks.

Climate risk: Nuclear power plants are not climate resilient

As Europe experiences climate impacts such as heatwaves and drought, several nuclear power plants have had to be at least partially shut down to accommodate low water levels and risks to aquatic life in natural water systems. When a nuclear plant is shut down, it continues to draw on electricity generated elsewhere to avoid a meltdown.

Given that global heating is a reality today, nuclear power generation is no longer a viable long-term option in hotter temperatures and drier climates. In Britain, we have had to come to terms with the fact that an approaching wildfire could have catastrophic consequences for a nuclear power plant.

The strategic point for policymakers is straightforward: If the climate is changing how we operate existing plants, it should also shape the way we assess the benefits of new build.

Nuclear power is sometimes hailed as a climate mitigation instrument as it is low carbon at the point of generation. However, the bulky concrete structures mean that it has a large amount of embodied carbon and, of course, it is not a renewable energy as it requires the mining of uranium, bringing with it carbon costs in terms of extraction and transport. Nuclear waste disposal and decommissioning must also be factored into the carbon budget of nuclear energy generation.

Security risk: Nuclear power poses real security risks

As we have seen in Ukraine and now also in the UAE, nuclear power plants are favoured sites for drone and other attacks and can be the scene of intense battles. A small drone exploding on the radiation shield of the ill-fated Chernobyl nuclear reactor caused major global concern as repairs to this vital safety structure are risky, and the associated costs of maintaining safety are extremely high.

Capacity risk: Nuclear power contributes to grid overload during electricity generation peaks

For the past decade, energy experts have insisted that, as consumers of solar and wind-generated electricity, we need to be concerned about the times when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, referred to as Dunkelflaute (dunkel=dark, flaute=lull). How do we keep the lights on and the economy whirling away during these dark, windless times? This is also the narrative of fossil fuel advocates, who present fossil gas as the saviour of the baseload, or the electricity that is available when renewables fall short. Fossil fuel sceptics point instead to nuclear power as a reliable baseload technology.

Making decisions based on Dunkelflaute anxiety is no longer rational, however. With renewables rapidly expanding – driven by low prices and the need for energy independence – grids are facing the opposite problem: energy surplus. For example, in May 2025 Germany experienced negative electricity prices on 21 days of the month. These occurrences resulted from the Hellbrise (hell=bright, brise=breeze): a situation where wind and solar generated more electricity than national demand.

In many European countries national grids cannot cope with these peaks of production meaning that electricity is either wasted or diverted if it cannot be stored. Nuclear power plants, which are slow and costly to turn off, only amplify our grids’ Hellbrise challenge.

Financial risk: Nuclear power generation remains very costly

Back in 2011, the Fukushima accident turned the public against nuclear power in Germany. Over the past decade, the nuclear industry has reeled from this. The solution from this industry is to build smaller, modular reactors, with the aim of diminishing risks and reducing costs via economies of scale.

Unfortunately, this reasoning is flawed. Nuclear waste is expensive to store safely, and engineers continue to struggle to identify long-term waste disposal sites.

Decommissioning costs must be factored into the financing of the power plant as it is highly expensive to dispose of the large concrete buildings and remaining radioactive materials. Otherwise, decommissioning and long-term waste storage falls to the taxpayer of the future.

Unfortunately, this reasoning is flawed. Nuclear waste is expensive to store safely, and engineers continue to struggle to identify long-term waste disposal sites.

In addition, there are other financial costs and risks: acts of war are still entirely possible and exceedingly dangerous; uranium mining commits providers to continued social and environmental impacts; renewables remain more competitive on cost.

Given the risks of nuclear power, there are better energy solutions

Nuclear power production does not help us cope with the challenge emerging from our power grids and the future of electricity production – the Hellbrise.

Instead, we should focus on improving flexibility of grids and energy demand, increasing energy efficiency, and addressing the technical challenges of energy storage. This strategy will more effectively support economies than nuclear power ever could.

September 1, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ENERGY | Leave a comment

Nuclearelectrica CEO steps down amid ‘shortcomings’ in 462 MW Doicești (NuScale) SMR project

August 26, 2026, by Vladimir Berbatović,
https://balkangreenenergynews.com/nuclearelectrica-ceo-steps-down-amid-shortcomings-in-462-mw-doicesti-smr-project/

Cosmin Ghiță, CEO of Romania’s state-controlled nuclear power producer Nuclearelectrica, has resigned amid “shortcomings” related to the joint venture developing a 462 MW small modular reactor (SMR) project in Doicești, as well as the project itself. Ghiță’s resignation comes after a government body identified the issues and recommended determining the accountability of Nuclearelectrica’s top executives and other individuals.

Last month, Acting Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan’s control body said that it had identified several shortcomings related to Nuclearelectrica’s partnership with state-owned energy company Nova Power&Gas in a joint venture called RoPower Nuclear, established to develop the nuclear power plant in Doicești using US-based NuScale’s SMR technology, according to Profit.ro.

The body said that it had also identified shortcomings related to the Doicești project itself, and it recommended “an analysis of the possibility of holding accountable” the top people of Nuclearelectrica and other individuals.

Shortcomings have also been identified concerning the SMR project itself

Nuclearelectrica has rejected the findings.

The Ministry of Energy said it “respects” the resignation and that it had been informed the CEO’s decision came “in the context of a new professional opportunity.”

According to government spokesperson Ioana Dogioiu, Ghiță’s 90-day notice period may be shortened by mutual agreement, after which a selection process for a new CEO will take place.

Ghiță has been at the helm of Nuclearelectrica for nearly nine years, since September 2017. He previously served as advisor to Romania’s prime minister on energy security and energy policies, according to Nuclearelectrica’s website.

The Ministry of Energy also said that Nuclearelectrica and its Cernavodă nuclear power plant continue to operate as usual and that it will take all necessary steps to maintain the company’s stability and continuity.

Cernavodă, Romania’s only nuclear power plant, has been offline since August 13. The plant, which normally generates about 20% of Romania’s electricity, has been unable to ensure enough reactor cooling water from the Danube due to heatwaves and drought.

September 1, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, EUROPE | Leave a comment

You’re A Terrorist If You Resist Genocide Or Mass Surveillance, And Other Notes

Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 28, 2026

The US has joined the UK in adding the activist group Palestine Action to its list of designated terrorist organizations.

The UK proscribing Palestine Action was already arguably the most insane attack on free speech in recent western history, and now it’s the official position of the US government as well. Western support for Israel is poisoning our entire civilization.

The US has also made the unprecedented move of adding the Italian tech support collective Autistici/Inventati to its list of banned terrorist groups, not because they’ve been accused of any crimes, but explicitly because the company allows people to communicate with each other while staying “anonymous, untraceable, and beyond the reach of the law.” Americans are now strictly forbidden from any transactions with the banned company.

In this dystopia, mass surveillance is now so normalized that you can be designated a terrorist for helping people avoid being surveilled.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has been issuing statements thanking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Isaac Herzog for their support, gushing about the “bilateral cooperation, trade partnerships, and strong people-to-people bonds” between the two countries.

These statements have been causing a lot of cognitive dissonance for a particularly annoying category of western progressive. You know the type. The ones who say both “Slava Ukraini” and “Free Palestine” and act like cheerleading for a NATO proxy war is an act of anti-imperialist resistance.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent just tweeted, “As the Iranian people struggle to afford basic necessities, the corrupt regime continues to squander enormous sums abroad. Instead of funneling billions of dollars to its terrorist proxies, the regime should spend that money for its people.”

Which is just hilarious, given what country this is coming from.

It’s so funny that US officials keep making this criticism of Iran. The United States is literally the single most egregious offender on the planet when it comes to spending obscene amounts of money on militarism and proxy warfare overseas while its own people struggle to afford basic necessities. I myself have built an entire career on slamming the United States for doing precisely this.

Saying you’re both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel is nonsensical.

I have a friend who was savagely raped by a guy in her social circle, and her friends told her they didn’t want to take sides about it because they valued their friendship with both her AND her rapist.

That’s what saying “I’m both pro-Palestine AND pro-Israel” reminds me of.

Europeans stopped fighting constant wars with each other like ten seconds ago and yet the average white westerner will tell you “the middle east has always been at war so all the bloodshed there is an unsolvable dilemma”. The only reason the middle east didn’t join the rest of the world in entering into a period of relative peace and stability after the second world war is because the west created Israel right after WWII and has been aggressively destabilizing and abusing the region ever since.

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AI isn’t going to save us. Techno utopianism only sounds reasonable when you don’t know the tech is run by an alliance of narcissistic billionaires and psychopathic government agencies who have no interest in creating a better world and would happily incinerate billions of people to obtain more money and power.

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The latest wave of Hasan Piker hysteria shows that there is nothing these freaks won’t pretend to believe in order to stomp out criticism of Israel and shut down all leftward movement in US politics. The guy made the completely obvious and indisputable observation that Jews are endangered by the Zionist tactic of painting all Jews as a monolith who support Israel, and now the top Democrats in Washington are pretending to believe he said Jewish people deserve to be attacked. The way they’re all just lining up behind a narrative they all know is false has got to be one of the most nakedly cynical uses of this smear I’ve ever seen employed.

Writing about “antisemitism” smears in the year 2026 is so tedious, because everyone already knows this tactic is bullshit and everything worth saying about it has already been said. But it really is fascinating how they’re looking us right in the eye and telling us they’re going to keep using this weapon to slash at the left until the blade has completely broken rather than simply espousing popular policies that make the world a better place.

September 1, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | culture and arts | Leave a comment

The push to clear nuclear power’s waste-disposal hurdle

The technical issues have mostly been solved, but the long-term potential peril of radioactive material has made it difficult to find politically acceptable sites.

Nature, By Brian Owens, 26 August 2026

Inside a nondescript warehouse in an industrial park in Oakville, Canada, sits a squat forklift truck that requires no driver. When activated by its remote operator, the vehicle trundles to a stack of huge clay blocks, each weighing 8,000 kilograms, and carries them into a narrow rock tunnel. Another custom-built machine then fills the spaces around the blocks with crumbled clay.

Each block is made of bentonite clay and encases a copper-coated steel container built to hold spent fuel from a nuclear reactor. The blocks will be sealed behind yet more clay and concrete in tunnels deep underground, and the radioactive material inside will be left to slowly decay over thousands of years.

Or it would be, if there were any nuclear waste stored on-site. The warehouse is a test facility for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), the group in Toronto, Canada, that is responsible for dealing with the long-term storage of the country’s nuclear waste. The life-sized mock-up, complete with simulated rock tiling, enables Peter Keech, manager of engineered barrier science at the NWMO, and his colleagues to test technologies that will be used to store the waste and to demonstrate the storage process to the public.

The metal fuel containers, for example, are designed to withstand the pressure of being buried under a 3-kilometre-thick glacier, should the next ice age arrive before the radiation has decayed fully. But Keech and his team take the testing much further, subjecting several canisters to crushing forces equivalent to being more than 6 km under the ocean. The containers looked like toothpaste tubes that had been squeezed in the middle — but they were still fully sealed.

“These are much higher forces than they will ever see in the repository, but we take it to failure to understand the materials,” says Keech. “And even in failure it still offers containment.”

Canada’s real waste repository will be built roughly 1,600 km to the northwest of the test facility, hosted by the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation and the town of Ignace. It is buried some 750 metres under the hard rock of the Canadian Shield, which was once the base of a vast mountain range. When the facility opens in around 2040, its 80–100 km of tunnels will be capable of storing the nearly 6 million bundles of spent fuel that will be produced by Canada’s four nuclear-power plants over their operational lives, isolating the waste from people and the environment until long after the material’s radiation levels return to that of natural uranium.

World tour

Almost every country with a nuclear-power industry is working on some variation of this plan. Finland’s is the most advanced: its Onkalo repository on the country’s west coast is expected to open later this year.

The storage facility is built 430 metres below ground in a hard crystalline bedrock, and will eventually consist of about 50 km of tunnels that can store around 6,500 tonnes of spent uranium fuel, says Linda Kumpula, a nuclear-safety engineer at Finland’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment in Espoo.

A site in Sweden, also built into hard crystalline rock, is expecting to begin accepting radioactive waste in the 2030s. France and Switzerland have each selected a site in natural clay formations and are in the process of gaining regulatory approval. And in December 2025, China completed the first stage of construction for its underground laboratory in the Gobi Desert, a facility that will test the area’s suitability for long-term waste storage.

In the United States, plans for a spent-fuel repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have been a political hot potato for decades, and the project is currently stalled. But the nation does already have one permanent facility: the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a repository for radioactive waste from the country’s nuclear-weapons programme that is located in salt caverns beneath New Mexico’s desert. That facility has been a major source of learning for other countries, says Keech — particularly how to protect communities when transporting waste to the site and how to minimize the time the material spends on the surface when it arrives.

These issues and other technical ones, such as how best to build a deep geological repository, have now mostly been resolved. “We’ve been working on this for a long time and it is no longer a major technical or scientific challenge,” says Stefan Mayer, team leader of radioactive waste disposal at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

The real challenge is political and social. “You have to find a site that’s technically suitable, but you also need a site that is hosted by a community that is willing,” says Allison Macfarlane, a geologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “It turns out that the latter problem is harder than the former.”

Types of waste

Waste from nuclear plants generally falls into four categories: materials with very low, low, intermediate and high levels of radioactivity.

Very-low-level and low-level waste make up most radioactive waste — about 95%. Very-low-level waste consists of the soil, concrete and rubble generated when a nuclear plant is decommissioned. Low-level waste is made up of used protective equipment and other lightly contaminated materials from the plant. Both types can be disposed of in near-surface secure facilities and need to be isolated for several hundred years.

Intermediate-level waste consists mainly of metal parts of the reactor that are contaminated with radiation. These metallic isotopes are so concentrated and long-lived that the material remains radioactive for thousands of years and cannot be disposed of near the surface — it needs to be isolated underground.

The biggest issue is the high-level waste. This is the spent nuclear fuel and its containers, as well as the waste from the reprocessing of spent fuel that some countries do to extend their fuel supplies. By volume, it represents just 3% of the waste generated by a power plant, but it is responsible for 95% of the radioactivity. And it remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years — longer than any human civilization has yet lasted. Because of the waste’s longevity, it must be safely isolated deep underground where it cannot contaminate the ecosystem or harm future generations………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Another important adjustment for the United States would be to change who is responsible for dealing with the waste. Instead of the Department of Energy, with its revolving door of politically appointed leaders, Macfarlane thinks that it should be an independent organization: either a government agency similar to New York’s port authority or an industry-led group such as Canada’s NWMO.

“You need more of a corporate structure with leadership that’s going to be there a long time, because this is a slow process,” Macfarlane says. “It takes decades to do properly.”

This was one of the main recommendations in 2012 of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, which Macfarlane took part in. But so far there has been no movement on the issue.

The United States, Macfarlane says, should not be afraid to admit defeat on Yucca Mountain and start again with a more consent-based process. “I think the US has failed and they just have to acknowledge that — and decide they’re going to try again,” she says.

The long timelines involved in dealing with nuclear waste make it tempting to continually kick the can down the road and trust that future generations will eventually find a solution. But Macfarlane is adamant that it is the responsibility of people today to at least get the ball rolling.

“It’s imperative that we do something sooner rather than later,” she says. “I can tell you one thing with 100% certainty: if we do nothing, this material will get into the environment and will harm humans in the future.”

September 1, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

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