Hinkley Point C nuclear power station will add £1bn a year to energy bills.

Electricity project will be UK’s most expensive source with consumers footing the cost.

Jonathan Leake, Energy Editor, 28 Nov 25

The troubled Hinkley Point C nuclear power station will add £1bn annually to UK energy bills as soon as it’s switched on, official figures show.

The money will be taken from consumers and handed to the French owner EDF to subsidise operations, making it one of the UK’s most expensive sources of electricity.

A further £1bn will be added to bills by a separate
nuclear levy, supporting construction of the Sizewell C nuclear power
station in Suffolk, also led by EDF. Campaigners branded it a “nuclear
tax on households”.

Details were revealed in documents released by the
Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility in the wake of Rachel
Reeves’s Budget. They describe how EDF will be entitled to claim the
money under the “Contracts for Difference” subsidy system as soon as
Hinkley C begins operations, probably in 2030.

The documents state: “In
2030-31, Contracts for Difference (CfDs) are expected to generate £4.6bn
in government receipts, including £1bn to fund subsidy payments to the
Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant for its first year of expected
generation.” The impact on bills is linked to a 2013 agreement reached
between EDF and Sir Ed Davey, the then energy secretary.

He guaranteed that
EDF could charge £92.50 per megawatt hour (MWh) of power once Hinkley
Point C came online. With inflation, this equates to £133 today and is
expected to reach about £150 in 2030. If the wholesale cost of electricity
remains at its current level of about £80/MWh, then EDF can claim an extra
£70 from consumers and businesses via CfDs.

From January, energy bills
will also be hit by an entirely separate levy designed to support the
construction of another nuclear power station at Sizewell in Suffolk. The
Regulated Asset Base levy will add £10 a year to power bills from 2026,
raising £700m, but will roughly double by 2030, when it will need to raise
£1.4bn a year for Sizewell.

Telegraph 28th Nov 2025, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/11/28/hinkley-point-c-nuclear-power-station-add-1bn-a-year-bills/

November 29, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, UK | 1 Comment

UK ‘most expensive’ in the world for nuclear projects due to complex regulation, taskforce finds.

“However, it is absolutely critical that we do not pursue cost reduction at the expense of health and safety standards”

The UK has become the “most expensive” nation in the world to
construct new nuclear projects and an overhaul to planning is needed to
remedy this, according to a new report published by the Nuclear Regulatory
Taskforce.

Examples of the delays and cost overruns are apparent in the
UK’s current nuclear construction projects, Hinkley Point C and Sizewell
C. Namely, the construction of Hinkley Point C has faced several issues
including health and safety concerns, structural faults, as well as
significant cost overruns and delays.

Financially, the project’s
estimated costs have risen to between £31bn and £34bn, up from an initial
£25bn to £26bn in 2015 prices. These cost increases are attributed to
civil engineering price hikes and delays in the electromechanical phase.
Consequently, the operational date for Unit 1 has been pushed back, with
scenarios suggesting completion between 2029 and 2031, partly due to
slower-than-anticipated civil construction, inflation, labour, and material
shortages, as well as disruptions from Covid-19 and Brexit.

The government’s Office for Value for Money (OVfM) noted that these cost
overruns and delays at Hinkley Point C complicated the development of the
Sizewell C project. While the huge costs involved with nuclear projects in
the UK are apparent, law firm Browne Jacobson has argued that, with time
and efficiencies being realised in their construction, costs will start to
go down. Browne Jacobson partner Zoe Stollard said: “Whilst the current
costs of nuclear power station construction in the UK may appear
substantial, it’s important to recognise that these figures will likely
decrease as efficiencies are realised in future projects.

“However, it is absolutely critical that we do not pursue cost reduction at the expense of health and safety standards. Maintaining the highest levels of nuclear safety, security, and safety culture are imperative. “Investing wisely in these projects now is essential to reduce the potential for significant
incidents further down the line. The upfront investment in robust safety
measures and regulatory compliance is not merely a cost, it is a necessary
safeguard for public welfare and long-term operational success.”

New Civil Engineer 25th Nov 2025

November 28, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear’s Costly Comeback Meets Harsh Market Reality.

By Leon Stille – Nov 21, 2025, https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Nuclears-Costly-Comeback-Meets-Harsh-Market-Reality.html

Nuclear power’s “cheap, clean, and secure” promise is breaking down.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) remain largely theoretical, with the only advanced U.S. project cancelled over high costs.
Renewables and storage now dominate energy economics, offering faster build times, flexibility, and lower prices.

I’ve followed the promise of small modular reactors (SMRs) and next-generation nuclear in several of my earlier pieces on OilPrice. The argument is familiar: nuclear provides low-carbon baseload, ensures energy security, and will one day deliver affordable, clean power. It sounds persuasive, until you look at the numbers. New nuclear remains slow, expensive, and deeply reliant on state support. In today’s European power markets, where renewables are already driving prices to record lows or even negative territory, the idea that nuclear can deliver “cheap and secure” power no longer holds up.

Expensive power disguised as security

Let’s start with the UK. Hinkley Point C, the flagship of the country’s nuclear revival, was only made possible through a 35-year Contract for Difference guaranteeing a strike price of £92.50 per MWh (in 2012 money). That’s roughly double the current wholesale market price, indexed to inflation, and fully guaranteed by taxpayers. It isn’t market competitiveness, it’s a subsidy designed to get the project financed.

Sizewell C will take the same path under a Regulated Asset Base model, transferring part of the construction risk directly to consumers through levies on electricity bills long before a single watt is produced. When “cheap” energy requires that level of public underwriting, something is fundamentally off.

A track record written in red ink

This pattern isn’t unique to Britain. France’s Flamanville reactor, long touted as the EPR showpiece, is over a decade late and has quadrupled in cost to more than €13 billion. Finland’s Olkiluoto 3 only began commercial operations after 17 years of delays and legal disputes. In the United States, Vogtle 3 and 4 finally came online after 15 years and around $36 billion in total costs, double initial projections, with ratepayers footing much of the bill through regulated recovery.

The nuclear industry’s narrative of reliability is at odds with its delivery record. Projects start with optimism and end with budget blowouts, political fallout, and consumer bailouts.

The SMR Illusion

Advocates often pivot to SMRs as the saviour, the “Tesla moment” for nuclear. I explored that hype in an earlier OilPrice article, noting that SMRs were being promoted as modular, factory-built, and inherently cheaper. Yet so far, reality looks familiar.

The most advanced U.S. SMR project, NuScale’s Carbon Free Power Project in Idaho, was cancelled in 2023 after projected costs rose to $89 per MWh, far above renewables and storage. Other designs remain on paper, heavily dependent on public subsidies or guaranteed offtake. The promise of small reactors may eventually prove out, but at the moment, SMRs are an idea with a press office, not a business case.

The market reality has shifted

Europe’s electricity markets tell the other half of the story. In 2024, countries like Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands each recorded more than 450 hours of negative day-ahead prices. France saw nearly 360. Across the EU, negative or ultra-low price hours exceeded 9,000 in total.

For inflexible, capital-intensive baseload assets like nuclear, that’s disastrous. These plants can’t ramp down profitably when prices collapse. Their economics depend on constant, high utilization, and that world is disappearing. The more renewables come online, the more volatile the price pattern becomes, with long stretches of near-zero wholesale power. Nuclear simply doesn’t fit this market geometry.

Renewables and storage are doing what nuclear can’t

The contrast is striking. Renewables can be deployed modularly, financed privately, and built within 18–36 months. Utility-scale batteries, once dismissed as expensive, are now scaling at record speed. Europe installed nearly 22 GWh of new storage capacity in 2024, bringing total installed capacity above 60 GWh. Italy’s first grid-scale auction secured 10 GWh of storage at competitive prices, no decade-long delays, no multi-billion-euro risk exposure.

Each incremental gigawatt of storage turns volatile wind and solar into a more stable, dispatchable asset. In that environment, nuclear’s supposed advantage of “firm capacity” starts to look less like a virtue and more like an anchor.

Security means flexibility, not monoliths

Nuclear advocates still frame the argument in security terms, stable, domestic generation insulated from fossil-fuel geopolitics. But in modern energy systems, security no longer means “always-on baseload.” It means adaptability, diversification, and resilience.

A network built from distributed solar, wind, storage, and demand-side flexibility is inherently harder to disrupt. It can absorb shocks, balance local fluctuations, and restart quickly after failures. A multi-billion-euro single-site nuclear facility, by contrast, is a high-value target for cost escalation, technical failure, or even physical risk.

Energy security in the 2020s is about systems thinking, not megaproject symbolism.

The economics of opportunity cost

Every euro sunk into new nuclear is a euro not available for faster, cheaper solutions. A 10 billion-euro reactor might take 15 years to produce its first electrons. The same money could build tens of gigawatts of solar and wind, backed by large-scale storage, grid upgrades, and hydrogen electrolysers to absorb surplus power, all online before the nuclear project breaks ground.

The opportunity cost is immense. Renewable portfolios are now financeable at market rates; nuclear requires a bespoke government rescue package before it even begins.

A niche role, not a blueprint

To be clear, existing reactors that can be safely life-extended make sense. Extending France’s fleet, or upgrading proven units, delivers low-carbon energy at marginal cost. But that’s asset management, not a case for new construction.

Building a fresh wave of reactors on 20-year timelines, in a power market already defined by negative pricing and flexible storage, is a strategic mismatch. Nuclear can remain a niche contributor, but not the foundation of affordable or adaptable decarbonization.

Conclusion: The future has moved on

The myth of nuclear as “secure, clean, and cheap” collapses under scrutiny. It is clean once built, but rarely cheap, and often far from secure when you consider financing and policy risk. Meanwhile, renewables plus storage are delivering real, scalable, market-driven results right now.

We no longer live in a world where the problem is lack of technology. The challenge is choosing the right ones for the energy system we are actually building, a fast, flexible, decentralized grid where adaptability equals security.

November 25, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Labour’s nuclear tax to blame for rising energy bills, says Octopus.

THE UK Government’s nuclear levy is to blame for rising energy bills,
according to a leading utilities company. Octopus Energy has said that
Labour’s imposition of a tax on energy bills to pay for the construction of
the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk is forcing up household costs.

Rachel Fletcher, the company’s director for regulation, said: “The price
cap is rising again, driven by costly subsidies for mega projects like
Sizewell C and major network upgrades that are adding billions to consumer bills – with no end in sight.

“Let’s be clear: this isn’t about supplier
profits, which are capped at around 2%, or renewables. The real issue is
our inefficient electricity system burdened by ever-growing policy and
network costs that keep stacking up on household bills.

“Instead of
paying wind farms not to generate and locking the country into tens of
billions of unnecessary grid spending, we need bold market reform. This
would save billpayers at least £5 billion a year and finally unlock the
full potential of our homegrown green energy.”

Speaking to Westminster’s
Energy Committee earlier this month, Fletcher estimated that contrary to
Labour’s pledge to cut energy bills by £300 a year, they were actually
going up by that amount to fund improvements to the grid and transmission networks.

The National 21st Nov 2025,
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25641939.labours-nuclear-tax-blame-rising-energy-bills-says-octopus/

November 25, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics | Leave a comment

How Holtec International became an expanding (and controversial) nuclear power.

In Ukraine, Holtec’s principal state partner, Energoatom, has become the focus of a sweeping corruption inquiry

Holtec now controls the fate of multiple nuclear power plants across the United States………. even though Holtec had never operated a nuclear power plant.

One week after acquiring Palisades for decommissioning, Holtec submitted plans to the Energy Department for restarting the plant. Those plans only came to public light through a Freedom of Information Act request by the activist group Beyond Nuclear, published on its website in October 2023. In March 2024, Holtec secured a $1.52 billion US government loan guarantee and moved forward with an attempt to restart the nuclear reactor, despite expert assessments that the plant was no longer viable.

Following its start as a producer of nuclear waste storage canisters, Holtec International has built an empire around mothballed nuclear power plants and as-yet incomplete nuclear initiatives. The firm’s history of overpromising and underdelivery raises a question: Is this who we should trust with the future of nuclear energy?

Bulletin, By Matt Smith, November 20, 2025
On a 90-degree afternoon in July 2014, the governor, the mayor, and the local state senator gathered before 200 people at Camden, New Jersey’s Broadway Terminal along the Delaware River to celebrate an impending economic miracle. A planned technology center would bring pioneering nuclear technology and hundreds of new jobs to a dismal waterfront known for its unemployment and poverty.

State Sen. Donald Norcross, among those on a stage decorated with an eight-foot-tall banner bearing the red and black logo of Holtec International, said the company behind the deal was “a titan of energy.”

Holtec CEO Krishna Singh could locate his company’s nuclear technology center anywhere, not just in the United States but in the world, Norcross said, “And he chose Camden.”

The 47-acre campus would be used to develop a new kind of nuclear reactor that “cannot under any condition go out of control,” Singh said.

Now, the promised local miracle of economic progress seems, at most, incremental. There is no nuclear power plant assembly line as initially envisioned by Singh. His promised next-generation nuclear reactors remain conceptual a decade later, so far not progressing beyond the drawing board.

Singh made public pronouncements about providing a “path out of hereditary poverty” and a “pathway to the middle class” for Camden residents. The Camden facility would employ some 2,000 laborers and 1,000 professional staff in its first five years, the company said in promotional materials. But it ultimately hired far fewer locals than initially suggested.

In a statement in response to questions for this article, Holtec said that it has exceeded every obligation outlined in its contractual agreement with the state related to its Camden site. Also, the company noted that a court had rejected the state of New Jersey’s view that Holtec had fallen short of commitments, restoring funds that had been withheld based on claims of noncompliance.

New Jersey officials did, however, abandon a partnership with Holtec to build a job training center. Holtec said the state’s move “turned its back on the people of one of America’s poorest cities. The company has continued to invest in workforce development initiatives and to create meaningful opportunities for residents, advancing its mission to contribute to the city’s long-term economic revitalization.”

Documents filed in state and federal courts, records from regulatory agencies, and interviews with officials, activists, ex-employees, and industry analysts show that the Camden project was not a Holtec anomaly. Across its ventures, announcements of grand undertakings have been followed by under-delivery and controversy, as Holtec, a company primarily known for making concrete nuclear waste containers, succeeded in promoting itself as a high-tech leader in nuclear power generation and the decommissioning of nuclear power plants.

Since launching the Krishna P. Singh Technology Campus in Camden, Holtec has expanded aggressively into the decommissioning of shuttered nuclear power plants and a government-backed attempt to revive the largely dormant US nuclear energy sector. Holtec’s business strategy has relied in part on acquiring old nuclear plants and tapping into trust funds that plant operators had paid to the government for the eventual decommissioning of those plants. In some cases, Holtec has then reversed course and tried to restart aging reactors. Internationally, Holtec has positioned itself as spearheading US efforts to expand nuclear power generation in Ukraine and South Korea.

The stakes of that claim are higher now. In Ukraine, Holtec’s principal state partner, Energoatom, has become the focus of a sweeping corruption inquiry alleging years of inflated contracts, illicit payments and political interference in the very projects Holtec helped build at Chernobyl — prompting new scrutiny of the environment in which those projects took shape.

Although many of its projects are either unfinished or less than initially portrayed, Holtec now controls the fate of multiple nuclear power plants across the United States. The company that didn’t fully deliver on initial promises about a technology center in Camden (see sidebar) has been entrusted with billions of dollars from ratepayer-funded decommissioning trust funds, responsibility for some of the nation’s most hazardous nuclear sites, and permission to re-start a closed nuclear reactor—even though Holtec had never operated a nuclear power plant.

Now, Holtec plans to go public in a planned stock offering that Singh told Barron’s could value his company at $10 billion. Singh hopes to sell shares worth 20 percent of the company’s total value in a stock offering that aims to raise capital for an expansion of its oft-stated plans to build small modular reactors (SMRs), a next-generation technology that, for Holtec, remains in the design stage and has not yet been licensed.

The move to go public entrusts yet more financial and public faith in a company whose grand undertakings have often been followed by controversy and under-delivery.

Capitalizing on the failure of Yucca Mountain

………………………………………………………………………………….. Today, Singh oversees a company that has expanded far beyond building nuclear fuel storage casks. Holtec has won contracts to control nuclear plants and manage billions of dollars in federally mandated decommissioning trust funds. However, this aggressive expansion has been overshadowed by serious concerns: 24-year-old bribery allegations (see sidebar) and regulatory violations related to employee radiation exposure risk, quality control in spent fuel transportation and storage systems, and inadequate security. Activists, public officials, and nuclear experts question whether a company with no prior experience in building, operating, or maintaining nuclear power plants—one that has attracted sustained controversy—should be positioned to lead a significant part of America’s nuclear future

………………………………………………………………………….In 2018, Holtec formed a subsidiary called Holtec Decommissioning International and began acquiring shuttered nuclear plants outright. Rather than simply selling storage systems to utilities, Holtec would now buy entire reactor sites, take control of their decommissioning trust funds, and assume responsibility for dismantling the facilities and managing the radioactive waste stored there.

Each closed nuclear plant came with a substantial decommissioning trust fund—money collected from ratepayers over decades to pay for eventual cleanup.

Holtec claimed it could complete the decommissioning work much faster than utilities had planned, promising 10- to 12-year timelines instead of the 60 years allowed by regulators. Also, there was a glittering prospect: Holtec could potentially keep whatever remained in the trust funds after decommissioning was complete………………………………….

For former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) chairman Gregory Jaczko and other observers skeptical of Holtec’s plans, one important question centers on whether Holtec has been set up in a way that will allow it to be held accountable should things go wrong.

Singh has set up his business via a web of subsidiaries spanning 17 countries across four continents. The company has created dozens of separate entities, from Holtec Orrvilon in Hong Kong to operations in Britain and Ukraine, plus numerous limited liability companies (LLCs) clustered in New Jersey, Delaware, and Florida. These are set up in complex structures, whereby entities often own each other in nested arrangements, with one LLC either a shareholder or a subsidiary of the other.

This structure is perhaps most clearly seen in Holtec’s nuclear decommissioning business. Each closed plant—the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan, the Indian Point plant in New York, and the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts—exists within its own special-purpose LLC. These subsidiaries control billions of dollars in decommissioning trust funds while maintaining limited legal liability, according to state attorneys general from Massachusetts and New York.

………………………………………Jaczko noted that there was no corporate entity positioned to provide a financial backstop if something went wrong.

………………………….“This structure is far less transparent and accountable than what we typically see for power plant ownership,” he said. “It appears that there is no corporate entity with sufficient resources to provide capital and cover operating expenses in the event of revenue losses, whether due to accidents or plant problems requiring extended shutdowns.”………………………………………………………….

A tangled tale: Holtec in Ukraine

…………………………………….. Anti-corruption officials in Ukraine in early November announced a $100 million corruption scandal that forced out the senior leadership of Energoatom, the principal state partner with Holtec at Chernobyl. The officials describe corruption and a lack of oversight at the agency—during periods that overlapped Holtec’s work. As of press time, allegations had not included Holtec itself.

……………………………Holtec’s promotional materials continue to present its Ukraine record as evidence of competence and reliability. Ukrainian authorities, meanwhile, continue collecting evidence to support allegations that agencies overseeing the U.S. company were compromised.

Publicly available information does not indicate that Holtec has been formally accused of wrongdoing in the Ukrainian corruption cases.

…………………….According to Holtec’s and the Ukrainian government’s project documents, the company served as the prime contractor for what is known as the Interim Spent Nuclear Fuel Dry Storage Facility, or ISF-2, which is designed to hold spent fuel from undamaged reactors at Chernobyl, which had remained in operation until 2000. Holtec hired YUTEM-Engineering as its principal subcontractor. That is, Holtec had a direct, if unwitting, role in hiring and managing a key local company whose owner had financial ties to what official Ukrainian investigations said was a notorious corruption network.

Holtec’s Ukrainian venture began in the mid-2000s, when the country confronted a growing crisis over its nuclear waste. Each year, Ukraine paid Russia approximately $200 million to dispose of the spent fuel from its 15 reactors. American officials grew increasingly worried about this dependency, diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show. In leaked cables, those officials touted Holtec as a means to pry Ukraine from Russia’s nuclear embrace. The geopolitical urgency also had a practical side: Holtec might help secure waste in the still-hazardous Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Ukraine decided to make the depopulated land around the old plant into a general-purpose nuclear waste storage site serving both the old plant and its spent fuel, as well as spent fuel from power plants elsewhere in the country.

The most visually prominent of the three separate projects is a massive arch-shaped sarcophagus that contains the old, damaged portion of the Chernobyl complex. But there are two lesser-known facilities, and that’s where Holtec supplied management, technical know-how, and equipment. Holtec was the main contractor for what was called the Interim Storage Facility-2 for spent fuel from Chernobyl reactors. And it supplied equipment and engineering support for the Centralized Spent Fuel Storage Facility, built to store nuclear waste from elsewhere.

In its prime contractor role, Holtec was to hire, manage, and pay subcontractors doing on-the-ground civil engineering work, according to records from the Chernobyl management agency, Ukraine’s public spending audit agency (hyperlined document in Ukrainian), and other documents.

Holtec’s work was supported by international heavyweights: the International Atomic Energy Agency and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The company nonetheless found itself in the company of controversial figures.

Holtec’s main local partner for the ISF-2 project was the firm YUTEM-Engineering, whose owner had ties to Maksym Mykytas, the head of a construction empire. According to official records, Holtec hired, managed, and paid YUTEM on that project.

Anti-corruption agencies have accused Mykytas of masterminding multimillion-dollar collusion and bribery schemes related to, among other things, the repository for waste from outside Chernobyl. On that centralized fuel storage project, Holtec was not responsible for hiring or managing YUTEM, which became mired in bid-rigging and bribery scandals.

Evidence connects YUTEM to a wider alleged criminal enterprise that’s been the subject of multiple high-profile investigations of alleged embezzlement, fraud, bribery, and bid-rigging. The Bulletin traced these ties via multiple records, including Mykyta’s asset declaration from 2017, when he was a member of Ukraine’s parliament, showing he received money or equity worth approximately $75,000 in a transaction with YUTEM’s owner.

Mykytas was not just any politician. According to Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, he was the alleged mastermind of a sprawling network of companies used to embezzle state funds.

……………………………..Eventually, investigations into Mykytas caused progress on the nationwide storage facility to stall, though all the sites at Chernobyl eventually passed testing and licensing phases. By then, Holtec and Ukrainian officials were announcing another ambitious nuclear effort: a commitment to build 20 small modular reactors across the war-torn country. The announcement came despite Holtec having no US-approved reactor design and no experience building or running nuclear plants, and despite Russia’s ongoing campaign of bombing energy infrastructure, once again pitting a grand vision against a complex and hazardous reality.

……………………………….In December, Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear company, announced it was discussing with Holtec the idea of building a factory for SMR components to make Ukraine a regional center for the production and export of nuclear technologies.

In January, Energoatom announced its officials had held a video conference with Singh to discuss ideas such as a new factory for producing parts for SMRs, a joint Energoatom-Holtec engineering and training center, and “implementation of SMR-300 technology in Ukraine,” according to an agency announcement.……………………………

Holtec’s unusual strategy in Michigan. And elsewhere.

…………………………………….. unlike some competitors who have made at least incremental progress toward deployment, Holtec’s SMR vision has remained mostly notional. It wasn’t until July, when Holtec obtained an operating license for Palisades, that the company had ever obtained regulatory approval to operate a reactor.

Holtec, in a statement, said its announced plans to install SMR reactors in Michigan five years from now show that it is ahead of its competitors.

At its Camden facility, Holtec has announced plans to install a simulator to mimic the reactor conditions of its SMR. The company describes the facility as an innovation center for SMR design, employing over 600 highly skilled workers and says it will be “where the US’s first SMRs will be constructed and shipped for commercial deployment in this decade.” But no reactor manufacturing has begun as the company awaits regulatory approvals for its designs.

Even so, these paper reactors have yielded concrete returns.

In September 2024, the US Department of Energy granted Holtec a $1.52 billion loan guarantee to restart the mothballed Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan. The re-commissioning of Palisades is controversial in its own right, but Holtec has also woven its still-unproven SMR program into the Palisades narrative. Though the loan formally supports the restart of an existing unit at the plant, Holtec has presented the site as a dual project: a place to both reboot old infrastructure and a site for new SMRs, making Palisades “ground zero for America’s nuclear renaissance,” according to company marketing materials.

This renaissance story seems to be absent from federal records, however. The SMR-300 design does not yet have an NRC license application on file. Holtec suspended the SMR-160’s licensing process in 2023 and has begun only informal pre-application discussions for the new design, according to the NRC. The target date for filing formal applications from scratch is sometime in 2026, according to a Holtec presentation to the NRC.

The idea of SMRs continues to deliver. Singh now describes Palisades as the birthplace of a nuclear revival, promising to deploy Holtec’s SMR-300 design on the Michigan lakeshore by 2030……………

……………………………Although it lacks US certification for its SMR designs, Singh has pursued this SMR strategy internationally. In India, it envisions hundreds of reactors.

………………………………………How decommissioning became re-commissioning

Holtec bought the Palisades nuclear plant in 2018, gaining access to a $592 million fund set aside for decommissioning.

But Holtec’s stewardship of the Palisades plant soon took a swift course change. …………………………….

…………………………………………….“They lied about what they were going to do at Palisades. They said they were taking over ownership to decommission the plant. Little did we know, they weren’t even intending to decommission,” said Kevin Kamps with Beyond Nuclear, an anti-nuclear advocacy group. “This was a trick to get their hands on the plant.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………….The questions about Indian Point

……………………………………………………………………………………Community fears intensified in 2021 when Holtec announced plans to discharge radioactive wastewater from Indian Point into the Hudson River. State lawmakers swiftly passed legislation blocking such discharges. Holtec sued the state in April 2024, arguing the law unlawfully infringed on federal authority over nuclear safety. A federal judge ruled in favor of Holtec in September 2025, but New York is appealing the decision.

…………………………Holtec’s financial disclosures raise additional concerns. In meetings with state officials, company executives admitted that project delays or unexpected costs could undermine their business model…………………………………………………………….

Vision vs. reality

The story of Holtec often comes down to moments when soaring vision collides with terrestrial problems……………………………………..

……………………………………Holtec International capitalized on the federal government’s failure to create a national nuclear waste repository, creating a captive market for concrete casks now on-site at power plants across America. From this foundation, CEO Krishna Singh launched a more audacious expansion into decommissioning, acquiring shuttered nuclear plants outright. The company took control of billions in ratepayer-funded decommissioning trust funds, promising to clean up sites in a fraction of the time planned by utilities, with the glittering prospect of keeping any leftover money.

This aggressive growth, however, relies on financial and operational strategies that have drawn unflattering scrutiny. . Holtec structures its decommissioning projects through a web of special-purpose corporations (LLCs), which own the plants and control their trust funds, potentially leaving no backstop if a project encounters costly problems. Instead of legal guarantees, Singh has offered his word and his company’s reputation.

Now, Holtec is asking the public and investors for even greater faith as it plans a multibillion-dollar initial public stock offering. The capital raised is intended to fund another expansive promise. Yet, like the future of high-tech jobs once promised for Camden, these SMRs remain in the concept stage. The company has built an empire on mothballed plants and sidelined projects while selling a vision of a nuclear renaissance. Its history leaves a question for regulators and potential investors: Is this who the world should trust with a large portion of the future of nuclear energy?

Matt Smith is a freelance reporter with 30 years of experience covering business, the environment, and other topics. https://thebulletin.org/2025/11/how-holtec-international-became-an-expanding-and-controversial-nuclear-power/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Disasters%20in%20a%20post-truth%20world&utm_campaign=20251117%20Monday%20Newsletter%20%28Copy%29

November 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Reference | Leave a comment

Trump’s Westinghouse nuclear deal comes with unresolved questions

Unpacking the unusual details of the administration’s $80 billion deal with the nuclear giant.

Alexander C. Kaufman, LATITUDE MEDIA, November 20, 2025

Last month, the Trump administration announced a deal to spend at least $80 billion to build at least 10 new large-scale Westinghouse reactors, a move that seemed to anoint a “national champion” in nuclear power. On its face, the agreement appeared to offer these new U.S. AP1000s — the type of reactor built at Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle in Georgia — with a guarantee of financing akin to direct funding from the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office.

But exactly how the $80 billion will be spent and when remains an open question.

The details are unusual. Rather than coming from the Energy Department, the Department of Commerce brokered the deal in what one Republican source described as an example of the administration’s internal “chaos.” Rather than coming from the federal budget, the $80 billion appears to be contingent upon Japan fulfilling its $550 billion investment in the U.S. that President Donald Trump negotiated in Tokyo last month. Rather than funneling the money through an entity such as the LPO, the disbursement process remains unclear.

“Without a sense of how this $80 billion is going to be used for nuclear in the U.S., it’s not going to give actual developers or owner-operators a chance to structure their own finances in response,” Advait Arun, a former Treasury Department analyst who now researches capital markets and energy finance at the Center for Public Enterprise think tank, told Latitude Media. “Is $80 billion going to go through LPO? Will it go through the White House? Are there other costs? There [are] all these different ways to imagine how the $80 billion will flow.”

Adding to the uncertainty, a top Energy Department official said this week the federal government may take ownership of the new reactors outright.

“The role of having the government involved in private markets is sacrosanct; you just don’t do it,” Carl Coe, the Energy Department’s chief of staff, said at a conference hosted by the Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council. “But this is a national emergency.”

In a statement, Cameco, the Canadian uranium giant that owns a 49% stake in Westinghouse, said the initial agreement with the Trump administration set the stage to “negotiate and enter into definitive” contracts. Brookfield Asset Management, the private equity firm that owns the 51% share of the nuclear giant, told Latitude Media it expected to broker a binding contract by early next year. ……………………………………………………………………….

The big investor-owned utilities — Exelon, Duke, or Southern Company, for example — are arguably the ones with the resources to pursue a new nuclear deal. But so far, they have resisted building the plants themselves.

“I wouldn’t build a nuclear plant,” Calvin Butler, CEO of utility giant Exelon, told CNBC last week. “What I could do is lean in on combined-cycle gas turbines. What I could do is build community solar. What I could do is own battery storage.”

In an earnings call earlier this month, Duke CEO Harry Sideris said North Carolina’s biggest utility would need to sort out some insurance policy to manage cost overruns before embarking on its loose plans to build more than a gigawatt of new nuclear power by 2037.

“We still need to figure out what we’re going to do with cost overrun protection and how we’re going to protect our investors and our customers from overruns,” Sideris told investors on the call. “Nothing going forward until we have those other items resolved.”

Westinghouse is pursuing alternative ways to bring down the cost of new reactors. Earlier this week, the company debuted new artificial intelligence software it’s developing with Google to streamline construction and reduce the enormous cost of interest payments on loans from slow buildouts.

‘A shiny toy’

That the landmark Westinghouse agreement came through the Commerce Department rather than the Energy Department is a sign of the lack of coordination between agencies under the Trump administration, a Republican source with direct knowledge of the White House’s nuclear plans told Latitude Media.

“Everyone is running around the globe trying to make deals to bring a shiny toy back to the president,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The source said it was a situation of “the left hand not knowing what the right is doing,” and expressed doubt that the Japanese would direct that much funding toward a non-Japanese company in the U.S.

But that might be about to change. In late October, hard-right stalwart Sanae Takaichi took office as prime minister, pushing her plans to rebuild her country’s nuclear sector. More than half of Japan’s operable reactors are still offline as part of a nationwide shutdown that occurred after the 2011 Fukushima-Daiichi accident, but the new Takaichi administration is aiming to restart those reactors and build new ones………………. https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/trumps-westinghouse-nuclear-deal-comes-with-unresolved-questions/

November 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Nordic nations’ Ukraine burden ‘unsustainable’ – Sweden.

Stockholm has criticized uneven cash injections from other bloc members, despite claims about backing Kiev “for as long as it takes”

RT Thu, 20 Nov 2025, https://www.sott.net/article/503063-Nordic-nations-Ukraine-burden-unsustainable-Sweden

It is unsustainable for Nordic countries to continue to pay a disproportionate amount to support Ukraine, Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard has said in an interview with Politico. Rifts are widening inside the EU over how – and whether – to keep funding Kiev, according to the outlet.

Currently, Nordic and Baltic countries continue to contribute the most to Kiev relative to GDP, while larger EU economies trail far behind in proportional terms – a disparity Stockholm says the EU can no longer ignore.

In an interview published on Thursday, Stenergard claimed “a few countries take almost all of the burden,” calling the imbalance “not fair” and “not sustainable in the long run.”

She noted that the Nordic countries, with fewer than 30 million people, are expected to provide a third of NATO’s military aid to Ukraine this year. “It’s not reasonable in any way. And it says a lot about what the Nordics do – but it says even more about what the others don’t do.”

Comment: The Swedish foreign minister forgets that the Nordic countries are doing it out of their own blindness to reality. If they feel it is unfair, then just stop handing over the Nordic taxpayers money to Ukraine.
Stenergard’s comments reflect mounting frustration in northern capitals despite continued rhetoric about backing Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” Politico reported.

Comment: They thought that “as long as it takes” wouldn’t last so long. In other words, it was just a nice sounding slogan without much thought to what it actually meant.
EU officials have reportedly circulated a document outlining three options for the bloc’s next package for Kiev – two involving increased cash injections from member states, and a third using proceeds from frozen Russian sovereign assets. Stenergard signaled that using the immobilized assets could be the only viable path, given resistance in parts of the bloc to deeper budget commitments.

Western nations froze about $300 billion in Russian central bank assets after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. The EU has so far transferred over a billion from interest to Kiev.

The debate comes as Ukraine faces a $100 million corruption scandal uncovered this month, in which anti-corruption agencies accused Timur Mindich – a former business partner of Vladimir Zelensky – of siphoning kickbacks from contracts with nuclear operator Energoatom, a company heavily dependent on foreign aid

The scandal broke just as Kiev is pushing for a new €140 billion ($160 billion) loan backed by frozen Russian assets, a plan stalled for weeks amid legal worries and Belgian resistance, with Moscow dismissing any use of its assets as “theft.”

Comment: So the Swedes want to steal Russian assets because they couldn’t really afford to support the black hole of Ukraine forever. They are now realizing that the money they gave to Ukraine will never come back and there wont be Russian resources to plunder. If they steal Russian frozen assets in Belgium, then the Euro will be relegated to the history of failed fiat currencies.

November 23, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Sweden, Ukraine | Leave a comment

US to Own Nuclear Reactors Stemming From Japan’s $550 Billion Pledge.

The US government plans to buy and own as many as 10 new, large nuclear reactors that could be paid for using Japan’s $550 billion funding
pledge, part of a push to meet surging demand for electricity. The new
details of the unusual arrangement were outlined Wednesday by Carl Coe, the Energy Department’s chief of staff, about the non-binding commitment made by Japan in October to fund $550 billion in US projects, including as much as $80 billion for the construction of new reactors made by Westinghouse Electric Co.

Bloomberg 19th Nov 2025,
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-19/us-to-own-reactors-stemming-from-japan-s-550-billion-pledge

November 22, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Japan, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Energy Department loans $1B to help finance the restart of nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island.

The U.S. Department of Energy said Tuesday that it will loan $1 billion to
help finance the restart of the nuclear power plant on Pennsylvania’s
Three Mile Island that is under contract to supply power to data centers
for tech giant Microsoft. The loan is in line with the priorities of
President Donald Trump’s administration, including bolstering nuclear power
and artificial intelligence.For Constellation Energy, which owns Three Mile
Island’s lone functioning nuclear power reactor, the federal loan will
lower its financing cost to get the mothballed plant up and running again.
The 835-megawatt reactor can power the equivalent of approximately 800,000
homes, the Department of Energy said.

Daily Mail 18th Nov 2025, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-15304171/Energy-Department-loans-1B-help-finance-restart-nuclear-reactor-Three-Mile-Island.html

November 22, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Google Boss Says Trillion-Dollar AI Investment Boom Has ‘Elements of Irrationality’

November 18, 2025, BBC, Faisal Islam, economics editor and Rachel Clun, business reporter

Every company would be affected if the AI bubble were to burst, the head of Google’s parent firm Alphabet has told the BBC.

Speaking exclusively to BBC News, Sundar Pichai said while the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) investment had been an “extraordinary moment”, there was some “irrationality” in the current AI boom.

It comes amid fears in Silicon Valley and beyond of a bubble as the value of AI tech companies has soared in recent months and companies spend big on the burgeoning industry.

Asked whether Google would be immune to the impact of the AI bubble bursting, Mr Pichai said the tech giant could weather that potential storm, but also issued a warning.

“I think no company is going to be immune, including us,” he said…………..

The interview comes as scrutiny on the state of the AI market has never been more intense.

Alphabet shares have doubled in value in seven months to $3.5tn (£2.7tn) as markets have grown more confident in the search giant’s ability to fend off the threat from ChatGPT owner OpenAI.

A particular focus is Alphabet’s development of specialised superchips for AI that compete with Nvidia, run by Jensen Huang, which recently reached a world first $5tn valuation.

As valuations rise, some analysts have expressed scepticism about a complicated web of $1.4tn of deals being done around OpenAI, which is expected to have revenues this year of less than one thousandth of the planned investment.

It has raised fears stock markets are heading for a repeat of the dotcom boom and bust of the late 1990s. This saw the values of early internet companies surge amid a wave of optimism for what was then a new technology, before the bubble burst in early 2000 and many share prices collapsed.

This led to some companies going bust, resulting in job losses. A drop in share prices can also hit the value of people’s savings including their pension funds.

In comments echoing those made by US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in 1996, warning of “irrational exuberance” in the market well ahead of the dotcom crash, Mr Pichai said the industry can “overshoot” in investment cycles like this………………….https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy7vrd8k4eo

November 21, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

A New Gold(en) Mine for Arms Contractors

Golden Dome seems like a marketing concept designed to enrich arms contractors and burnish Trump’s image rather than a carefully thought-out defense program.

William D. Hartung and Ashley Gate, November 16, 2025

“…………………………………………………………….as TomDispatch regulars Bill Hartung and Ashley Gate point out today, Trump has long been wildly in favor of building a “Golden Dome” nuclear defense system that would prove a remarkable (and remarkably costly) boon for the corporations of what still passes as the “defense” industry, even if it would do nothing whatsoever for the rest of us. Let them fill you in on that nightmare project of our moment and the president who seems intent on recreating a nuclear arms race globally on a planet that already has enough problems to deal with. What a nightmare! Tom

Doomed, Not Domed? The Wrath of the Con Man

By Ashley Gate and William D. Hartung

Kathryn Bigelow’s new nuclear thriller, A House of Dynamite, has been criticized by some experts for being unrealistic, most notably because it portrays an unlikely scenario in which an adversary chooses to attack the United States with just a single nuclear-armed missile. Such a move would, of course, leave the vast American nuclear arsenal largely intact and so invite a devastating response that would undoubtedly largely destroy the attacker’s nation. But the film is strikingly on target when it comes to one thing: its portrayal of the way one U.S. missile interceptor after another misses its target, despite the confidence of most American war planners that they would be able to destroy any incoming nuclear warhead and save the day.

At one point in the film, a junior official points out that U.S. interceptors have failed almost half their tests, and the secretary of defense responds by bellowing: “That’s what $50 billion buys us?”

In fact, the situation is far worse than that. We taxpayers, whether we know it or not, are betting on a house of dynamite, gambling on the idea that technology will save us in the event of a nuclear attack. The United States has, in fact, spent more than $350 billion on missile defenses since, more than four decades ago, President Ronald Reagan promised to create a leak-proof defense against incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Believe it or not, the Pentagon has yet to even conduct a realistic test of the system, which would involve attempting to intercept hundreds of warheads traveling at 1,500 miles per hour, surrounded by realistic decoys that would make it hard to even know which objects to target.

Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists has pointed out that the dream of a perfect missile defense — the very thing Donald Trump has promised that his cherished new “Golden Dome” system will be — is a “fantasy” of the first order, and that “missile defenses are not a useful or long-term strategy for defending the United States from nuclear weapons.”

Grego is hardly alone in her assessment. A March 2025 report by the American Physical Society found that “creating a reliable and effective defense against even [a] small number of relatively unsophisticated nuclear-armed ICBMs remains a daunting challenge.” Its report also notes that “few of the main challenges involved in developing and deploying a reliable and effective missile defense have been solved, and… many of the hard problems we identified are likely to remain so during and probably beyond” the 15-year time horizon envisioned in their study.

Despite the evidence that it will do next to nothing to defend us, President Trump remains all in on the Golden Dome project. Perhaps what he really has in mind, however, has little to do with actually defending us. So far, Golden Dome seems like a marketing concept designed to enrich arms contractors and burnish Trump’s image rather than a carefully thought-out defense program.

Contrary to both logic and history, Trump has claimed that his supposedly leak-proof system can be produced in a mere three years for $175 billion. While that’s a serious chunk of change, analysts in the field suggest that the cost is likely to be astronomically higher and that the president’s proposed timeline is, politely put, wildly optimistic. Todd Harrison, a respected Pentagon budget analyst currently based at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, estimates that such a system would cost somewhere between $252 billion and $3.6 trillion over 20 years, depending on its design. Harrison’s high-end estimate is more than 20 times the off-hand price tossed out by President Trump.

As for the president’s proposed timeline of three years, it’s wildly out of line with the Pentagon’s experience with other major systems it’s developed. More than three decades after it was proposed as a possible next-generation fighter jet (under the moniker Joint Strike Fighter, or JSF), for example, the F-35, once touted as a “revolution in military procurement,” is still plagued by hundreds of defects, and the planes spend almost half their time in hangars for repair and maintenance.

Proponents of the Golden Dome project argue that it’s now feasible because of new technologies being developed in Silicon Valley, from artificial intelligence to quantum computing. Those claims are, of course, unproven, and past experience suggests that there is no miracle technological solution to complex security threats. AI-driven weapons may be quicker to locate and destroy targets and capable of coordinating complex responses like swarms of drones. But there is no evidence that AI can help solve the problem of blocking hundreds of fast-flying warheads embedded in a cloud of decoys. Worse yet, a missile defense system needs to work perfectly each and every time if it is to provide leak-proof protection against a nuclear catastrophe, an inconceivable standard in the real world of weaponry and defensive systems.

Of course, the weapons contractors salivating at the prospect of a monstrous payday tied to the development of Golden Dome are well aware that the president’s timeline will be quite literally unmeetable. Lockheed Martin has optimistically suggested that it should be able to perform the first test of a space-based interceptor in 2028, three years from now. And such space-based interceptors have been suggested as a central element of the Golden Dome system. In other words, Trump’s pledge to fund contractors to build a viable Golden Dome system in three years is PR or perhaps PF (presidential fantasy), not realistic planning.

Who Will Benefit from the Golden Dome?

The major contractors for Golden Dome may not be revealed for a few months, but we already know enough to be able to take an educated guess about which companies are likely to play central roles in the program………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Should the Golden Dome system indeed be launched (at a staggering cost to the American taxpayer), its “gold” would further enrich already well-heeled weapons contractors, give us a false sense of security, and let Donald Trump pose as this country’s greatest defender ever. Sadly, fantasies die hard, so job number one in rolling back the Golden Dome boondoggle is simply making it clear that no missile defense system will protect us in the event of a nuclear attack, a point made well by A House of Dynamite. The question is: Can our policymakers be as realistic in their assessment of missile defense as the makers of a major Hollywood movie? Or is that simply too much to ask? https://tomdispatch.com/doomed-not-domed/

November 21, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear levy will increase UK energy bills from December

SMEs need to factor in a boost in their energy costs as the nuclear levy – a mandatory charge for both homes and businesses – is brought in by the Government.

.From next month, all energy bills will include the “nuclear levy”, a charge used by the Government to fund nuclear infrastructure. It is expected to add up to around £100 a year for small businesses, but this will vary with their energy usage.

Start-Ups 19th Nov 2025, https://startups.co.uk/news/nuclear-levy/

November 21, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear Stocks Crash, With A Potential Payoff Still Years Away

Oil Price, By Alex Kimani – Nov 17, 2025

Uranium prices have surged amid a structural supply deficit and a global policy-driven nuclear revival, but the sector faces long project timelines and mounting volatility.
Despite major investment pledges like the U.S.–Canada $80 billion reactor partnership, nuclear and uranium stocks have plunged 15–45% in recent weeks.
Investors confront the industry’s slow path to revenue.

‘…………………………………………… the harsh reality of the long lead and construction times of nuclear facilities, coupled with the fact that some stocks in the space with zero revenues are in nosebleed territory, has sent the sector into a tailspin. Nuclear and uranium stocks have pulled back sharply from recent highs, with many seeing double-digit losses: the sector’s popular benchmark, VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF (NYSEARCA:NLR) has declined -16.6% over the past 30 days, at a time when the S&P 500 has gained nearly 3%……………………………….

The market appears to be waking up to the reality that it could be up to a decade before we start to reap the benefits from the billions of dollars flowing into the sector. Whereas $80 billion can build enough reactors to power Virginia’s Data Center Alley, traditional reactors typically take 10 years or more to build. Meanwhile, the frequently touted small, modular reactors (SMRs) by the likes of NuScale Power, TerraPower and X-energy are still far from going mainstream primarily because the technology is still in early development and faces significant economic and regulatory hurdles.

While some prototype units are operational in countries like Russia and China, most designs are still in the theoretical or early construction phases………………………

Amazon has invested in X-energy with the goal of deploying up to 5 GW of SMRs by 2039.

Only Oklo Inc., Kairos Power and TerraPower have begun construction of their SMR plants; however, none have proven they can produce power at a commercial scale nor received regulatory approval to build a commercial system.

“There’s a lot going on, and nothing is going on,” BloombergNEF’s head nuclear analyst Chris Gadomski recently quipped.

To exacerbate matters, the markets have bid up these companies to absurd valuations despite many having no revenues to show for their troubles. To wit, Oklo’s market cap has at times exceeded $20 billion, despite the company having no operating reactors, no licenses to operate commercially, and no binding contracts to supply power. Wall Street analysts currently project Oklo will not generate significant revenue until late 2027 or 2028. Oklo’s current market cap is $15.3 billion…………………… https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Nuclear-Stocks-Crash-With-A-Potential-Payoff-Still-Years-Away.html

November 19, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Geoffrey Hinton: They’re spending $420 billion on AI. It pays off only if they fire you.

So the business case for AI isn’t “AI will help workers be more productive.” It’s “AI will replace workers entirely, and we’ll pocket the salary savings.”

Tasmia Sharmin, Nov 2, 2025, Published in Predict.

Let me translate what Geoffrey Hinton just said, because it’s important and most people are going to miss it.

Geoffrey Hinton literally invented the neural networks that power modern AI. He won a Nobel Prize for it. And this week, he went on Bloomberg TV and said something that tech CEOs have been dancing around for months:

Tech companies cannot profit from their AI investments without replacing human workers.

Not “might replace.” Not “could eventually replace.” Cannot profit without replacing.

That’s not a prediction. That’s him explaining the business model.

What He’s Actually Saying

Here’s Hinton’s point in plain English:

Tech giants are spending $420 billion next year on AI infrastructure. Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon. They’re building data centers, buying AI chips, training massive models.

That money only makes sense if AI replaces workers.

Think about it. If you spend $100 billion building AI systems, how do you make that money back?

You can’t just sell slightly better products. You need massive cost savings. And the biggest cost in any company is labor.

So the business case for AI isn’t “AI will help workers be more productive.” It’s “AI will replace workers entirely, and we’ll pocket the salary savings.”

Hinton is saying what everyone in Silicon Valley knows but won’t say publicly: the whole AI investment thesis depends on job elimination.

Why This Matters

When Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the 14,000 layoffs are about “culture, ” Hinton is calling bullshit.

When tech companies say AI will “augment” human workers, Hinton is calling bullshit.

When they claim AI will create as many jobs as it destroys, Hinton, who literally invented this technology, is saying: I don’t believe that.

He told Bloomberg: “I believe that to make money you’re going to have to replace human labor.”

Not augment. Replace.

This is the guy who understands AI better than almost anyone on the planet. And he’s warning us that the tech industry’s entire AI strategy is built on eliminating jobs.

The Numbers Back Him Up

Since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, job openings have dropped 30%.

During that same time, the stock market went up 70%. So companies are doing great. Investors are happy. But jobs are disappearing.

Stanford research found that young workers (22–25) in AI-exposed fields saw employment drop 13% to 16%. Meanwhile, older workers in the same fields actually saw job growth.

What does that tell you?

Companies are replacing entry-level workers with AI while keeping experienced people for now.

The pattern is clear: AI isn’t creating a bunch of new jobs. It’s eliminating the bottom rungs of the career ladder.

What Hinton Sees That Others Won’t Say

Previous technological revolutions created jobs while destroying others. Cars eliminated horse-related jobs but created automotive manufacturing, gas stations, road construction, and suburbs.

Hinton thinks AI is different. He’s skeptical that AI will follow that historical pattern.

Why?

Because AI doesn’t just replace one type of job. It can potentially replace cognitive work across entire industries. Writing, analysis, coding, design, customer service, data entry, research, translation.

When factories automated, displaced workers could move to other sectors. When AI automates cognitive work, where do knowledge workers go?

Hinton doesn’t have an answer. Nobody does. And that’s what scares him.

The $420 Billion Question

Tech companies are projected to spend $420 billion on AI next year. OpenAI alone announced $1 trillion in infrastructure deals.

That is an insane amount of money.

The only way to justify spending that much is if you’re confident the returns will be massive . And the only way to get massive returns is through massive labor cost reduction.

Hinton is basically saying: look at the math. These companies aren’t investing hundreds of billions to make workers 10% more productive. They’re investing to eliminate positions entirely.

When a Bloomberg interviewer asked if AI investments could generate returns without job cuts, Hinton said he believes they can’t.

Think about what that means. The person who pioneered AI technology is telling you the business model requires job elimination. And companies are investing as if he’s right.

Why Amazon’s “Culture” Excuse is Bullshit

This week, Amazon fired 14,000 people. CEO Andy Jassy said it’s about culture and organizational layers, not AI.

But back in June, Jassy wrote a memo saying Amazon would need “fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today” because of AI efficiency gains.

So which is it, Andy?

Hinton is cutting through the corporate speak.

He’s saying: of course it’s about AI. The entire industry is betting on AI replacing workers. Stop pretending otherwise.

Amazon is just the first major wave. More are coming.

The Healthcare and Education Exception

Hinton isn’t totally pessimistic. He admits AI will have benefits in healthcare and education.

AI can help doctors diagnose diseases, analyze medical images, personalize treatment. It can help students learn at their own pace, provide tutoring, make education more accessible.

But even there, it’s not all upside.

Better diagnostic AI means you need fewer radiologists. Better educational AI means you need fewer tutors and teaching assistants.

The benefits are real. But so is the job displacement.

The Real Problem Hinton Identifies

Here’s the most important thing Hinton said, and most people will miss it:

The problem isn’t AI itself. It’s how we organize society.

Right now, we live in a system where most people need jobs to survive. Income comes from employment. No job means no money, no healthcare, no security.

So when AI eliminates jobs, that’s catastrophic for individuals even if it’s profitable for companies.

Hinton is pointing out that our entire social structure assumes full employment. When that assumption breaks, the system breaks.

Unless we restructure how society works, how wealth is distributed, and how people access resources, AI-driven job displacement creates a crisis.

What Makes This Warning Different

Lots of people warn about AI and jobs. But most of them are outside the industry, or they’re critics, or they’re trying to sell you something.

Hinton is different. He’s not some Luddite afraid of technology. He invented this technology. He won a Nobel Prize for work that made modern AI possible.

And he quit Google specifically so he could speak freely about AI risks without it reflecting on his employer.

When the person who created the technology warns you about its consequences, you should probably listen.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Here’s what Hinton is really saying, stripped of all politeness:

Tech companies are spending hundreds of billions on AI. That investment only pays off if they fire massive numbers of workers and pocket the salary savings. They know this. Their business plans depend on it.

Everything else, all the talk about augmentation and productivity and creating new jobs, is PR.

The actual business model is: build AI, replace workers, increase profits.

And unless society fundamentally changes how it works, this is going to devastate a lot of people while making shareholders very rich.

My Take

I think Hinton is right, and it’s terrifying that he’s right.

The math is simple. Companies are investing too much money in AI for the returns to come from anything other than large-scale job replacement. The spending only makes sense if the plan is to eliminate positions.

And they’re not going to admit that’s the plan until it’s already happening.

We’ll keep hearing about culture changes and organizational efficiency and digital transformation. But the reality is what Hinton described: companies betting on AI to replace human labor because that’s where the money is.

The scary part isn’t that one guy thinks this. The scary part is that he invented the technology, understands it better than almost anyone, and he’s warning us that the people building AI are building it specifically to replace jobs.

We should probably pay attention!!!

Do you think Hinton is right? Can tech companies make back their AI investments without massive job cuts? Or is he just stating the obvious that everyone else is too polite to say?

Because if he’s right, and I think he is, we’re not preparing for what’s coming. We’re still pretending this is about productivity tools and augmentation while companies are quietly planning for something much more disruptive.

November 18, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | employment, technology | Leave a comment

Health Care Workers Spoke Out for Their Peers in Gaza. Then Came Backlash.

Medical institutions are silencing their staff and impeding efforts to build solidarity with medical workers in Gaza.

By Marianne Dhenin , Truthout, November 17, 2025

handra Hassan, an associate professor of surgery at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) College of Medicine, spent three weeks in Gaza in January 2024, treating patients who had survived tank shelling, drone strikes, and sniper fire amid Israel’s ongoing genocide. When Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis came under siege, Hassan and the MedGlobal doctors he was serving with were forced to flee. “We were evacuated when they bombed just across the street from the hospital [and] tanks were rolling in,” Hassan told Truth

When Hassan returned home to Chicago, he was eager to share his experiences and advocate for an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has killed an estimated 68,000 Palestinians since October 2023. Among the dead are over 1,500 health care workers, including doctors and nurses Hassan worked alongside.

But instead of being welcomed like he had been after previous missions to conflict zones in Ukraine and Syria, Hassan soon found himself on the receiving end of a doxxing and harassment campaign. StopAntisemitism, a pro-Israel group that doxxes people it accuses of antisemitism, shared screenshots of some of Hassan’s LinkedIn posts to its X account. Hassan said his employer received around 1,500 emailed complaints the day StopAntisemitism posted his information.

“I was speaking up for the human rights of Palestinians [because] it’s like, you’re witnessing another genocide, you need to talk about it,” Hassan told Truthout. But StopAntisemitism “put my picture, and they wrote that I’m [an] antisemite.”

Hassan is one of more than 15 health care workers in eight states who told Truthout they faced silencing, harassment, or workplace retaliation for Palestine-related speech, including giving a talk on health issues in Palestine, endorsing statements condemning the killing of health care workers in Gaza, or wearing a keffiyeh or other symbols of Palestine solidarity at work. Many said they felt that their hospitals, clinics, or professional societies had become increasingly hostile working environments since October 2023.

The experiences that health care workers shared suggest that organized campaigns of complaints and harassment from pro-Israel groups against health care workers have intensified, and that anti-Palestinian racism is entrenched across health care institutions nationwide. In a 2024 survey, the Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism (IUAPR) also found widespread anti-Palestinian racism in health care: More than half of the 387 health care provider respondents “reported experiencing silencing, exclusion, harassment, physical threat or harm, or defamation while advocating for Gaza and/or Palestinian human rights.” Half said they were “afraid to speak out.”

Many of those who spoke to Truthout shared that fear and expressed concerns for their patients and profession: “The reality on the ground is that racism is running unchecked throughout our medical institutions, and as a result, health care workers don’t have the training they need, accountability is not happening at the level of the medical institutions, and our communities are not being served,” Asfia Qaadir, a psychiatrist specialized in trauma-informed care for BIPOC youth, told Truthout. “Racism is about erasure, and ultimately, our patients are paying the price.”