America’s ‘zombie’ nuclear reactors to be revived to power Trump golden age
By ELLYN LAPOINTE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM, 24 January 2025 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14317459/zombie-nuclear-reactors-revived-ai-demand-trump-stargate-south-carolina.html
A defunct nuclear power plant will be revived to power Donald Trump‘s new half-trillion-dollar project to make America the world’s artificial intelligence powerhouse.
The state-owned utility Santee Cooper — the largest power provider in South Carolina — said Wednesday that it is seeking buyers to complete construction on a partially-built project that was abandoned in 2017.
The VC Summer Nuclear Power Station, which houses two unfinished nuclear reactors, was scrapped following years of lengthy, costly delays and bankruptcy by its contractor, according to a company statement.
But now, the utility is hoping tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft will be willing to finish the project, as they are seeking clean energy sources to fuel data centers for AI.
‘We are seeing renewed interest in nuclear energy, fueled by advanced manufacturing investments, AI-driven data center demand, and the tech industry’s zero-carbon targets,’ said Santee Cooper President and CEO Jimmy Staton.
This announcement came as President Donald Trump unveiled a $500bn AI project which he says will jumpstart America’s ‘golden age.’
The project, dubbed the ‘Stargate Initiative,’ is a massive private sector deal to expand the nation’s AI infrastructure, led by Big Tech companies such as OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle. It is the largest AI infrastructure project in history.
Trump stated that Stargate will create over 100,000 new jobs ‘almost immediately.’
‘This monumental undertaking is a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential under a new president,’ he said during a Tuesday briefing.
Trump emphasized that the project aims to sharpen the country’s technological edge against competitors, notably China.
He held the briefing in the White House’s Roosevelt Room alongside SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
The US AI industry has already grown rapidly in recent years, but one of the biggest hurdles to expansion is the energy cost of running data centers.
A recent Department of Energy (DOE) report found that total data center electricity usage more than tripled from from 2014 to 2023, rising from 58 TWh to 176 TWh.
The DOE estimates that by 2028, data center energy demand will increase between 325 to 580, consuming up to 12 percent of US electricity.
‘This monumental undertaking is a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential under a new president,’ he said during a Tuesday briefing.
Trump emphasized that the project aims to sharpen the country’s technological edge against competitors, notably China.
He held the briefing in the White House’s Roosevelt Room alongside SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
The US AI industry has already grown rapidly in recent years, but one of the biggest hurdles to expansion is the energy cost of running data centers.
A recent Department of Energy (DOE) report found that total data center electricity usage more than tripled from from 2014 to 2023, rising from 58 TWh to 176 TWh.
The DOE estimates that by 2028, data center energy demand will increase between 325 to 580, consuming up to 12 percent of US electricity.
Santee Cooper said it was working with the investment firm Centerview Partners LLC to vet buyer proposals, which they will accept until May 5.
The exact asking price has not been publicly named, but the Wall Street Journal reported that completion of the reactors would cost the buyer billions of dollars over several years.
This would not be the first time that Big Tech bankrolled a nuclear energy project. Last September, Microsoft struck a deal with the New York utility Constellation Energy to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
This plant was the site of the worst nuclear power accident in US history, when its Unit 2 reactor partially melted down in 1979 and released radioactive gases and iodine into the environment.
Amazon, Meta and Google also sought or signed deals to back nuclear energy projects in 2024, similarly motivated by their AI endeavors.
The federal government has also shown support for the resurgence of nuclear power.
In September, the DOE finalized a $1.52 billion loan guarantee to help Holtec International, a New Jersey manufacturing company, recommission the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, marking the first-ever revival of a nuclear power plant in the US.
The Biden administration and Congress also offered billions of dollars in subsidies to maintain older nuclear plants and fund the construction of new reactors.
President Trump has largely opposed and sought to repeal the former president’s energy and climate policies, but has said he supports nuclear energy.
In its first actions this week, the new administration signed an executive order directing the heads of ‘all agencies’ to identify regulations that ‘impose an undue burden’ on domestic energy resources, including nuclear power.
It also instructs the US Geological Survey ‘to consider updating the Survey’s list of critical minerals, including for the potential of including uranium,’ which can be refined into nuclear fuel.
High likelihood of radioactive waste in smoldering landfill, Missouri officials say
MISSOURI INDEPENDENT, By: Allison Kite – January 22, 2025
Missouri officials are warning the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of a “high likelihood” there is radioactive contamination in a smoldering landfill outside St. Louis.
In a letter last week, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources asked that the EPA assume oversight of the Bridgeton Landfill, arguing it may contain nuclear waste like the adjacent West Lake Landfill.
The two landfills, situated in the St. Louis suburb of Bridgeton, have received extensive attention from regulators over the years. The Bridgeton Landfill has been experiencing a “subsurface smoldering event” — a chemical reaction that heats and consumes waste like a fire but lacks oxygen — for more than 14 years, emitting noxious odors and raising concerns among residents that the “fire” might reach the radioactive waste in the West Lake Landfill next door.
The West Lake Landfill is subject to an EPA oversight and a cleanup to remove thousands of tons of uranium left over from World War II.
But, the state argued in its letter, there may be radioactive waste in the Bridgeton portion of the landfill far closer to the subsurface smolder than previously known……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The St. Louis area has struggled for years with a radioactive waste problem.
During World War II, uranium was refined in downtown St. Louis for use in the Manhattan Project, the name given to the war-era effort to build the world’s first atomic bomb.
After the war, the waste was trucked to St. Louis County and dumped at the airport where it leaked into Coldwater Creek, polluting its banks and waters and subjecting generations of families to radiation exposure and an increased risk of certain cancers. The waste was sold and moved to a site in Hazlewood — still adjacent to the creek — where it continued to expose residents.
In 1973, after valuable metals were extracted from the pile, the remaining waste was illegally dumped in the West Lake Landfill, where it remains today.
The EPA is nearing the end of a process to plan an excavation of much of the radioactive waste from the landfill. Parts of the landfill with lower levels of contamination will be capped.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing the cleanup of Coldwater Creek.
Last week, the EPA announced it would expand the excavation at the West Lake Landfill because it found additional radioactive contamination. Under the revised plan, another 40 acres of the landfill will be included in the cleanup. Crews will need to dig up another 20,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris, and the price of the cleanup will climb to almost $400 million.
For years, the EPA thought the radioactive material was confined to two portions of the landfill, relying on findings from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which, in the late 1970s, flew a helicopter over the landfill to measure gamma radioactivity. That effort missed contamination in parts of the landfill.
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ letter came in response to the EPA’s announcement last week that it would expand the cleanup. The state agency said it supported the expanded cleanup and recommended that the EPA “considers being the lead agency for all the potentially affected properties.” https://missouriindependent.com/2025/01/22/high-likelihood-of-radioactive-waste-in-smoldering-landfill-missouri-officials-say/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIAOhZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHR0Eo5ucf2C5gyG0H9KX_GVfE9QfJMSf34RPNYlxK_bMz-QNu–VBSiyrA_aem_ijh3lKomduLQR0zVXkDaIQ
St Louis radioactively contaminated sites visited by Dr Helen Caldicott.
Anti-nuclear activist tours north St. Louis County sites contaminated with radioactive waste, St Louis Public Radio, By STEPHANIE LECCI • FEB 19, 2016 An internationally recognized anti-nuclear activist and Australian physician said the radioactive contamination in north St. Louis County is “worse than most places” she’s investigated.
Dr. Helen Caldicott toured several local sites Friday afternoon, including: the recently remediated St. Cin Park in Hazelwood; West Lake Landfill Superfund site, which contains radioactive nuclear waste dating back to 1940s and ’50s; and the Bridgeton Landfill, whose underground smoldering has caused concern due its proximity to the waste in West Lake.
Byron DeLear, an executive for a clean-energy company, helped take Caldicott on the tour.
“This is truly an historic opportunity for this community to have the expertise of Helen to show up and really start to investigate what’s going on here,” he said.
Caldicott, founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, whose umbrella parent organization International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War won the Nobel Peace Prize, called the situation “obscene.”
“When you inhale radon, it decays into lead 210 and stays there in the bronchus irradiating just a small volume of cells with alpha radiation, very carcinogenic,” she said. “Radon is one of the most potent causes of lung cancer.”
Caldicott said she will discuss other elements along the decay chain of uranium and “where they go in the body and how they cause cancer” during a symposium at St. Louis Community College-Wildwood Saturday at 7 p.m. Caldicott will be the keynote speaker on the impacts of nuclear weapons development, and will be joined by a panel of other experts. The presentation will also be live-streamed………
Anti nuclear activists celebrate fourth banniversary of nuclear weapons
Half of the world’s nations, representing 2.5 billion people, have now signed and / or ratified the Ban Treaty. There are now 94 States Parties to the treaty and 73 have ratified their absolute adherence to it.
NFLA 22nd Jan 2025
Today (22nd January) is the banniversary, the fourth anniversary of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons[i] entering into international law at the UN.
This treaty, usually called the Ban Treaty, is the first piece of international legislation to outlaw the production, stockpiling, transfer, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.
In the world today we have nine confirmed or acknowledged nuclear weapons states, the USA, Russia, United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, with an estimated 12,121 nuclear weapons in January 2024[ii].
In 2023, these states were estimated to have spent $91.4 billion maintaining and enhancing their nuclear arsenals.
Nuclear proliferation has been restrained because of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty[iii] which was first signed by the USA, USSR and UK in 1968 and has almost universal acceptance in the world community. Signatory nations without nuclear weapons agree not to acquire them, whilst retaining the right to employ nuclear power for energy, whilst the five nuclear weapon states, the USA, Russia, UK, France and China, which have signed it have agreed not to deploy nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states. Furthermore, under Article 6 they have committed to: pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament’.
The Ban Treaty came to pass because global civil society, particularly in nations whose people suffered greatly from post-war atomic and nuclear bomb testing, such as Australia, the Pacific Islands, Algeria, and Kazakhstan, became increasingly frustrated by the failure of these nuclear nations to conduct any negotiations in ‘good faith’, despite the passage of over 60 years. Civic society groups, scientists, physicians and the Hibakusha pushed back by establishing an International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) to bring about the world’s first definitive legislation to outlaw nuclear weapons.[iv]
In doing so they were following the example set by worldwide campaigners opposed to anti-personnel landmines, whose campaign led to the passage of the Ottawa Convention or the Anti-Personnel Land Mine Ban Convention.[v] This became law in 1997. Later that year the International Campaign to Ban Landmines won the Novel Peace Prize.
The new campaign aimed to bring in similar legislation to that which previously banned other weapons of mass destruction, namely chemical, biological and bacteriological weapons.
Lawyers from civil society groups and supportive nations drew up the legislation. Several years were spent by campaigners in international shuttle diplomacy, with private meetings and various regional conferences held across the world to build support amongst United Nations member states…………………………………………………………………………………………
Half of the world’s nations, representing 2.5 billion people, have now signed and / or ratified the Ban Treaty. There are now 94 States Parties to the treaty and 73 have ratified their absolute adherence to it.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. The Nuclear Free Local Authorities and Mayors for Peace are both established partners in ICAN.
Interestingly in both organisations are member authorities in the Republic of Ireland and the UK. The Republic is a neutral and non-nuclear weapon state that has signed and ratified the Ban Treaty. The UK is a NATO and nuclear weapon state which is refusing to engage with the treaty. This creates a dichotomy.
What then will the UK/Ireland NFLAs and Mayors for Peace Chapter be doing in 2025 to build support for the treaty and the communities affected by nuclear weapons and testing?
Richard Outram, explains:
The big challenge here is getting any British Government, whatever its political persuasion, which remains wedded to nuclear weapons and is a member of a nuclear weapons alliance with a first use policy, to get on board with the Treaty.
“2025 will be an especially significant year in the history of nuclear weapons, being the 80th anniversary of the tragic atom bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so it will be important to have a focused plan with positive actions.”
Richard intends to:
- Ask the Labour Government to send an official observer to the next conference of the Ban Treaty to join signatory states and civil society groups. This will be held in New York in March.
- Lobby the Government to acknowledge the moral imperative for the UK to provide reparations and practical support for the communities, generally Indigenous, impacted by British atomic and nuclear weapons, as per the provisions of Articles 6 and 7 in the Ban Treaty.
- Continue to work for justice and compensation for Britain’s atomic and nuclear test veteran community and their families. The NFLAs have been a major player in lobbying politicians at all levels in both Conservative and Labour governments, and has appointed a former British Army veteran, Councillor Tommy Judge, to be its spokesperson on these issues.
- Ask Mayors for Peace to follow Manchester’s example in passing resolutions in support of the ICAN Cities Appeal calling on the British Government to sign the Treaty.
- Write to parliamentarians at Holyrood in support of a resolution just tabled before the Scottish Government favouring nuclear disarmament and a nuclear free Scotland.
- Support any move to lobby local government pension funds to divest from nuclear weapons.
- Continue to work building up the number of our member authorities and to strengthen their capacity to act for peace in this 80th anniversary year of the atom bombings. https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/anti-nuclear-activists-celebrate-fourth-banniversary-of-nuclear-weapons/
Legal challenges to infrastructure plans to be blocked in Starmer growth push
Dr Ruth Tingay, a prominent environmental campaigner and a co-director of Wild Justice, said: “It sounds like Starmer is auditioning for a role in Trump’s cabinet.
Prime minister hopes his plan to ‘take the brakes off Britain’ will send a message to business to build more
Pippa Crerar, Kiran Stacey, Sandra Laville and Patrick Barkham. Guardian 23rd Jan 2025
Legal challenges to infrastructure plans to be blocked in Starmer growth push
Prime minister hopes his plan to ‘take the brakes off Britain’ will send a message to business to build more
Pippa Crerar, Kiran Stacey, Sandra Laville and Patrick BarkhamThu 23 Jan 2025 11.01 AEDTShare
Campaigners will be blocked from “excessive” legal challenges to planning decisions for major infrastructure projects including airports, railways and nuclear power stations as part of the government’s drive for economic growth.
High court judges will be given the power to rule that judicial reviews on nationally significant projects that they regard as “totally without merit” – and which can currently be brought to the courts three times – will be unable to go to appeal.
Keir Starmer said the change would “take the brakes off Britain” by reforming the planning system, sending a message to business to build more national infrastructure, as ministers desperately pursue opportunities to improve the economy.
“For too long, blockers have had the upper hand in legal challenges – using our court processes to frustrate growth,” he said.
“We’re putting an end to this challenge culture by taking on the nimbys and a broken system that has slowed down our progress as a nation.”
It is one of a range of measures being considered by the government as part of an all-encompassing dash for growth, which has caused alarm among environmental groups.
With GDP figures barely moving since the election, Rachel Reeves is looking at proposals from airport expansion to widespread deregulation in an effort to improve the UK’s economic outlook.
Government sources said the chancellor was “deeply unimpressed” with the pro-growth ideas presented by a number of the country’s biggest regulators when she met them last week, and has since instructed them to improve their plans………………………………………………………………………….
However, some environmentalists have expressed unease with the government’s drive to curtail legal challenges to infrastructure projects, of which they have promised to deliver 150 this parliament………………….
In February 2020, Starmer tweeted “congratulations to the climate campaigners” when plans for a third runway at Heathrow airport were ruled illegal by the court of appeal after a judicial review.
“There is no more important challenge than the climate emergency. That is why I voted against Heathrow expansion,” he said then…………………………………
The current first attempt – known as the paper permission stage – will be scrapped. Primary legislation will be changed so that where a judge in an oral hearing at the high court deems the case “totally without merit”, it will not be possible to ask the court of appeal to reconsider. A request to appeal second attempt will be allowed for other cases………………………………….
Green groups also have voiced concerns over plans to overrule environmental protections to free up the planning system with a new Nature Restoration Fund which, the government said, would not allow protected species such as newts and bats to be deemed more important than homes or infrastructure.
Niall Toru, senior lawyer at Friends of the Earth, said: “No one is above the law, not even the government.
“Friends of the Earth only brings cases we think are strong and necessary to protect people and nature from unlawful harm – and considering our string of recent legal wins, so do the courts.
“It is deeply concerning that Labour is attempting to scapegoat claimants. If ministers don’t want to be challenged in the courts, they should act within the law, because already cases aren’t allowed to proceed unless they have merit.”
Dr Ruth Tingay, a prominent environmental campaigner and a co-director of Wild Justice, said: “It sounds like Starmer is auditioning for a role in Trump’s cabinet.
“This proposal doesn’t make any sense whichever way you look at it. First, campaigners can only take judicial reviews if their case does have merit, as judged by the high court.
“So to then allow another judge to block an appeal on the basis that the case is ‘totally without merit’ is nonsensical and will lead to problems of accountability and lack of scrutiny.
“Second, and more importantly, economic growth based on environmental and climate degradation is a loser’s game, and we’ll all be paying the price of that.” https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jan/23/legal-challenges-to-infrastructure-projects-to-be-blocked-in-push-for-growth
Vegetation being removed to enable upgrade of Sizewell line
Work on a Suffolk railway line has sparked “fury and upset” over the
apparent removal of mature trees and vegetation. Leiston resident Hayley
Trueman said the foliage had been cut down along the Sizewell branch line
between Saxmundham and Leiston as part of an upgrade to enable the track to
be used to transport building materials to the new Sizewell C nuclear power
station.
She said: “The trees and vegetation not only provide screening for
us as residents, but is a green corridor for the abundant wildlife that
lives there.
East Anglian Daily Times 22nd Jan 2025 https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/24873970.vegetation-removed-enable-upgrade-sizewell-line/
Bill Gates’ nuclear energy startup inks new data center deal
The Verge 23rd Jan 2025
Tech companies are flocking to nuclear energy to power their data centers.
TerraPower, a nuclear energy startup founded by Bill Gates, struck a deal this week with one of the largest data center developers in the US to deploy advanced nuclear reactors. TerraPower and Sabey Data Centers (SDC) are working together on a plan to run existing and future facilities on nuclear energy from small reactors.
Tech companies are scrambling to determine where to get all the electricity they’ll need for energy-hungry AI data centers that are putting growing pressure on power grids. They’re increasingly turning to nuclear energy, including next-generation reactors that startups like TerraPower are developing………..
A memorandum of understanding signed by the two companies establishes a “strategic collaboration” that’ll initially look into the potential for new nuclear power plants in Texas and the Rocky Mountain region that would power SDC’s data centers.
There’s still a long road ahead before that can become a reality. The technology TerraPower and similar nuclear energy startups are developing still have to make it through regulatory hurdles and prove that they can be commercially viable.
Compared to older, larger nuclear power plants, the next generation of reactors are supposed to be smaller and easier to site. Nuclear energy is seen as an alternative to fossil fuels that are causing climate change. But it still faces opposition from some advocates concerned about the impact of uranium mining and storing radioactive waste near communities……………..
TerraPower’s reactor design for this collaboration, Natrium, is the only advanced technology of its kind with a construction permit application for a commercial reactor pending with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to the company. The company just broke ground on a demonstration project in Wyoming last year, and expects it to come online in 2030………….
https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/23/24350335/bill-gates-terrapower-data-center-sabey-nuclear-energy-ai
Suffolk Coastal MP said priority to hold Sizewell to account.
24th January, By Dominic Bareham, East Anglian Daily Times
A Suffolk MP has written to the developers of the new Sizewell C nuclear power station expressing concerns raised by her constituents about the current construction.
Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, MP for Suffolk Coastal, said her priority was to hold Sizewell C to account on its “social valuable and charitable investments, employment opportunities and environmental actions”.
Campaigners from action group Together Against Sizewell C (TASC), which is opposed to the power station, have written to her asking her to call a halt to the project due to the “huge amount of environmental damage being inflicted by the project”.
………………………………………………………………In the letter, TASC raised concerns works associated with the Sizewell C project were causing environmental damage, including a new link road, access road, five roundabouts and park and ride sites.
It said: “These projects have resulted in the felling of thousands of trees, grubbing out miles of hedging and covering vast areas under concrete and tarmac, devastating the biodiversity-rich environment, Heritage Coast and the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty landscape in the process.
“This amounts to wholesale environmental vandalism, especially when the project still not only lacks a final investment decision but also a final design of the all-important sea defences, has no guaranteed sustainable supply of potable water essential for its 60 years of operation and with the nuclear site’s ground stabilisation trials remaining unfinished.” https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/24876996.suffolk-coastal-mp-said-priority-hold-sizewell-account/
For Australia, the nuclear lobby brings out the big massage!
https://theaimn.net/for-australia-the-nuclear-lobby-brings-out-the-big-massage/ 24 Jan 25
In December 2022, 16 year-old Will Shackel started a “charity” – Nuclear For Australia, funded by entrepreneur Dick Smith. It’s a “fact-filled” “grassroots” movement, devoted to champion the cause of “clean reliable” nuclear energy for Australia. It’s not a lobby group for the nuclear industry – Oh no! – even if its leaders are Dr ADi Paterson, with his career in the industry, and Tony Irwin, Technical Director of SMR Nuclear Technology Pty Ltd. It’s not political, oh no! even if its goal happens to identical with the policy campaign goal of the Liberal Coalition Party for the coming Federal Election.
But, just by coincidence, in this election year, Nuclear for Australia is touting not just young Will Shackel, but also 24 year old American Grace Stanke. And these are the nuclear propaganda big guns for 2025.
Why do I call them the “big guns?
After all, Australia has some very experienced nuclear experts, happy to tell us how great nuclear power is. There are not only Dr Paterson, and Mr Irwin. There are Ziggy Switkowski, Michael Angwin, the expert staff of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, and the Australian Uranium Association. Well, the thing is they are the old-style big guns, who will spout their expert facts at length, and in detail..
In the new Trumpian era, it’s not enough to know the facts, and perhaps, not even necessary.
What is now important is the person who is touting nuclear power. Is he, and preferably she, young, attractive, warm, enthusiastic, and easy to understand?
Actually, the Australian nuclear lobby has recognised this for a while. They previously promoted the rather wacky young nuclear spruikers Zion Lights and Isodope (Yes – those really are their names)
Zion and Isodope did their best. But what Australia needs, seems to be young people who are bright and attractive, and with appeal not just to the young, but across the generations – knowledgeable, likeable, but not rebellious.
Polls always show that in Australia, women are less supportive of nuclear power, than men are. With compulsory voting, it’s always important for the parties campaigning to pay attention to the opinions of women. So it’s especially important for the nuclear lobby to appeal to women.
Young Will Shackel was a good propagandist over 2023-34, articulate, enthusiastic, and good-looking. But in this election year, what is needed is a female propagandist, an appealing model for young women, and also attractive to men, and acceptable to older generations.
Enter Grace Stanke.
Grace Stanke is an attractive, articulate, accomplshed young woman – a classical violinist, a water-skier, Miss America 2023 – and a nuclear engineer. She graduated in 2023, and went to work full time as Nuclear Engineer and Nuclear Energy advocate at Constellation Energy
I can’t help admiring Grace Stanke for her achievements, and for her apparently very sincere motivation. She is grateful to nuclear medicine, for helping her father who had cancer, and she believes that climate change must be addressed, by replacing fossil fuels. And she’s obviously very bright, and knows her stuff about nuclear technology.
Still, for thoughtful people there’s a problem with Grace as a nuclear proponent. This is the fact that it doesn’t seem to matter that she knows her nuclear stuff. I have watched several video interviews with her, some remarkably long, and she was not called upon to answer the hard questions. The interviewers seem focussed on her career in beauty pageants, and her year as Miss America. The interviews have a happy positive tone, rejoicing in her success as a young woman and a mentor for girls. No need to get down and dirty about toxic wastes, the effects of the industry on the health of uranium miners and other workers and communities.
And this what we’re up against in the new age of Trumpic spin – short, bright messages – purveyed by attractive young people. Marshall McCluhan predicted it decades ago – The Medium is the Massage. It’s usually written as “Message”, but I think that his original wording was more accurate.
Grace Stanke has been travelling around the world, promoting the nuclear industry, including to the Climate Summit Cop 29, and even before graduating, was named the “New Face of Nuclear Energy” by the Wall Street Journal.
I feel that it is incorrect to call people like Grace Stanke and Will Shackel the “big guns”. That suggests a sort of aggressive, forceful propaganda. And that’s not their style. They’re so sincere, and squeaky clean and nice. It will be interesting, but unlikely, if Grace Stanke has to worry about any tough questioning . After all, that wouldn’t be courteous to a visiting Miss America.
Sweden’s Nuclear Waste Plan: A 100,000-Year Gamble
Oil Price, By Kurt Cobb – Jan 20, 2025,
- Sweden plans to store nuclear waste for 100,000 years, but the author questions whether this is feasible given the uncertainties of human civilization and technological progress over such a long period.
- The author argues that climate change, political instability, and technological limitations could all pose threats to the long-term safety of nuclear waste storage.
- The author suggests that reprocessing nuclear waste might be a better solution than burying it, but acknowledges that this is also expensive and dangerous.
The sensible Swedes like planning ahead. This time its storage for nuclear waste from its own nuclear industry—storage that is supposed to last 100,000 years. Nuclear power currently provides 40 percent of Sweden’s electricity from six operating reactors. The Swedes expect to fill the storage site—”60 km of tunnels buried 500 metres down in 1.9 billion year old bedrock”—sometime by 2080 at which time it will be closed.
For understanding whether the target of 100,000 years of successful storage is plausible, I suggest a trip back 100,000 years to understand what surprises might be in store over such an interval. One hundred thousand years ago the Bronze Age, the age when humans first started to refine and work with metal, was still 97,000 years in the future.
It might seem that not much happened in those 97,000 years, but actually a lot that could challenge such storage schemes did. For example, somewhere around 71,000 to 74,000 years ago Mount Toba, located in modern-day Indonesia, erupted in a supervolcano thought to be the largest in human history. The eruption was two orders of magnitude (100X) larger than another famous Indonesian volcanic eruption, Mount Tambora, which caused what is now referred to as “the year without a summer” in 1816.
…………..Of course, another Mount Toba might just solve the problem of keeping humans away from Swedish nuclear waste because there will be so few people left who could end up drinking radioactive water or touching radioactive soil that we needn’t worry. But a lesser disaster might only, say, halve the human presence on Earth while destroying the kind of complex technology and crucial political structure that make it possible to monitor such waste sites.
……………………………..What we call civilization, that is, human settlement in cities, has only been around about 10,000 years. That’s hardly an endorsement for continuity over the next 100,000. Maybe the Swedes believe that the way they are burying their nuclear waste will make the coming and going of human civilizations over the next 100,000 years irrelevant. But, how could they possibly know that? After all, one Swedish environmental group is going to court to challenge the plan because “research from Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology showed the copper capsules [used to contain the waste] could corrode and leak radioactive elements into the ground water.”
Okay, maybe you’re thinking that surely in the future our technological prowess will be always ever greater and so containing these wastes will ultimately be a trivial problem in retrospect. There are so many answers to why that will almost certainly NOT be the case. The simplest one is that technology relies on energy and our inability to get beyond fossil fuels which are finite to something even more dense and versatile doesn’t bode well for an advanced technological future.
………………..I understand that now that we humans have produced this waste, we ought to figure out how to store it safely for the sake of whatever life, both human and nonhuman, comes after us. One solution would be to reprocess it to get the usable radioactive products from the waste and use them up as much as possible. That reduces but does not eliminate waste. And, reprocessing is expensive and dangerous and essentially a doubling down on an advanced technological solution.
Of course, another problem is that reprocessing is great for extracting plutonium that can be used in nuclear weapons—which could lead to another kind of disaster. Beyond this, worldwide the amount of waste continues to increase and there are plans to build new nuclear reactors without a solution to the waste problem having been realized on any scale necessary to take care of wastes from all the countries of the world NOT called Sweden. That’s why burying what we have in the ground seems like a cheap and viable solution in comparison to reprocessing—or the totally crazy idea of shooting such waste into space or into the Sun.
I just wonder how knowledge of such waste sites will be preserved for 100,000 years. I wonder whether we humans can build something that will last 100,000 years given our record and the dangerous exigencies of life on Earth. And, I wonder if we were wise to create something in the first place that requires 100,000 years of care, given how heedless we as a species are to hazards of our own making that may destroy our current civilization much, much sooner than a thousand centuries from now. https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Swedens-Nuclear-Waste-Plan-A-100000-Year-Gamble.html
9 February -UNITAR Hosts Forum on Nuclear Abolition: 80 Years On
Mirage, 23 Jan 2025
- UNITAR partners with the Japan Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (JANA) to host a public event on nuclear disarmament at the University of the Sacred Heart, Tokyo, on 9 February 2025
- The public session invites international experts on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, including Mr. Tariq Rauf, former Head of Verification and Security Policy, IAEA
- The discussion will touch on topics such as multilateral security challenges and diplomacy, prospects for the 2026 NPT review and the latest trends and efforts of the Secretary-General and UN Member States to try to advance nuclear disarmament
- After the public session, a virtual reality (VR) experience to convey the realities of the atomic bombing will be held in collaboration with Fujita Corporation and Tabimachi-gate Hiroshima Co., Ltd. for in person participants
- In person attendance of the public forum requires prior registration and ticket purchase. Livestreaming is available for Part I, free of charge
……………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.miragenews.com/unitar-hosts-forum-on-nuclear-abolition-80-1395104/
Nuclear fusion: it’s time for a reality check
Significant obstacles lie ahead in the quest for commercially viable nuclear fusion, writes Luca Garzotti, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jan/22/nuclear-fusion-its-time-for-a-reality-check
I can’t help thinking Ed Miliband has not been accurately briefed when he says a government funding pledge means Britain is within “grasping distance” of “secure, clean, unlimited energy” from nuclear fusion (Ministers pledge record £410m to support UK nuclear fusion energy, 16 January).
Before we start talking about nuclear fusion via magnetic confinement as a commercially viable source of energy, five main challenges have to be met by the scientific community, each one of them a potential showstopper. We have to demonstrate:
1) That we can run a burning plasma for hours (if not in steady state) with Q=40 (Q being the ratio between power coming from the fusion reactions and power used to heat the plasma) without disruptions. If all goes well, at some point in the future, the ITER fusion project your article mentions will run a burning plasma with Q=10 for about 10 minutes.
2) That we can handle and exhaust the heat escaping from such a plasma and impinging on the first wall of the confining device.
3) That we can breed in the blanket of a power plant more tritium than we burn in the plasma. (Tritium is not readily available in nature and must be produced.)
4) That the materials used to build such a plant can withstand the neutron fluence coming from the burning plasma without losing their structural properties and without becoming excessively radioactive.
5) That a fusion reactor can be operated reliably and maintained by remote handling, minimising the downtime needed for maintenance.
These are massive scientific and technological challenges, the solution of which (despite progress being made) is not in the near future. The reward for finding a solution will be immense and therefore research must continue with humility and tenacity, but there is no room for overoptimistic or triumphalist statements, which can only undermine the credibility of the scientists and engineers working on the problem.
Labour Minister concedes no new nuclear power stations will be built in Scotland
Michael Shanks said the SNP Government’s opposition to new nuclear would see plants blocked
Paul Hutcheon, Political Editor, Daily Record, 21st Jan 2025
The UK Energy Minister has said there will be no new nuclear plants in Scotland because they would be blocked by the SNP Government. Michael Shanks said he disagreed with the Edinburgh administration’s position but said their stance was “legitimate”.
Shanks made his comments in an evidence session to Holyrood on the Labour Government’s plan for GB Energy. The publicly-owned company will be headquartered in Aberdeen and is aimed at spearheading a clean energy revolution.
But nuclear appears to have no future in Scotland as the SNP Government is opposed and can exercise a veto through the planning system.
………..“They’ve set a very clear statement that there will be no new nuclear in Scotland. I might disagree with that but that is the landscape they operate in and therefore there is no plans, there will be no engagement on that issue because it is very clear that those applications would be blocked by the Scottish Government and that is the legitimate position that the Scottish government [takes] on planning matters.”
He added that there was no “confrontation” and said GB Energy has to comply with the rules, regulations and planning statements in each part of the UK.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/labour-minster-concedes-no-new-34522820
North Korea beats sanctions to acquire key tool for nuclear weapons.
North Korea obtained a key tool used in the production of nuclear warheads
by shipping it through three separate countries in an elaborate ploy to
dodge international sanctions on the country’s weapons programme.
According to a US think tank, authorities in Mexico, South Africa and China
failed to spot false documentation for a vacuum furnace, which can be used
in creating uranium fuel for nuclear warheads.
The case demonstrates the
increasing difficulties of enforcing international sanctions against North
Korea. The report by the Institute for Science and International Security
cites unnamed government sources to describe an incident in 2022, when the
vacuum furnace was shipped from Spain with an accurate declaration of its
function.
Times 20th Jan 2025,
https://www.thetimes.com/world/asia/article/north-korea-sanctions-key-nuclear-tool-z6qwg79jj
Hiroshima, Nagasaki request Trump visit to teach ‘reality’
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, January 21, 2025, https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15593546?fbclid=IwY2xjawH-kw1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWQj2ot0ghPWLSQohYVpcrIV882O59BHkl0uht0iBsjnLw2qXSEFsC2wtA_aem_GPd2Oltqb_ec9tqxNwFwAw
HIROSHIMA–Hiroshima Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki has invited new U.S. President Donald Trump to visit the prefectural capital in an effort toward nuclear disarmament and world peace.
In a letter dated Jan. 20, Yuzaki urged Trump to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and engage in dialogue with the survivors of the U.S. atomic bombing of the city in 1945.
Yuzaki highlighted the significant influence the United States, a major nuclear superpower, holds over global security.
He emphasized that Trump’s visit to the city would help him understand the reality of the atomic bombing, sending a powerful message of peace that encourages political leaders to make decisions and take actions toward a world free of nuclear weapons.
A similar request was also sent to Vice President JD Vance.
The prefecture’s call comes amid increasing international tensions over nuclear issues and as 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.
A similar request was made during the inauguration of President Joe Biden four years ago. President Barack Obama was the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima in 2016.
In a separate development, Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki has also announced plans to invite Trump to the city, the second and final location to be targeted by a nuclear attack.
“Leaders of nuclear powers have significant influence on nuclear disarmament efforts,” Suzuki said on Jan. 20, adding that he would closely watch Trump’s nuclear policies.
Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui will co-sign a letter to Trump, which calls for a presidential visit to both cities.
(This article was compiled from reports by Yuhei Kyono and Takashi Ogawa.)
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