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The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) commits £20M to UKI2S fund for fusion innovation

 The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) has contributed a further £20
million to the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S) to back UK-based
spinouts and early-stage companies. UKI2S is a government-backed seed fund
managed by Future Planet Capital that invests in and grows early-stage deep
tech companies emerging from UK research, helping turn science into
commercially viable businesses.

The investment forms part of a wider
£33.25 million funding increase across three UKI2S sub-funds (Space,
Defence and Fusion), taking the fund’s total capacity to £150 million.
The capital includes £9.25 million from the UK Space Agency, £4 million
from the Ministry of Defence and £20 million from UKAEA. The cumulative
investment from UKAEA in the UKI2S fund is £28 million.

 UKAEA 10th June 2026, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ukaea-commits-20m-to-uki2s-fund-for-fusion-innovation

June 15, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Sizewell C to move work offsite ‘as much as possible’ amid skills crisis

The National Audit Office (NAO) last month questioned whether investors in the Sizewell C nuclear power station were sufficiently incentivised to keep construction costs under control.

The public spending watchdog said it was “not clear” whether the project’s funding structure would motivate backers to keep costs down below the project’s “higher regulatory threshold” of £47.7bn.

09 Jun 2026 By Greg Pitcher, https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/civils/sizewell-c-to-move-work-offsite-as-much-as-possible-amid-skills-crisis-09-06-2026/

Sizewell C chief executive Nigel Cann has outlined plans to maximise offsite working on the £38bn nuclear project amid a looming construction skills shortage.

He told MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) this week that productivity was a key risk to the programme and budget of the Suffolk scheme.

Sizewell C, which is backed by Hinkley Point C developer EDF as well as the UK Government and other investors, reached financial close last year.

Asked by PAC chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown whether he was confident the Suffolk nuclear plant would be delivered on time and at its lower ‘regulatory cost’ of £40.5bn, Cann replied: “Absolutely.”

But he admitted there was work to do to achieve this.

“You need to manage your risk as a long project; it’s over 10 years,” Cann told the committee. “So we absolutely need to focus.”

He said his first challenge was to get as much equipment as possible built and stored in the company’s 92,900 square metre warehouse ready for the start of main construction. Enabling works including excavation and infrastructure tasks had to be carried out efficiently as well, he added.

“All that [risk] will be retired by 2029 and then we look forward,” said Cann. “It’s [then] about really managing productivity. The UK currently has got a challenge around making sure productivity rates are high.

“It’s about working with all the bodies concerned, including trade unions, including the workforce, making sure we’ve got enough trained people to do the work, and really optimising that productivity.

“Our big challenge between now and [the start of main construction] to make that happen is to modulise as much as possible. So we want to take as much welding off site, we want to take as much stuff into factories as we can, so that when we get to the construction on site, it’s absolutely optimised.”

The first-ever Annual Skills Report 2026 from Skills England this month predicted a sharp increase in labour demand alongside an exodus of existing workers from the construction industry, warning that a million more people were needed over the next decade to meet UK infrastructure commitments.

Cann said all big infrastructure projects contained uncertainty.

But he added: “If I go back to what are the cornerstones that make a project successful, [they are] stable design at the beginning; a very good bill of quantities; a supply chain [that] has done it before, in contract – we plan to have all our equipment contracts signed up by the end of next year. All that gives you confidence that you can deliver a project on time, on budget.”


The National Audit Office (NAO) last month questioned whether investors in the Sizewell C nuclear power station were sufficiently incentivised to keep construction costs under control.

The public spending watchdog said it was “not clear” whether the project’s funding structure would motivate backers to keep costs down below the project’s “higher regulatory threshold” of £47.7bn.

Jonathan Brearley, permanent secretary at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, told the PAC this week: “If we’d gone for a contract for difference, and purely private finance, we think this wouldn’t deliver either the best value for customers or indeed be affordable for customers.

“And we’ve learned lessons from High Speed 2 (HS2). We are not replicating HS2. We are not putting in a fixed price because of the cost that’s involved. We have created a regulatory system that balances those risks.

“I’m not sitting here saying there is no risk… but I think we’ve put a structure in place that best allows us to manage those risks.”

June 14, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Rolls-Royce strikes nuclear deal with Japan, likely to be tax-payer funded

potential support that could eventually include
taxpayer-backed loans, debt financing or direct investments from the
National Wealth Fund.

Sir Keir Starmer and Sanae Takaichi set to sign agreement to develop advanced modular reactors

Matt Oliver, Industry Editor

 Britain will join forces with Japan to build mini nuclear reactors capable
of powering factories, data centres and military bases. Sanae Takaichi,
Japan’s prime minister, and Sir Keir Starmer will sign an agreement at a
ceremony in Downing Street on Sunday, as part of a push to strengthen
energy cooperation between Tokyo and London.

The tie-up will lead to
British engineering giant Rolls-Royce working with the National Nuclear
Laboratory and its Japanese counterpart to develop advanced modular
reactors (AMRs) and the fuel needed to power them, The Telegraph can
disclose.

Japan has been testing a high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor for
decades, but the technology remains unproven commercially. Under the
partnership, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency will share its extensive safety
data with Rolls-Royce to help the company build a demonstrator AMR in the
UK by the mid-2030s.

Rolls is understood to have held discussions with the
Government about potential support that could eventually include
taxpayer-backed loans, debt financing or direct investments from the
National Wealth Fund.

Under the agreement, Rolls-Royce, the UK and Japanese
national laboratories have also agreed to explore options for supplying the
novel kind of fuel the AMRs will use. Known as tri-structural isotropic
particle fuel (TRISO), it is seen by scientists as inherently safer than
more conventional nuclear fuel because it can be left to cool on its own.
TRISO fuel is made by taking poppy seed-sized pieces of uranium and
wrapping them in layers of ceramic material that are almost as tough as
diamond. These pellets are then compacted into hexagonal blocks or billiard
ball-sized “pebbles”, which can be loaded into a nuclear reactor. The
Government has already announced a £300m programme with Urenco, a nuclear
fuel company, to build a UK enrichment facility capable of providing the
uranium needed to make TRISO pellets.

 Telegraph 14th June 2026, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/06/14/rolls-royce-strikes-nuclear-deal-with-japan/

June 14, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, Japan, UK | Leave a comment

Planned strikes suspended at nuclear site

 Planned strike action at a nuclear site has been suspended, union
officials have confirmed. About 2,000 construction workers employed by
contractors to work at Sellafield, in Cumbria, were set to down tools
between 15 and 21 June because of a dispute over pay. The workers argued
they should receive “a site-specific allowance due to the specialist skills
needed to work at a nuclear site and the hazardous nature of that site”.
Ryan Armstrong, regional officer at the union Unite, said industrial action
had been suspended as an “act of goodwill” to allow “meaningful talks” to
take place between the union and employers.

 BBC 11th June 2026
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c70y88lzel7o

June 14, 2026 Posted by | employment, UK | Leave a comment

Like Midas, our rulers want to monetise everything they touch – and kill it

War and profit are intimately tied together. The billionaires cannot secure their profits without war, or the threat of it – whether it is against workers at home or against other nations abroad.

War and profit are intimately tied together. The billionaires cannot secure their profits without war, or the threat of it – whether against workers at home or against other nations abroad

Jonathan Cook, Jun 10, 2026

I am old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the wave of excitement it unleashed. With the Soviet Union consigned to the history books, the world was going to become a better, safer place.

Liberals crowed that the West’s superior, democratic values had won out. Intellectuals like Francis Fukuyama wrote about the “end of history”: the triumph of free-market capitalism and a resolution of ideological struggle.

Nearly half a century on, the celebratory mood of that time looks not just misplaced but positively deluded.

The end of the Cold War brought not a peace dividend. Rather, it unleashed a surfeit of greed and hubris.

With the fear of mutually assured destruction behind it, the United States unveiled a new doctrine: “full-spectrum global dominance”, militarily and economically.

Fukayama’s vision of a world rallying to capitalism’s side ignored the fact that capitalism isn’t just a neutral, disinterested idea that everyone can subscribe to on equal terms.

It has a physical form too. Giant corporations that seek monopolistic control over other countries’ resources. And a gargantuan war machine headquartered in the US, but with 800 bases around the globe, that is ready to crush those who stand in the way of ever-greater wealth accumulation by a tiny elite of billionaires.

There could be no end of history because capitalism’s billionaire stewards are never satiated. They are driven to constantly entrench and expand their control, to amass more wealth, to buy more influence in our pretend-democracies, to be more ruthless against anyone or anything that threatens their dominance.

Fukayama forgot that capitalism isn’t socialism. It doesn’t seek the best for everyone. It doesn’t want to share the wealth. It doesn’t prioritise dignity over profit. Its lifeblood is exploitation – of individuals and of entire peoples.

Fukuyama forgot that capitalism without constraints would produce resistance.

War and profit

War and profit are intimately tied together. The billionaires cannot secure their profits without war, or the threat of it – whether it is against workers at home or against other nations abroad.

The “end of history” has brought not a unity of interests, and end to struggle, but ever greater polarisation between the haves and have-nots, between powerful nations and weak ones.

War drums sound ever more loudly across the globe. Ask Venezuelans, Cubans, Greenlanders, Ukrainians, Russians, Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians how the “end of history” is working out for them.

Ask Europeans and Americans too, now permanently mired in the politics of austerity. Ever more workers have been forced into the gig economy, with zero-hours contracts. And that is before an AI “revolution” makes swathes of jobs redundant.

The ever-growing arrogance of the Epstein class, however, is catching up with it. A mood of unrest is beginning to find its voice, recognising that we are already deep in a class war.

Meanwhile, Iran – by refusing to submit to US and Israeli aggression, and in realising its power to throttle global oil supplies – has shown that full-spectrum dominance was never as complete as the “masters of the universe” assumed. It has an Achilles’ heel, after all.

The truth is we should all have been terrified by the idea that our leaders might assume and behave as if history had come to an end.

In practice, it could mean only an end to constraints on capitalism – an end to any humanising limits on its reach, on its ambitions, on its cruelty.

Like King Midas, the Epstein class expected to monetise everything it touched. And like King Midas, hubris will be its downfall.

Limits of power

There are constraints, both immediate and long term, that even the billionaires cannot overcome…………………………. https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/like-midas-our-rulers-want-to-monetise

June 13, 2026 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) defends Sizewell C funding which puts risk on taxpayer.

 Representatives of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ)
have defended the government’s funding model for Sizewell C, which places
risk on taxpayers rather than private investors.

Under the agreed final
investment decision (FID), private investors won’t have to pump more
equity into the nuclear project even if construction costs spiral.

At an oral evidence session of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Monday (8
June), DESNZ civil servants were grilled about the findings of a recently
published report by the National Audit Office (NAO) into the delivery of
the 3.2GW nuclear plant, which concluded that private investors are reaping
“high” rewards from the project.

 Utility Week 8th June 2026,
https://utilityweek.co.uk/desnz-defends-sizewell-c-funding-which-puts-risk-on-taxpayer/

June 12, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Screwed again: small investors to bail out billionaires from SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic

In the past, companies had to wait, and have a track record of revenues and profits.

But that rule is gone. Now, a newly public company can qualify, simply based on size—how big it is.

This is work the Wall Street Journal is supposed to be doing. That’s what the Securities and Exchange Commission is supposed to be asking questions about. Instead it’s left to “Where’s your Ed at?” and a handful of podcasts who are showing the world that the investment thesis for the entire American AI industry is blowing up. Costs are rising, not falling.

Inside China / Business, Kevin Walmsley, Jun 07, 2026

SpaceX will soon go public, in an offering that will value the company at over a trillion dollars.

Anthropic and OpenAI are Artificial Intelligence companies, who also plan IPO’s for later in the year.

Recent changes to indexing rules will compel massive share buys into these companies by retirement and pension plans, and by passive ETF’s and mutual funds.

In the past, new companies were required to wait until insiders sold most of the shares after the lockup periods before being added to investment indices. Companies also needed to show a strong history of growth and sound financial practices.

The heads-up on this story comes from one of our favorite Substacks, Gold and Geopolitics. Our concern is that the public, normal people, are at least unaware, and maybe even indifferent, to how really screwed they are at the highest level, and by people at the highest level. It’s not the kind of story that is felt tangibly, at least not at first, like a big spike in gas or food prices. And it’s also difficult to follow, and that’s exactly what the architects of our financial and political system are counting on.

It involves the qualification requirements for a new company to be included in the NASDAQ-100. The regulators changed those rules, so that new public companies can be part of the index. In the past, companies had to wait, and have a track record of revenues and profits. Because trillions of dollars’ worth of pension investments—which is money invested on behalf of workers, millions of private retirement plans, plus exchange-traded funds and other mutual funds, are invested in those indices. And they do so, assuming that the top 100 tech companies, in this case, are well-managed and profitable businesses.

But that rule is gone. Now, a newly public company can qualify, simply based on size—how big it is. And they changed the definition of “public”. Companies can qualify as a megacap public company simply by being large at the time of its IPO, then limiting how many shares they sell to the public. The index now accepts a weighting multiplier. That is what “small float” means—insiders of the company still own almost all of shares, and so completely control the company, even though it’s “public”.

They also threw out the rule for four consecutive quarters—one full year—of profits.

With these rule changes, the guardrails are down and regular Americans will be forced to buy shares of bad companies, that don’t make money.

The NASDAQ, in this case, gets big fees from the Initial Public Offerings of companies that want to avoid the rules that used to govern the industry, and protect small investors, somewhat, and SpaceX, in this case, will have tens of millions of passive investors buying their shares. That massive, passive buying will put a floor under the stock price no matter what happens, at the same time that insiders are allowed to dump their stock. Insiders and early investors are restricted from selling their shares during the IPO; they must wait to do so, until later.

That was previously a major risk to company insiders, and early investors: if the IPO price is set too high, or if the company does poorly after the IPO, their shares will be worth far less than they had hoped, just as they and all the other insiders are selling. But with these rule changes, passive investors will be buying shares, every single month, because they’re buying the index.

This is the source document. Paragraph 2 explains the new “fast entry” rules for new companies that list on the NASDAQ exchange. If the company’s market cap is in the top 40 of companies already there, it’s a Fast Entry addition, and will be put into the index after 15 trading days. So 15 days after the IPO, SpaceX will go into the index. The company will be exempt from “seasoning and liquidity requirements”—seasoning is how much experience the company has, earning money, and liquidity is how much money it has in the bank. Exempt………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

This is work the Wall Street Journal is supposed to be doing. That’s what the Securities and Exchange Commission is supposed to be asking questions about. Instead it’s left to “Where’s your Ed at?” and a handful of podcasts who are showing the world that the investment thesis for the entire American AI industry is blowing up. Costs are rising, not falling. AI data centers today are budgeted to cost $50 billion per gigawatt to build—and they’re not getting built anyway. Soon they’ll cost $80 to $100 billion per.

And the costs are rising just as companies who use the AI are realizing they’re not getting their money’s worth. Uber is a client of Anthropic, and has already spent its entire 2026 budget. Will they load up on some more tokens, to get through the rest of the year? Doubt it—it was a “head exploding moment” to learn how much Uber spent on tokens, which did NOT result in useful consumer features.

Alibaba is a Chinese company, and their Qwen large language model is the world’s most popular AI tool for business owners outside the United States. Airbnb tried to use ChatGPT to design a new reservation feature on their app, and even though the CEO of Airbnb is good friends with Sam Altman at OpenAI, his company switched over to Qwen instead. It works faster and costs less.

And that is catching on. Other companies are quietly making the switch to Chinese large-language models because they cost far less, and they’re open source and easier for their teams to use in their companies. The performance of Chinese models is similar to Silicon Valley’s best products, and are easier to use, cost less, and are more efficient. Companies are enterprise users—they pay for tokens, and executives lose their jobs if other executives heads blow up when they see their AI bill and ask what they’re getting for it. Companies are looking for alternatives to OpenAI and Anthropic, and signing up for DeepSeek instead. That also means that data is not going through US data centers, it’s coming to China instead, where electricity also happens to cost a lot less.

That could be the biggest challenge of all. For active investors – not the passive ones — business models matter. Revenues and profits – they matter. And the cost of compute is what is driving these corporate users of AI. They pay for the AI. Their engineering teams use it, every day, to develop new tools and applications, and they’re switching over to Chinese LLM’s.

Anthropic and OpenAI are fundamentally bad companies, with bad valuations, and produce financial reports that not even their own top executives trust. Their customers are moving away. And that used to mean that the insiders cannot cash out and make billions of dollars. They might even go to jail. But that was before they changed the rules, and so they’ll make you buy them instead.

Be Good.

Resources and links:……………………………………………………………………………………….. https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/screwed-again-small-investors-to?publication_id=3320368&post_id=200908108&isFreemail=true&r=3alev&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

June 11, 2026 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

Industrial dispute on Hinkley C site sees large police presence

A LARGE early morning police presence was needed at Hinkley Point C as
tempers flared while hundreds of workers were locked out of the site during
unofficial industrial action. The dispute arose after claims a dangerous
crane lift on the nuclear power station construction site has put workers
at risk. MEH Alliance workers, who are delivering Hinkley C’s mechanical,
electrical, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning installations,
staged protest sit-downs in canteens. The site’s management then withdrew
access rights for the workers ‘to avoid any further disruption, limit
impacts to other HPC team members, and allow time for discussions’.

West Somerset Free Press 6th June 2026, https://www.wsfp.co.uk/news/industrial-dispute-on-hinkley-c-site-sees-large-police-presence-914669

June 10, 2026 Posted by | employment, UK | Leave a comment

Expert Warns of ‘Rubber Stamp’ Approvals as Ontario Expands Nuclear Spending

the changes effectively shift final authority from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to cabinet if concerns arise during assessment. It also shifts accountability if those decisions eventually go wrong—although the elected officials involved would likely be out of office by the time the full impacts were known.

the budget “goes on at some length about how wonderful [nuclear projects] are in terms of their economic contributions, but never actually talks about costs.”

the combination of the proposed new builds, the SMR pilots, and refurbishments will push capital expenditures “north of $400 billion”.

June 3, 2026, Nathaniel Crouch, https://www.theenergymix.com/expert-warns-of-rubber-stamp-approvals-as-ontario-expands-nuclear-spending/?utm_source=The+Energy+Mix&utm_campaign=7f479c951f-TEM_RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_dc146fb5ca-7f479c951f-510028305

Federal impact assessment reviews for two Ontario nuclear projects risk serving as little more than procedural approvals, a Toronto environmental studies professor says, as they move through the process without first identifying the reactor types to be built.

Ontario’s Wesleyville Project in Port Hope has several reactor technologies under consideration, and the Bruce C expansion near Kincardine has not yet selected a technology, either. Both are undergoing federal impact assessment.

Mark Winfield, a professor at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University, told The Energy Mix he is also concerned that proposed federal approval reforms, combined with Bill C-5 passed last summer, and the newly announced National Electricity Strategy, could lead to what he called “the explicit politicization of decision-making on nuclear projects.” Where “once projects are designated as being in the national interest,” he said, “they will be approved regardless of what the technical reviews find.”

That would be “a very dangerous situation when dealing with what will be first-of-kind reactors in Canada, or in some cases globally,” he added.

Winfield said the changes effectively shift final authority from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to cabinet if concerns arise during assessment. It also shifts accountability if those decisions eventually go wrong—although the elected officials involved would likely be out of office by the time the full impacts were known.

“The implication of going to cabinet is that the regulator’s concerns could be overridden for political or economic reasons,” he said, recalling Harper government’s 2008 decision to fire the CNSC chair after the rejection of the MAPLE reactors at Chalk River.

Winfield said Canada’s new electricity strategy seemed to “aggressively skate over” the cost implications of its nuclear heavy focus, as nuclear energy continues to be subject to enormous capital costs and construction delays.

“Essentially the federal strategy seems to be following Ontario’s lead—a heavy emphasis on gas and nuclear, and mostly ignoring the global movement in the direction of renewables.”

Ontario, Ratepayers Confront Growing Nuclear Costs

Critics have warned that Ontario’s nuclear expansion strategy could carry major long-term financial consequences.

In May, the Ontario government announced a $300-million cost-sharing agreement with Bruce Power to advance early planning for the expansion of the Bruce C nuclear complex, a project the province said would support 18,900 jobs and help make Ontario home to the largest nuclear generating facility in the world.

The announcement marked one of the clearest signals yet that Premier Doug Ford’s government sees large-scale nuclear expansion as the backbone of Ontario’s future electricity system. It also landed amid criticism that the province is shifting billions in electricity costs onto taxpayers, obscuring the long-term price of nuclear refurbishments, new reactors, and small modular nuclear projects.

Ontario’s 2026 budget led the province into a $13.8-billion deficit, with energy expenditures— and nuclear energy in particular—central to the shortfall. The government’s budget documents flagged large “amounts for electricity cost relief” and related line items, but stopped short of detailing long-term capital costs. That omission drew sharp criticism from electricity system experts.

Winfield said the budget “goes on at some length about how wonderful [nuclear projects] are in terms of their economic contributions, but never actually talks about costs.” Using figures the province provided for electricity supports, Winfield calculated that electricity-related spending accounted for roughly half the deficit—about $6.9 billion on the books—but said it would be difficult to figure out exactly how much of that line item in the budget is nuclear related because the figures are “deliberately opaque.”

Environmental Defence Canada Programs Director Keith Brooks too linked the deficit to rising nuclear and legacy refurbishment costs, as well as growing use of gas power plants to meet growing demand while the nuclear plants are being brought online.

29% Rate Hike

Last November, Ontario raised its basic electricity rate by 29% and simultaneously expanded rebate programs, which the government framed as short-term relief and a change in cost allocations. Both Winfield and Brooks said those measures masked the underlying driver: rising costs tied to refurbished and new nuclear plants. “What they seem to be doing is setting a precedent—allowing the costs for these projects to be charged to ratepayers before they’re built,” Winfield said, adding that the combination of the proposed new builds, the SMR pilots, and refurbishments will push capital expenditures “north of $400 billion”.

the combination of the proposed new builds, the SMR pilots, and refurbishments will push capital expenditures “north of $400 billion”.

June 8, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, Canada | Leave a comment

Police at Hinkley Point C as thousands of workers locked out

 Police attended Hinkley Point C on Wednesday (June 3) as part of an
ongoing industrial dispute that has seen thousands of workers locked-out of
the site. MEH Alliance workers staged a sit-in protest in the site canteen
on Tuesday (June 4).

The protest related to several issues alleged by
workers, including a change in shift patterns to include weekends. Workers
had previously held a vote to overwhelmingly reject the shift pattern
change. Following the protest, EDF has barred MEH Alliance workers from
attending site without pay this week – with no decision made on when they
can return.

 Bridgwater Mercury 6th June 2026, https://www.bridgwatermercury.co.uk/news/26169782.police-hinkley-point-c-thousands-workers-locked/

June 8, 2026 Posted by | employment, UK | Leave a comment

Up to 2,000 workers temporarily kicked off Hinkley Point C site after protest

 EDF has told around 2,000 mechanical and electrical (M&E) workers to stay
away from the Hinkley Point C construction site until next Monday (8 June)
after they downed tools in a dispute over shift patterns and other
grievances, Construction News understands.

The client for the £46bn
Somerset nuclear project suspended the passes of workers from the MEH
Alliance who took part in a sit-down protest on Tuesday (2 June). It is
understood that operatives refused to undertake scheduled tasks on site and
instead sat down for long periods in areas including the canteen and
changing rooms.

The workers are believed to be unhappy with a proposed
change to shift patterns being introduced in July that will see them on
duty for 10 days in a row every fortnight.

 Construction News 4th June 2026,  EDF has told around 2,000 mechanical and electrical (M&E) workers to stay
away from the Hinkley Point C construction site until next Monday (8 June)
after they downed tools in a dispute over shift patterns and other
grievances, Construction News understands. The client for the £46bn
Somerset nuclear project suspended the passes of workers from the MEH
Alliance who took part in a sit-down protest on Tuesday (2 June). It is
understood that operatives refused to undertake scheduled tasks on site and
instead sat down for long periods in areas including the canteen and
changing rooms. The workers are believed to be unhappy with a proposed
change to shift patterns being introduced in July that will see them on
duty for 10 days in a row every fortnight.

 Construction News 4th June 2026 EDF has told around 2,000 mechanical and electrical (M&E) workers to stay
away from the Hinkley Point C construction site until next Monday (8 June)
after they downed tools in a dispute over shift patterns and other
grievances, Construction News understands. The client for the £46bn
Somerset nuclear project suspended the passes of workers from the MEH
Alliance who took part in a sit-down protest on Tuesday (2 June). It is
understood that operatives refused to undertake scheduled tasks on site and
instead sat down for long periods in areas including the canteen and
changing rooms. The workers are believed to be unhappy with a proposed
change to shift patterns being introduced in July that will see them on
duty for 10 days in a row every fortnight.

 Construction News 4th June 2026,  EDF has told around 2,000 mechanical and electrical (M&E) workers to stay
away from the Hinkley Point C construction site until next Monday (8 June)
after they downed tools in a dispute over shift patterns and other
grievances, Construction News understands. The client for the £46bn
Somerset nuclear project suspended the passes of workers from the MEH
Alliance who took part in a sit-down protest on Tuesday (2 June). It is
understood that operatives refused to undertake scheduled tasks on site and
instead sat down for long periods in areas including the canteen and
changing rooms. The workers are believed to be unhappy with a proposed
change to shift patterns being introduced in July that will see them on
duty for 10 days in a row every fortnight.

 Construction News 4th June 2026, https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/supply-chain/up-to-2000-workers-temporarily-kicked-off-hinkley-point-c-site-after-protest-04-06-2026/

June 8, 2026 Posted by | employment, UK | Leave a comment

Rolls-Royce under fire for outsourcing parts of UK nuclear project to South Korea

 Multibillion-pound contract to build three small modular
reactors was signed with government body in April. Rolls-Royce is facing
mounting criticism from politicians and industry figures for a decision to
outsource the core parts of a multibillion-pound UK government plan for
three small nuclear reactors to South Korea.

The announcement by the
British engineering giant, the lead investor in a consortium developing the
reactors, has raised questions about whether the government’s target of
70 per cent of the project being British-made will be met.

Rolls-Royce
SMR’s selection of South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility to finalise designs
for key components for the small nuclear reactors has triggered warnings
from industry representatives that the UK is squandering a chance to build
its own supply chain for the technology. Liam Byrne, Labour MP and chair of
parliament’s business and trade committee, said he would be writing to
ministers seeking clarification as to how Rolls-Royce’s announcement is
compatible with the 70 per cent target.

 FT 5th June 2026, https://www.ft.com/content/dcc90c25-43e7-4456-84bb-35458dc6726c?syn-25a6b1a6=1

June 6, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Canadian nuclear company Bruce Power has launched a CAD1 million (USD722,000)bribery system to win over municipalities.

World Nuclear News, 2 June 2026

Bruce Power has launched a CAD1 million (USD722,000) Regional Municipal Readiness Assessment Fund to support municipalities in the Bruce, Grey, and Huron counties in advancing planning related to the proposed Bruce C Project. The fund is designed to support studies and assessments that help municipalities prepare for the potential opportunities and impacts associated with Bruce C – a proposed new power plant of up to 4.8 GW at the Bruce Power site in Ontario – with individual projects to be completed by the end of 2027.

“Municipal leadership is critical in planning for large-scale infrastructure opportunities,” Pat Dalzell, Bruce Power’s Vice-President, Corporate Affairs and Market Development, said. “This new fund will help to ensure communities are well positioned to capture economic benefits while maintaining the services and quality of life residents depend on.”

brennainlloyd . 3June 26

Bruce Power has launched a CAD1 million (USD722,000) Regional Municipal Readiness Assessment Fund to support municipalities in the Bruce, Grey, and Huron counties in advancing planning related to the proposed Bruce C Project. The fund is designed to support studies and assessments that help municipalities prepare for the potential opportunities and impacts associated with Bruce C – a proposed new power plant of up to 4.8 GW at the Bruce Power site in Ontario – with individual projects to be completed by the end of 2027.

“Municipal leadership is critical in planning for large-scale infrastructure opportunities,” Pat Dalzell, Bruce Power’s Vice-President, Corporate Affairs and Market Development, said. “This new fund will help to ensure communities are well positioned to capture economic benefits while maintaining the services and quality of life residents depend on.”

June 5, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, Canada | Leave a comment

Nuclear Power and Other People’s Money

Arnie Gundersen, https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/05/28/nuclear-power-and-other-peoples-money/

Nuclear Power would never have existed without government handouts and ratepayer subsidies. The commercial nuclear power Gordian knot, from mineral extraction to component manufacturing to reactor operation to Price-Anderson Nuclear Insurance, and ending in waste disposal, exists only because of opium, whoops, OPM, Other People’s Money, in the form of taxpayer subsidies. Intense political pressure from the DC-based Nuclear Energy Institute prevents national and state politicians from cutting that twisted knot into pieces.

The financial problems associated with constructing and operating commercial nuclear power plants and the need for federal subsidies had been identified as early as 1958 by Time Magazine.

“The program needs a strong infusion of Government aid because

commercial nuclear power is so new, complex, and costly that private

companies cannot carry that burden alone,”[1]

And again at the turn of the 21st century according to Scully Capital Services Inc, a Washington-based investment and financial services firm, when the “Nuclear Renaissance” was being hyped by NEI:

“without government participation, some risks and costs of new nuclear reactors may remain at unmanageable levels.” [2]

Just before the Fukushima meltdowns in February 2011, the Union of Concerned Scientists again identified how heavily subsidized nuclear power had been and continued to be:

Government subsidies to the nuclear power industry over the past fifty years have been so large in proportion to the value of the energy produced that in some cases it would have cost taxpayers less to simply buy kilowatts on the open market and give them away… Piling new subsidies on top of existing ones will provide the industry with little incentive to rework its business model to internalize its considerable costs and risks.[3]

In 2018, sixty years after that Time Magazine subsidy analysis, the United States Congressional Research Service issued an analysis[4] of total government energy research and development funding spanning 71 years between 1948 and 2018. The report concluded:

Energy-related research and development (R&D)—on coal-based synthetic petroleum and on atomic bombs—played an important role in the successful outcome of World War II. In the postwar era, the federal government conducted R&D on fossil and nuclear energy sources to support peacetime economic growth. … For the 71-year period from 1948 through 2018, nearly 13% went to renewables, compared with nearly 5% for electric systems, 11% for energy efficiency, 24% for fossil, and 48% for nuclear.

The graph [on original]shows that for seventy years after the secrets of the atom were unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, America plowed almost half (48%) of its research funds into more nuclear subsidies. What did those expenditures buy us? At the peak of the Atoms for Peace nuclear building spree in 1990, nuclear power provided about 20% of America’s electricity. But electricity is only a small part of the total energy America consumes; most of the US energy consumption comes from fossil fuels for transportation and heating. The nation’s overall energy consumption shows that nuclear power provides about 9 percent of the energy that our society runs on[5]. The bottom line is that half of America’s research expenditures over 70 years subsidized nuclear power’s 10% energy contribution. That is hardly a worthwhile investment unless you are the companies receiving all that cash!

I can understand that subsidizing a nascent industry in 1950 might be a reasonable policy decision, but nuclear subsidies have continued for eight decades. When your kids return from college, letting them have their bedroom back might be reasonable. But when the kids turn eighty years old, it’s long past time to end that subsidy. And ending those subsidies is exactly what the Nuclear Energy Institute was created to prevent.

It’s time to pick up the pieces from Atoms for Peace. Without subsidies, nuclear power is simply not competitive with renewable energy.

power is simply not competitive with renewable energy.

NOTES

1. February 10, 1958 Time Magazine ↑

2. July 2002 Business Case for New Nuclear Power Plants, Scully Capital Services, Inc. ↑

3. https://www.ucs.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-viable-without-subsidies?utm_source=SP&utm_medium=more&utm_campaign=NuclearSubsidies-02-23-11-more ↑

4. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RS22858, Renewable Energy R&D Funding History: A Comparison with Funding for Nuclear Energy, Fossil Energy, Energy Efficiency, and Electric Systems R&D, CRS Product Number RS22858 ↑

5. https://usafacts.org/articles/what-kinds-of-energy-does-the-us-use/ ↑

Arnie Gundersen is the Chief Engineer, board member, and resident “science guy” at the Fairewinds Energy Education NGO. Since the catastrophe at Fukushima, Arnie focuses his energy worldwide on the migration of radioactive microparticles. During his multiple trips to Japan, Arnie has met and trained community-volunteer citizen-scientists to study the migration of radioactive microparticles from Fukushima in two co-authored peer-reviewed scientific articles.

May 30, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Spending watchdog warns £38bn cost of Sizewell C nuclear plant is ‘risky’

risks surrounding the project “could easily turn Sizewell C into a financial disaster” while the funding model meant its investors were “the only ones who can’t lose”.

National Audit Office says potential benefits are ‘considerable but uncertain’ while risks are ‘immediate and substantial’

Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondent, Guardian, 20 May 26

The cost of the government’s £38bn nuclear plant in Suffolk is subject to “significant uncertainty” and may outweigh the benefits for UK households until at least 2064, according to the government’s spending watchdog.

The National Audit Office (NAO) has warned that although the potential benefits of the Sizewell C nuclear plant are considerable, they remain uncertain. The risks, however, are “immediate, substantial and borne by the public”.

The government claims the nuclear reactor, expected to generate the equivalent of enough low-carbon electricity to power 6m homes when it begins operations in the late 2030s, could save £2bn a year from the electricity system compared with using other low-carbon technologies.

However, for households the overall savings could be outstripped by the cost of supporting its construction until almost halfway through its 60-year operational life. The project could take even longer to “break even” if there are cost overruns or delays, the NAO warned.

“Sizewell C is a project of exceptional scale, complexity and significance for taxpayers,” said Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the chair of the public accounts committee, which oversees the work of the NAO. “Experience from comparable nuclear projects in the UK and overseas highlights their vulnerability to delays and cost overruns.”

Sizewell C is being developed by French state nuclear company EDF as a successor project to the Hinkley Point C reactor in Somerset, the first nuclear plant to be built in the UK in a decade. It has invested £1.1bn to take a 12.5% stake in the project alongside the UK government, which has invested £14.2bn as the majority stakeholder.

British Gas’s parent company, Centrica, owns 15% of Sizewell C while the Canadian pension fund La Caisse and the investment fund Amber Infrastructure own 20% and 7.6%, respectively……………………………………………….

Households began paying for the Sizewell C project via home energy bills at the start of the year to help fund construction. This financial framework, known as a regulated asset base model, is a marked change from the Hinkley Point deal, which will begin to earn a guaranteed stream of revenues from home energy bills only once it begins generating in the early 2030s.

Critics of the regulated asset base model, including the campaign group Stop Sizewell C, have warned that any construction delays could mean that bill payers support Sizewell without receiving power for longer than expected, while the government would be on the hook for the project’s financial risk.

Stop Sizewell C said the risks surrounding the project “could easily turn Sizewell C into a financial disaster” while the funding model meant its investors were “the only ones who can’t lose”.

The NAO has urged the government to mitigate the risk by using “close monitoring, greater transparency to parliament, and by securing value for money from the significant public and private investment”. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/may/20/spending-watchdog-warns-38bn-cost-of-sizewell-c-nuclear-plant-is-risky

May 24, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

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