‘Huge conflict of interest’: Trump’s $600 million windfall after nuclear deal.
ByMatt O’Brien and Jennifer McDermott, Sydney Morning Herald, December 19, 2025
The parent company of US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social media platform is merging with a fusion power company, an unusual pairing of the Trump name with a futuristic clean energy venture that aims to power the next wave of artificial intelligence. Trump Media & Technology announced its merger with TAE Technologies in an all-stock deal that the companies said was valued at more than $US6 billion ($9.1 billion).
The combined company says it plans to find a site and begin construction next year on the “world’s first utility-scale fusion power plant,” with aims to provide the electricity needed for artificial intelligence.
Nuclear fusion is seen as a promising solution to climate change caused by burning fossil fuels, but one that is a long way off compared to today’s clean technologies like wind and solar. It will need huge investment as well as regulation to advance, which makes Trump’s ties a major conflict, said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.
“He’s jumping into this industry just like he jumped into cryptocurrency a couple of years ago,” Painter said. “Just as the United States government is gonna get all involved in it. And it’s so obvious that there’s a huge conflict of interest.”
Devin Nunes, the Republican congressman who resigned in 2021 to become the chief executive of Trump Media, will be co-CEO of the new company with TAE CEO Michl Binderbauer.
Shares of Trump Media & Technology have tumbled 70 per cent this year but jumped 34 per cent in afternoon trading on Thursday.
Trump is by far the largest stakeholder in Trump Media, owning 41 per cent of all outstanding shares. The share surge has added about $US400 million ($605 million) to Trump’s net worth, according to Forbes.
Backed by Google and other investors, TAE is a private company and the merger with Trump Media would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies.
“We’re taking a big step forward toward a revolutionary technology that will cement America’s global energy dominance for generations,” Nunes said in a prepared statement.
TAE focuses on nuclear fusion, a technology that combines two light atomic nuclei to form a single heavier one. It releases enormous amount of energy, a process that occurs on the sun and other stars, according to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency.
TAE and Trump Media shareholders will each own approximately 50 per cent of the combined company.
In October, the US Department of Energy released what it called a “road map” for fusion technology, with the aim of fostering “a burgeoning fusion private sector industry in the US toward maturity on the most rapid timeline.” A number of tech companies, including Google, Microsoft and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, have shown interest in fusion technology as a way of powering the energy-hungry data centres needed to build and run their AI products…………………………………………
Holland said the Trump administration has said it strongly supports fusion, but has yet to make any new financial support available.
In the association’s surveys of the industry, companies are saying they expect to see fusion energy on the electricity grid in the 2030s, with most saying they expect it in the first half of the 2030s, Holland said.
TAE and Trump Media say the transaction values each TAE common stock at $US53.89 per share.
At closing, Trump Media & Technology Group will be the holding company for Truth Social and TAE, along with its subsidiaries TAE Power Solutions and TAE Life Sciences. https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/huge-conflict-of-interest-trump-media-to-merge-with-nuclear-fusion-company-in-9-1-billion-deal-20251219-p5nowl.html
Let the investor beware: why buying UK government Green Savings Bonds now means backing nuclear.
15th December 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/let-the-investor-beware-why-buying-government-green-savings-
In commercial transactions, prospective purchasers are often urged to exercise caution before signing on the dotted line with a Latin phrase, ‘caveat emptor’ or ‘let the buyer beware’. The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities would like to warn future purchasers of government savings products to be wary that they might be investing in nuclear projects.
The UK’s Green Financing Programme raises financing from investors through the issuance of green gilts via the Debt Management Office and the sale of retail Green Savings Bonds to the public via National Savings and Investments. This money has been invested in projects which help the government move toward their ambition to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Many savers desiring to help tackle climate change will have invested their hard-earned money into the three-year, interest-bearing bonds which were first launched in October 2021.
To date, the Green Financing Programme has raised over £51 billion.
The Green Financing Framework issued in 2021 included guidelines on the projects that could be backed; these fell into six categories: clean transportation, renewable energy, energy efficiency, pollution prevention and control, living and natural resources, and climate change adaptation.
Every year the government publishes a report identifying which projects have been backed into the last twelve months and their impact on climate emissions[i]. Typically this has including building offshore wind farms, investing in electric buses, offering discounts on electric vehicles, installing electric vehicle charging points, planting masses of trees, and insulating homes.
Now in a retrograde step, the government, obsessed with funnelling as much public money as possible into nuclear power, has issued a revised Green Financing Framework, with future investment in nuclear energy projects now included in the list of Eligible Green Expenditures.[ii]
The Framework makes clear that ‘the proceeds from sales of green gilts or Green Savings Bonds issued prior to 27 November 2025 will not be allocated to nuclear energy related expenditures’, but there will be no restriction on such investment after this date.
In the new supposedly ‘Green’ Category: Nuclear Energy, investment can be made in: ‘Electricity and/or heat (including cogeneration); support for the design, development, construction, commissioning, safe operation, lifetime extension, or supporting infrastructure of new or existing nuclear power generation assets (including enabling fuelcycle activities; radioactive waste and spent fuel storage, management and final disposal), and research and development for future fission and fusion energy technologies
Nuclear is NOT a green energy technology, but permitting the use of money raised from green investors in the management and disposal of high-level radioactive waste, which poisons people and our planet for millenia, must surely be the ultimate travesty. Our advice: avoid.
Elon Musk says small nuclear reactors ‘super dumb’
Eamonn Sheridan, 15 Dec 25, https://investinglive.com/news/musk-says-small-nuclear-reactors-super-dumb-20251214/
Musk coming out in favour or solar energy
Musk weighing in on nuclear reactors in a tweet:
- The Sun is an enormous, free fusion reactor in the sky. It is super dumb to make tiny fusion reactors on Earth.
- Even if you burned 4 Jupiters, the Sun would still round up to 100% of all power that will ever be produced in the solar system!!
- Stop wasting money on puny little reactors, unless actively acknowledging that they are just there for your pet science project jfc.
Sizewell C — the last of its kind
The deal to build the Sizewell C, two reactors using the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) design, using the Regulated Asset Base (RAB) finance model was inevitably a bad one for the UK public. It gives guaranteed profits to investors by placing the risks on consumers while the EPR has an unenviable record of huge cost and time overruns. It requires consumers to pay the finance charges in the construction period – of the same order as the construction cost – as a surcharge on their bills. However, the additional subsidies and risk removal that were necessary to persuade private investors to take stakes are shocking.
The new finance deal for Sizewell C
RAB financing deal, developed from 2018, was announced in 2021 and legislated for in 2021-2022 when Kwasi Kwarteng was Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and completed under Ed Miliband at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) in July 2025. The Regulated Asset Base (RAB) finance model for nuclear power plants was sold to the public on the basis that it would provide cheaper power than using the fixed power price financial model under which the Hinkley Point C reactors1 are being built.
It was claimed the model would bring in new sources of investment, particularly institutional investors such as pension funds. The power price reduction would be achieved if the public shared the economic risks with the investors and offered limited subsidies and guarantees. Reducing the risk borne by investors would reduce the cost of capital, a major element in the cost of power from a nuclear power plant, and hence the price of electricity. The subsidies were portrayed not so much as paying costs that would be expected to have been borne by investors, as is normal for subsidies, but as giving the investors guarantees they were not at risk from the consequences of low-probability, high-consequence events and from volatile wholesale electricity market prices.
After five years of effort by government to complete the deal, a Final Investment Decision (FID) for Sizewell C was finally taken on July 22, 2025. The contracts were finalised on November 4, 20252. The largest investor is the UK government (44.9%). The other investors are the Canadian pension fund, La Caisse (20%), Centrica (15%), EDF (12.5%) and Amber Infrastructure (7.6%). Amber Infrastructure is acting on behalf of the UK’s Nuclear Liabilities Fund, NLF, (4.6%), arguably public funds, and International Public Partnerships Limited 3.0%. So only 23% of the investment will come from institutional investors, 27.5% from energy companies and about half (if we include the NLF) from public sources.
An analysis of the Sizewell C deal shows that balance of risks is one-sided with the risks falling almost entirely on taxpayers and consumers, with minimal penalties and generous incentives offered to investors. The subsidies offered are far more extensive than those acknowledged by government and represent large amounts of public money being given to the private investors for no public return. The price of power from Sizewell C is unknown and will vary unpredictably from year to year, but there can be little confidence the RAB model will produce a lower power price than Hinkley Point C even if the cost of the subsidies is not factored in. The incentives required to bring in private investors are so expensive and risky to consumers that the model should not be repeated, and, like the Hinkley Point C deal, it ought to be a one-off, not a door-opener for new nuclear investments.
The Risk/Reward balance
The plan to use the Hinkley Point C finance model for Sizewell C was abandoned by EDF in 2018. This was because it was not willing to accept the financial risks it had signed up to for Hinkley by agreeing a fixed power purchase price with all construction cost and time risks falling on itself. Costs have escalated dramatically at Hinkley since the deal was signed in 2016, by up to 90% but cannot be passed through to the power purchase price: and this commitment led to EDF writing off €12.9bn of its investment in Hinkley Point C in 20233.
The investors in the Sizewell project frequently talk about the project being ‘derisked’4 by which they mean not that the risk has been reduced, but that it falls on others………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Subsidies…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… “The acknowledgement that ‘Difference’ payments will be substantial demonstrates that it is expected that consumers will be forced to buy power from Sizewell C that will cost more than alternatives in the market.”
…………………………………………………………………………………………….. Will the power be cheaper than for Hinkley?……………………………………………………………………….
Is the Sizewell deal repeatable?………………………………………………………………………………. If the deal proves not to be repeatable, the huge amount of government time and cost that has gone into completing the deal will, as with Hinkley Point C, have been a costly diversion of more than a decade from pursuing the cheaper, quicker and more reliable ways of meeting the government’s promises of net zero…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Is Sizewell the last large reactor for the UK?…………………………………………………………………………………
Endnotes -……… [copious] https://policybrief.org/briefs/sizewell-c-the-last-of-its-kind/
Could armed robots be the future of nuclear site security?
experiments to test the military potential of near-identical quadrupeds being carried out by the US armed forces, with Spot’s cousin converted into an armed platform by the addition of an artificial intelligence-enabled gun turret
16th October 2024, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/spot-to-robocop-could-armed-robots-be-the-future-of-nuclear-site-security/
Robots are becoming increasingly employed in decommissioning operations at Sellafield and Dounreay. Whilst the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities welcome their use in hazardous environments which are too radioactive and otherwise contaminated for human operators, we have concerns that in the long-term their use might expand into on-site security.
The Atomic Energy Authority Special Constable Act 1976 first permitted the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority to raise an armed private police force. In 2005, the UKAEA Constabulary was replaced by the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. CNC officers are routinely armed with sub machine guns and authorised to use deadly force – in extremis – whilst guarding nuclear facilities, but also whilst engaged in hot pursuit outside.
However last month, seemingly to counter possible threats from sabotage or terrorism and the greater incidence of climate change protests, the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband instructed the CNC to redeploy officers from their traditional duties to protecting coastal gas plants with effect from April 2025[i]. It is likely that this role may further expand to cover oil depots.
In 2021, the NFLAs objected to planned legislation to widen the CNC’s remit to guarding non-nuclear sites. In our response to a consultation, we said that the ‘CNC’s role should continue to be explicitly confined to policing nuclear sites and facilities’ and that ‘protection of critical national infrastructure should be carried out by an adequately funded democratically controlled local police force’ rather than an unaccountable paramilitary police force.
If CNC numbers at nuclear sites are diluted, there could be pressure to employ robots on security duties in their stead, and in the long-term it is not inconceivable that they may even become armed and autonomous.
The ‘poster child’ of the robots is the quadruped first developed by Boston Dynamics in the United States, affectionately known as Spot the Dog. This variant is now routinely used in decommissioning operations in environments that are unsafe for human operators. The robot uses a specialist scanning system to create a 3D moveable image of its environment, allowing engineers to carry out remote inspections in support of clean-up operations[ii].
Spot can though operate entirely autonomously. Last month, it was reported that such a robot had completed a 35-day autonomous operation to inspect the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s Joint European Torus (JET) facility. Tasks successfully completed included ‘mapping the facility, taking sensor readings, avoiding obstacles and personnel involved in the decommissioning process, and collecting essential data on JET’s environment and overall status twice a day. The robot also knew when to dock and undock with its charging station, to ensure it could complete the task without humans having to intervene’.[iii]
So far, so benign, but a disturbing report appeared around the same time about experiments to test the military potential of near-identical quadrupeds being carried out by the US armed forces, with Spot’s cousin converted into an armed platform by the addition of an artificial intelligence-enabled gun turret to participate in exercises in Saudi Arabia. The flexible turret enabled ground fire, but also aerial fire against drones, which are also an increasing threat to civil nuclear facilities. The article in Military.Com records that robot dogs have already been engaged by the US Defence Department in several roles, including ‘boosting perimeter security at sensitive installations’, a task in which they excel as they can ‘patrol’ ‘without need to rest’.[iv]
The NFLAs cannot help thinking that in a dystopian nuclear future, in which the CNC increasingly overstretched and renamed the Civil Infrastructure Constabulary to reflect its ever-expanded role in providing armed protection to a wide range of critical sites, security forces might engage a force of armed Robocops to supplement the dwindling number of armed human officers, each charged with patrolling the perimeters of civil nuclear facilities, and granted autonomous decision-making to engage trespassers, protestors, and drones with deadly force.
The concept of Spot the Dog becoming SWAT the Dog, however unlikely, is truly terrifying.
Concerns about so-called killer robots animated the world community late last year. The Stop Killer Robots campaign, founded in October 2012, continues to work for a new international law to regulate autonomy in weapons systems. The coalition of over 250 civil society organisations in 70 countries successfully lobbied states to adopt the first ever resolution on autonomous weapons at the United Nations on December 22, 2023. 152 countries supported General Assembly Resolution 78/241 which acknowledged the ‘serious challenges and concerns’ raised by ‘new technological applications in the military domain, including those related to artificial intelligence and autonomy in weapons systems.’
Stop Killer Robots was recently awarded Archivio Disarmo’s Golden Dove for Peace Award at a ceremony in Rome on Saturday, 12 October. The award is given to an international figure or organisation which has made ‘a significant contribution to the cause of peace’.
More details of the campaign can be found at https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/
American-owned consortium assumes control of Canada’s premier nuclear research facility.
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, Matthew McClearn, 12 Dec 25
An American-owned consortium has assumed responsibility for managing Canada’s premier nuclear research facility, Chalk River Laboratories, along with cleaning up the federal government’s sizable inventory of radioactive waste spread across the country.
After a three-month delay, Nuclear Laboratory Partners of Canada Inc. formally took control on Thursday of the organization that runs Chalk River, known as Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.
CNL manages the assets and liabilities of a federal Crown corporation called Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. under an arrangement Ottawa describes as a “government-owned, contractor-operated” model………………………………………………….
Earlier this year, AECL said the consortium’s contract is worth about $1.2-billion annually. It has been called the federal government’s largest contract at the moment, although key federal authorities – including the Treasury Board Secretariat, Auditor-General and AECL – have been unwilling or unable to confirm that. The term of the contract will be six years but it can be extended for up to another 14 years.
The consortium’s American ownership has provoked controversy. Since assuming office, Prime Minister Mark Carney has espoused a Buy Canadian policy – a key part of his government’s response to mounting conflict with its dominant trading partner, the United States.
Corey Tochor, a Conservative member of Parliament for Saskatoon-University, accused AECL of “selling out our nuclear secrets” to American interests, during the first of three scheduled hearings held before the House of Commons standing committee on natural resources to examine the consortium’s American ownership.
“What we have real deep concerns [about] is that we’re letting a foreign country manage our medical isotopes,” Mr. Tochor said.
Earlier this month, Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant from Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke characterized the awarded contract as an “elbows-down” approach that left Americans in control of Canadian intellectual property…………………………………………………………….
The American-owned consortium is led by a large nuclear specialty manufacturer focused on military equipment and nuclear fuel called BWX Technologies Inc…………………………………..
The U.S.-led consortium takes over from another partnership known as Canadian National Energy Alliance, which held the contract for a decade. Its members recently included Montreal-based AtkinsRéalis Group Inc. and two American companies, Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. and Fluor Corp………………………….
The American consortium was declared the winner of a competitive procurement process in June and had originally been scheduled to take over in September. The transfer was delayed pending a review by the Competition Bureau, which is responsible for enforcing federal antitrust rules. Late last month the Competition Bureau issued a “no-action letter” confirming it will not oppose the contract, which allowed the transfer to proceed. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-nuclear-laboratory-partners-chalk-river-laboratories-cnl-atomic-energy/
Revelation that UK’s Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) could be robotic prompts question over employment.
Where are the jobs? A question surely prompted by the revelation by New CivilEngineeri that NWS chief technical officer John Corderoy recently claimed that the organisation might build a future Geological Disposal Facility operated solely by an army of robots.
Due to become operational by the late 2050s, but this is a moveable feast, the GDF will be the final repository for Britain’s high-level legacy and future radioactive waste. Three Areas of
Focus in West Cumbria are currently being examined by Nuclear Waste Services as prospective locations for an approximately 1km2 surface facility to receive waste shipments prior to their being taken below ground and out through tunnels to engineered vaults deep under the Irish Sea bed.
Advocates for the GDF have raised as an economic benefit the generational employment that the facility might provide for local people over its (possibly) 150-year lifespan, but in his speech to the Nuclear Industry Association annual conference last week, Mr Corderoy conceded that with the advancement in robotics it might be possible to build a facility ‘that’s fully automated and run by robots on the ground’.
This also makes the NFLAs wonder if that would include dispensing with a human armed police force to patrol the perimeter and check entrants in favour of an AI version, as we presaged in our article of 16 October 2024:
Although, as Mr Corderoy rightly indicated, such a plan would mean ‘we don’t have to put humans in harm’s way deep underground’, for Nuclear Waste Services it would also mean a
workforce which toils without payment and without any expectation of a workplace pension, and which does not require catering, medical or welfare facilities, carparking, protective clothing, lit or heated workspaces, holidays, maternity or paternity leave, or time off for
sickness (aside from an occasional recharge, oil or parts change, or annual MOT). All representing significant cost savings for NWS.
Nor would robots be discovered leaving work
early or engaging in toxic workplace behaviour, nor would they become embroiled in an industrial dispute with their employer; things that cannot be said about some of the human
workforce at Sellafield in recent years.
The industry trades unions will also be horrified; for not only would it mean that their members, facing redundancy after the closure of storage facilities at Sellafield, would not be
able to access alternate operational jobs at the GDF site, but it would mean a loss of income to help sustain the salaries of officials as robots do not pay union subs.
Japan rejects EU plan to steal Russian assets – Politico.
09 Dec 2025, https://www.sott.net/article/503419-Japan-rejects-EU-plan-to-steal-Russian-assets-Politico
The bloc wants to use Moscow’s funds immobilized in the West to cover Ukraine’s budget deficit.
Japan has reportedly dismissed a European Union initiative to tap frozen Russian sovereign assets to help finance Ukraine’s massive budget shortfall.
Brussels hopes to issue a so-called “reparation loan” backed by Russian funds immobilized in the West – a plan that Moscow has denounced as outright theft. Belgium, where most of the money is held by the Euroclear clearinghouse, has refused to greenlight the proposal unless other nations agree to share associated legal and financial risks.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has said broader international backing, particularly from non-EU countries holding Russian assets, would bolster the European Commission’s case for what he called the effective confiscation of a foreign state’s funds. But at a meeting of G7 finance ministers on Monday, Japan’s Satsuki Katayama made clear her government would not support the plan due to legal constraints, Politico reported, citing EU diplomatic sources.
Officials told the outlet they believe Japan’s stance aligns with that of the United States, which also opposes the EU approach and views the frozen assets as leverage in negotiations with Moscow.
France has reportedly likewise declined to touch any assets held on its soil, while Canada and the UK have signaled possible participation if the EU ultimately pursues the scheme.
Ukraine’s parliament last week adopted a 2026 budget with a staggering $47.5 billion deficit, expecting foreign donors and creditors to fill the gap. Roughly half that anticipated support – an estimated $23.6 billion – remains uncertain pending the fate of the EU loan plan.
Ukrainian media noted that lawmakers pushed the budget through despite unresolved questions over foreign financing, in part to project stability following the removal of Andrey Yermak, formerly the most powerful aide to the country’s leader, Vladimir Zelensky. Yermak was dismissed as a corruption scandal engulfed Kiev’s political establishment.
Cashing in on war: Why stealing Russia’s assets actually makes things worse for the EU.
The loan is also, implicitly, seen as an invitation to keep the war going – thus not only keeping the Kiev regime afloat but complicating the prospects for a comprehensive settlement.
03 Dec 2025 , https://www.sott.net/article/503422-Cashing-in-on-war-Why-stealing-Russias-assets-actually-makes-things-worse-for-the-EU
For bloc taxpayers, it could mean Brussels has walked them into a fait accompli where they simply have to stump up for funding a corrupt regime in Kiev.
After a week of humiliation in which her much-touted plot to sequester Russian assets to fund Kiev’s war chest was outright rejected by both Belgium and the European Central Bank, European Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen has told EU member states they have two choices, both of which would send cash to Kiev’s coffers.
According to the embattled EC president, either EU countries will have to borrow cash for Ukraine and make their taxpayers foot the bill, or allow her to push through her – potentially illegal – “reparations plan” and kick the repayment can down the road.
Let’s take a look at what all the talk is about.
Russia’s frozen assets: How much is where?
It is known that Belgium-based clearinghouse Euroclear holds some €180 billion in Russian central-bank funds. Reports that Luxembourg held some €20 billion in Russian assets was denied by the country itself, which claimed it holds “less than €10,000.”
Switzerland, which is in neither the EU nor G7 and thus not subject to von der Leyen’s demands, has declared some 7.45 billion Swiss Francs (€8 billion).Germany has refused to disclose what it holds, citing data protection laws. Japan is thought to hold some €30 billion, while former French Finance Minister Bruno de Maire has spoken about immobilizing some €22.8 billion. The US is believed to hold around $5 billion.
What are the Russian assets frozen in the EU?
The assets mainly consist of European short- and mid-duration bonds that have mostly already come due. When the bonds matured, the principal was paid. Because Euroclear wasn’t prepared to hold that much money itself, the proceeds were invested by Euroclear’s house bank in an account at the European Central Bank. The money is earning interest that legally belongs to Euroclear, although in ordinary circumstances the clearinghouse would send those funds (minus fees) to the client (the Russian central bank).
What is the proposed reparations loan?
The plan entails the EU loaning Ukraine up to €140 billionusing the Russian assets as collateral. Technically, this would involve Euroclear making an interest-free loan of the same value as the Russian assets it holds.
The EU would sign for the cash and give it to Kiev where it would ostensibly be used to fight the war and cover budget expenses, although past experience indicates that much of it could end up in offshore accounts belonging to insiders close to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky.
The sweetener for Kiev is that Ukraine only has to pay back the EU in the highly unlikely event that Russia loses the war and agrees to pay Ukraine reparations. In that case, Kiev would then have to pass those reparations back to Brussels, which would pay back Euroclear, which, in turn, would be able to honor its liability to the Russian central bank.
Why is Belgium afraid to go through with the scheme?
Continue readingWhy this nuclear energy stock could face a meltdown in 2026
by Devesh Kuma, Dec 9, 2025, https://invezz.com/news/2025/12/09/why-this-nuclear-energy-stock-could-face-a-meltdown-in-2026/
- Nuclear stocks soared in 2025 as AI-driven energy demand boosted investor enthusiasm.
- Licensing deadlines, dilution, and execution challenges threaten its 2027–2028 targets.
- High valuation and rising losses make this stock one of the most vulnerable nuclear plays in 2026.
At a time when the stock markets across the world are focusing on artificial intelligence, long-term players are also looking at sectors that will power the future of the AI space, most notably nuclear energy.
The year 2025 was massive for nuclear energy stocks, which saw exponential growth on the backs of AI boom and high-profile partnership.
Oklo stock (NYSE: OKLO) exploded nearly 379% in 2025 on soaring enthusiasm for small modular reactors, but is facing sharp headwinds next year in the form of regulatory approvals, dilution risks, and execution challenges.
As Oklo races against a July 2026 Department of Energy deadline and faces a fresh $1.5 billion share offering, 2026 will reveal whether the company’s promise is genuine or merely speculative froth.
Will Oklo stock clear the final hurdles?
Oklo’s entire business model hinges on clearing one of the nuclear industry’s most daunting challenges: winning approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission while delivering a first-of-a-kind reactor on time and on budget.
The company completed Phase 1 of the NRC’s pre-application readiness assessment in July and plans to submit its Combined Operating License Application by late 2025, but the real tests arrive in 2026.
The agency is expected to issue a draft evaluation of Oklo’s Principal Design Criteria in early 2026, a shortened timeline compared to traditional reviews, yet still unproven territory.
Any regulatory surprise or request for additional design modifications could cascade into months of delays, directly threatening the company’s stated goal of reaching commercial operation at Idaho National Laboratory by late 2027 or early 2028.
What amplifies the risk is that Oklo remains entirely pre-revenue and dependent on federal support.
Cash burn is accelerating, with operating losses widening from $17.8 million in Q2 2024 to $28 million in Q2 2025, even as the company boasts a $683 million cash buffer.
Sky-high valuation and the reversal risk
The market has priced in perfection. Oklo’s stock has swung wildly from a low of $17.42 to a peak of $193.84 in 2025.
Analyst price targets diverge sharply, ranging from $14 to $175, reflecting deep uncertainty about whether the company can justify a $16.3 billion market capitalization without any revenue streams visible before 2027 at the earliest.
In his latest article in The Motley Fool, analyst Adam Spatacco outlined that the nuclear energy sector has already priced in a lot of future optimism.
In 2026, I think investors will witness sharp corrections across a number of nuclear energy stocks, with Oklo being by far the most vulnerable in my opinion.
Oklo’s aggressive dilution, boosting share count by roughly 50% since 2024, creates a precarious scenario.
Even if the Aurora reactor succeeds, the accumulated shareholder dilution may offset long-term returns.
Investors should weigh Oklo’s long-term promise against the near-term gauntlet of approvals and capital raises.
Schemes of Bankruptcy: The United Nations, Funding Dues and Human Rights
Increasingly shrivelled and shrunken, the UN’s far from negligible role in seeking to conserve peace, flawed as it can be, or distributing aid and protecting human rights, risks vanishing into history.
11 December 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/schemes-of-bankruptcy-the-united-nations-funding-dues-and-human-rights/
The United Nations, in turning 80, has been berated, dismissed and libelled. In September, US President Donald Trump took a hearty swipe at the body’s alleged impotence. “What is the purpose of the United Nations?” he posed to gathered world leaders. All it seemed to do was “write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It’s empty words and empty words don’t solve war.” Never once did he consider that many of the wars he has allegedly ended have not so much reached their pacific terminus as having gone into simmering storage.
While harsh geopolitics has become violently fashionable and sneery of international law, an organisation whose existence depends on solidarity, support and cooperation from its often uncooperative Member States, is seeing itself slide into what has been described as a “worsening liquidity crisis.” The crisis was given much stimulus by the organisation’s US$135 million deficit as it entered 2025. By September’s end, it had collected a mockingly inadequate 66.2 per cent of the year’s assessments.
In October, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in speaking to the Fifth Committee of the General Assembly responsible for the entity’s budget, warned that the organisation was facing a “race to bankruptcy” unless Member States forked out their dues. Last year, arrears totalled US$760 million. With the need to return credits worth US$300 million to Member States at the start of 2026, some 10 per cent of the budget would be emptied. “Any delays in collections early in the year [2026] will force us to reduce spending even more … and then potentially face the prospect of returning US$600 million in 2027, or about 20 per cent of the budget.”
While discussing finances can induce a coma, some preliminary discussion about the structure of contributions to the UN is necessary. Assessed or mandatory contributions for 2025, measured by the “capacity to pay” formula, comprised the regular budget of the organisation covering administrative and operational costs (approximately $US3.7 billion); funding for international tribunals ($US43 million); the Capital Master Plan covering the renovation of the UN headquarters in New York; and peacekeeping operations (US$5.4 billion). Voluntary contributions are self-explanatory enough, comprising optional donations from Member States and various other entities for humanitarian and development agencies, in addition to sustaining the broader UN system.
States discharging their obligations in making contributions to the regular budget receive proud mention in the Honour Roll of the UN. Those not doing so risk losing their vote in the organisation if their financial lethargy continues for two years or more after the due date of contributions – not that this injunction has been well observed. The United States remains famously tardy, and under Trump, boisterously so. As the body’s primary contributor to the regular budget – assessed as 22 per cent in 2025 – and 26 per cent to the peacekeeping budget, this is particularly galling.
Since January, the current administration has savaged funding to various UN bodies. On his first day of office, the President signed an executive order withdrawing his country from the World Health Organization due to its “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.”
The UN Human Rights Council was the next fashioned target, with February’s withdrawal from the body justified on the basis that it had “protected human rights abusers by allowing them to use the organization to shield themselves from scrutiny”. In sympathy for Israel, funding was also frozen to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), citing the allegation that employees had been “involved in the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel.”
Revealing its crass, impulsive philistinism, the Trump administration proceeded to withdraw from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in July. “UNESCO,” declared State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce, “works to advance divisive social and cultural causes and maintains an outsized focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy.” Amidst all of this, the parochial agenda was made clear: UNESCO, in admitting Palestine as a Member State was “highly problematic, contrary to US policy, and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization.”
Washington has been singular in this regard only in terms of scale. China and Russia are also conspicuous in being late with their contributions while other Member States have simply pared back their UN contributions for reasons of defence and domestic expenditure. War mongering is proving catching, while peacemaking, despite the boasts of the US President, is falling out of vogue. A most conspicuous area to suffer has been human rights.
In October 2025, the International Service for Human Rights identified an ongoing campaign to defund the UN human rights agenda being waged in the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee. In a report using material gathered from 37 diplomats, UN officials and experts, along with data analysis of UN documents and the organisation’s budget from 2019 to 2024, the ISHR identified a campaign of “coordinated obstruction” by Member States steered by China and Russia. Coupled with Washington and Beijing’s “failure to pay their assessments in full and on time (respectively)”, the UN’s means of funding and implementing its human rights programs has been stymied.
Most to suffer has been the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which finds itself $90 million short of what it needs for 2025. Some 300 jobs have already been shed by the organisation. “Our resources have been slashed, along with funding for human rights organisations, including at the grassroots level, around the world,” warns UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk. “We are in survival mode.”
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), responsible for humanitarian aid and crisis, has had to resort to the beggar bowl. Facing its own budgetary razor, the body is seeking US$23 billion as a matter of immediacy, with the hope that it will save 87 million lives. “Ultimately, in 2026,” the body announced on December 8, “the aim is to raise a total of US$33 billion to support 135 million people through 23 country operations and six plans for refugees and migrants.”
While wobbly, scarred by imperfections and marked by contentiousness, an organisation built from the ashes of murderous global conflict in 1945 risks becoming the very model of impotence Trump claims and no doubt wishes it to be. In this, he can count on a number of countries, friendly or adversarial to the US. Increasingly shrivelled and shrunken, the UN’s far from negligible role in seeking to conserve peace, flawed as it can be, or distributing aid and protecting human rights, risks vanishing into history.
Nuclear power? Its account is (almost) OK
In France, it has been decided that widespread electrification will mean a nuclear revival. But the feasibility and viability of this revival are questionable. Technically, industrially… and also economically and financially. Laure Noualhat delivers a damning indictment of the cost of nuclear power for the coming years and envisions France defaulting on its debt due to this investment choice. A provocative statement designed to shock: intrigued, the public might be inclined to watch her documentary, ”
Nuclear Power Will Ruin France, ” or read her book of the same name to discover figures recently validated by the Court of Auditors. Perhaps even underestimated.
Science involving nuclear power is nothing but the ruin of the state.
This new nuclear perspective rests on a risky gamble, devoid of any studies or clearly established facts. The long-awaited third multi-year energy program (PPE) has not yet been published, but the decision is already considered final:
three pairs of EPR2 reactors have been announced, with four more expected to follow. And the current dithering at the highest levels of government will not allow for the swift publication in the Official Journal of the implementing decrees for the corresponding laws passed in 2019 and 2021, relating to renewable energies and nuclear power. While the second PPE was largely dominated by the question of the pace of reducing the share of nuclear energy in electricity production, this third version intends to prioritize nuclear power, while curbing the development of wind and solar power.
Plans drawn up without much detail regarding the financial arrangements. A vague understanding of the economic impact of such investments in France. This is the general observation, which is hardly reassuring given the sums involved.
Aside from the future design and construction of new reactors ( whose final design is not yet complete ), the nuclear sector faces expenses related, for example, to the annual operating costs of the existing fleet. While considered minor compared to the initial investment and expected to decrease continuously, these costs are actually increasing each year for an aging fleet due to so-called “refurbishment” investments and safety upgrades (the “major overhaul” plan). These are all bills to be paid, essential for ensuring the fleet’s operation beyond 40 or 50 years and beyond, and considerably larger than initially anticipated.
This is clearly considered in the numerous reports conducted by the Court of Auditors (CC) on EDF (
2012 report ,
updated in 2014 ,
2021 report ). Given the difficulty of extracting the precise elements for a comprehensive analysis of the situation from EDF’s financial reports, the Court’s reports prove to be a valuable journalistic contribution. Valuable, but still incomplete. The Court of Auditors itself admits that the reports are systematically produced with little cooperation from the national company: the CC emphasizes that projections sometimes had to be established “without EDF’s data,” disregarding “hidden costs,” “concealed amounts,” and “difficult calculations,” despite the various accounting methods that are always prone to significantly altering the evolution of the different parameters.
So much so that the CC finally admits to having to put forward the figures ‘with caution’, not without difficulty since EDF is playing with the withholding of sensitive information…………….
From this murky situation, Laure Noualhat takes on the almost sacred mission of reconstructing the future burden of nuclear power in France. And, in addition to the costs of the EPR2 reactors, it turns out that costs are also rising through operating expenses, maintenance investments, the cost of future expenses (decommissioning, waste and spent fuel management), changes in the fleet’s production, the level of economic lease payments…
This interview returns to the investment problems raised, the growing financial consequences of this technology, deemed totally unreasonable by Laure Noualhat.
Published in the Reporterre media collection , the bias with which the book could be accused easily falls away: the figures are corroborated by the Court of Auditors itself.
The goal would therefore be to find €200-250 billion, a conservative estimate reconstructed by Laure Noualhat. This is equivalent to the investment costs for the construction of the 58 existing civilian reactors (€106 billion in 2018; the two reactors at Fessenheim have since been shut down ). However, the national electricity provider remains heavily indebted (by approximately €54 billion) and cannot claim to finance the new nuclear program on its own. Furthermore, the cost has increased by 100% since the announcement in 2019 (the initial estimate was €52.7 billion). Undoubtedly, all of this will require guarantees from the State.
However, there is nothing very attractive about it for investors given the hypothetical financial returns which could be considered insufficient over a period running from the construction phase to the operation phase, i.e. more than 60 years.
The costs of existing reactors will increase, particularly in the event of generic defects, combined with the risks associated with the aging of the fleet that will inevitably come to light. This growth will be difficult to control and anticipate. Therefore, given the significant investments it may require, this issue has become urgent, as it will severely impact the budget.
The risk of insufficient performance of the nuclear fleet is among the most critical in the group’s risk assessment. It is directly affected by the occurrence of generic faults, which can reduce fleet availability while they are being addressed. This risk has been assigned the highest impact level and a control level ranging from medium to low.
It’s an open secret that all this is because the premature aging of internal materials and components has been known since 1986. The Energy Regulatory Commission itself noted that EDF believed that with the aging of the fleet, generic hazard problems would become more structural: this was the case during the episode of stress corrosion cracking discovered quite by chance, and there is reason to fear that others will occur.
Indeed. Just recently, an ASNR meeting revealed that new cracks measuring 2 to 3 millimeters had been detected and confirmed at the Civaux nuclear power plant on reactor 2 (1450 MW). The piping of the affected RRA circuit (the primary circuit under normal operating conditions) has reportedly already been dismantled and sent for analysis, suggesting that the cracks were detected well before this announcement. This specter of renewed stress corrosion cracking raises concerns about the technical and technological control of this accelerated aging process under irradiation and extreme operating conditions (temperature, pressure).
An already outdated figure
The Court of Auditors’ investigation into EDF is far from over. A new
report was just published at the end of September 2025. The findings are alarming: EDF faces a massive investment challenge of €460 billion over 15 years…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Protected like few others, supported by the political class, the nuclear sector deviates from certain minimal procedures in terms of accounting and transparent financing. It is decidedly not subject to any of the economic rules that prevail in other industrial sectors.
The aim of this investigation, led by Laure Noualhat, was to shed more light on the expenses generated by undebated political decisions. Mission accomplished.
Will these colossal investments put an end to the new nuclear program in France? https://homonuclearus.fr/nucleaire-compte-presque-bon/?utm_source=Homo+nuclearus&utm_campaign=3e0276f781-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_02_12_08_27_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_338d2a581d-3e0276f781-433658419
When it all comes crashing down: The aftermath of the AI boom.
Like financial crises of the past, an abrupt end to the AI bubble could inflict considerable economic pain on millions of people worldwide. But the alternative is the prolonging of an AI bubble that is increasingly unsustainable in both the financial and environmental senses, with the winners mainly being some of the wealthiest companies on the planet and their investors.
“Ultimately, for society’s sake, it would be a wonderful thing the faster this thing goes, because very few people are benefiting from it,”
By Jeremy Hsu, December 5, 2025, https://thebulletin.org/2025/12/when-it-all-comes-crashing-down-the-aftermath-of-the-ai-boom/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=The%20AI%20boom%20s%20aftermath&utm_campaign=20251207%20Monday%20Newsletter
Silicon Valley and its backers have placed a trillion-dollar bet on the idea that generative AI can transform the global economy and possibly pave the way for artificial general intelligence, systems that can exceed human capabilities. But multiple warning signs indicate that the marketing hype surrounding these investments has vastly overrated what current AI technology can achieve, creating an AI bubble with growing societal costs that everyone will pay for regardless of when and how the bubble bursts.
The history of AI development has been punctuated by boom-and-bust cycles (with the busts called AI winters) in the 1970s and 1980s. But there has never been an AI bubble like the one that began inflating around corporate and investor expectations since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022. Tech companies are now spending between $72 billion and $125 billion per year each on purchasing vast arrays of AI computing chips and constructing massive data centers that can consume as much electricity as entire cities—and private investors continue to pour more money into the tech industry’s AI pursuits, sometimes at the expense of other sectors of the economy.
“What I see as a labor economist is we have starved everything to feed one mouth,” says Ron Hetrick, Principal Economist at Lightcast, a labor market analytics company. “These are now three years that we have foregone development in so many industries as we shove food into a mouth that’s already so full.”
That huge AI bet is increasingly looking like a bubble; it has buoyed both the stock market and a US economy otherwise struggling with rising unemployment, inflation, and the longest government shutdown in history. In September, Deutsche Bank warned that the United States could already be in an economic recession without the tech industry’s AI spending spree and cautioned that such spending cannot continue indefinitely. However it ends, the AI bubble’s most enduring legacy may be the global disruptions from any financial crisis that follows—and the societal costs already incurred from betting so heavily on energy-hungry data centers and AI chips that may suddenly become stranded assets.
Warning signs. Silicon Valley’s focus on developing ever-larger AI models has spurred a buildout of bigger data centers crammed with computing power. The staggering growth in AI compute demand would require tech companies to build $500 billion worth of data centers packed with chips each year—and companies would need to rake in $2 trillion in combined annual revenue to fund that buildout, according to a Bain & Company report. The report also estimates that the tech industry is likely to fall $800 billion short of the required revenue.
That shortfall is less surprising than it might seem. US Census Bureau data show that AI adoption by companies with more than 250 employees may have already peaked and began declining or flattening out this year.
Continue readingJapan pulls out of Vietnam nuclear project, complicating Hanoi’s power plans
Japan has dropped out of plans to build a major nuclear power plant in
Vietnam because the time frame is too tight, Japanese ambassador Naoki Ito told Reuters, potentially complicating Vietnam’s long-term strategy to
avoid new power shortages.
Vietnam, home to large manufacturing operations for multinationals including Samsung and Apple, has faced major power blackouts as demand from its huge industrial sector and expanding middle class often outpaces supplies, strained by increasingly frequent extreme weather, such as droughts and typhoons.
“The Japanese side is not in a position to implement the Ninh Thuan 2 project,” the ambassador to Vietnam said, referring to a plant with a planned capacity of 2 to 3.2 gigawatts. The project is part of Vietnam’s strategy to boost power generation capacity.
Asahi Shimbun 8th Dec 2025, https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/16208469
South Carolina’s abandoned nuclear plants could be revived as company offers $2.7 billion
South Carolina´s stalled nuclear power project could finally finish
construction as a private company has offered to pay $2.7 billion to the
state-owned utility and a small share of the power if they can reach an
agreement to get the two reactors up and running. The half-built reactors
ended up so far behind schedule that the project was abandoned in 2017.
However, the potential deal is a long way from complete. There will be up
to two years of negotiations between utility Santee Cooper and Brookfield
Asset Management on the thousands and thousands of details. The deal would also let Brookfield keep at least 75% of the power generated by the new plant that they could mostly sell to whom they want, such as
energy-gobbling data centers. The exact amount of the rest that Santee
Cooper receives would be determined on how much the private company has to spend to get the reactors running.
Daily Mail 9th Dec 2025, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-15368257/South-Carolinas-abandoned-nuclear-plants-revived-company-offers-2-7-billion.html
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