nuclear-news

Why New Large and Small Nuclear Reactors are Not Green.

August 20, 2025, By: Mark Z. Jacobson, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-world/why-new-large-and-small-nuclear-reactors-are-not-green

Despite their considerable allure in the eyes of many, and despite being put forth as the cure to the energy crisis, nuclear reactors are not green.

Air pollution, global warming, and energy security are three of the biggest problems facing the world. Many have suggested that new nuclear reactors can help solve these problems. However, due to the long time from planning to operation alone, new reactors are useless for solving any of these problems. This is just one of seven issues with nuclear electricity that illustrate why it can’t be classified as “green.” Developing more clean, renewable energy is a viable solution.

Long Planning-to-Operation Time

The planning-to-operation (PTO) time of a nuclear reactor includes the time to identify a site, obtain a site permit, purchase or lease the land, obtain a construction permit, finance and insure the construction, install transmission, negotiate a power purchase agreement, obtain permits, build the plant, connect it to transmission, and obtain an operating license.

New reactors now require PTO times of seventeen to twenty-three years in North America and Europe and twelve to twenty-three years worldwide. The only two reactors built from scratch in the United States since 1996 were two in Georgia. They had PTO times of seventeen and eighteen years (construction times of ten and eleven years). The Olkiluoto 3 reactor in Finland began operating in 2023 after a PTO time of twenty-three years. A French reactor began operating in 2024 after a PTO time of twenty years. Hinkley Point C in the UK is estimated to have a PTO time of up to twenty-three years. Four UAE reactors had PTO times of twelve to fifteen years (construction times of nine years). A Chinese reactor in Shidao Bay had a PTO time of seventeen years. China’s Haiyang 1 and 2 had PTO times of thirteen and fourteen years. No reactor in history has had a PTO time of less than ten years. Today, that number is twelve years,

Wind and solar take only two to five years. Rooftop PV is down to six months. Thus, new nuclear is useless, but renewables are not, for solving the three world problems, which need an eighty percent solution by 2030 and 100 percent renewable by 2035 to 2050.

Cost

The 2025 cost of electricity for the new Vogtle nuclear reactors is $199 (169 to 228) per megawatt-hour. This compares with $61.5 (thirty-seven to eighty-six) for onshore wind and $58 (thirty-eight to seventy-eight) for utility-scale solar PV. Thus, new nuclear costs three (two to 6.2) times as much as new solar and wind. But nuclear’s cost does not include the cost to clean up the three Fukushima Dai-ichi reactor meltdowns, estimated at $460 to $640 billion, or ten to 18.5 percent of the capital cost of every reactor worldwide. Also, the cost of storing nuclear waste for 200,000 years is ignored. About $500 million is spent yearly in the United States to safeguard waste.

Air Pollution and Global Warming From Nuclear

There is no such thing as a close-to-zero-emission nuclear power plant. Carbon-equivalent emissions per unit of electricity from new nuclear power plants are nine to thirty-seven times those of onshore wind. Higher nuclear emissions are due to emissions from the background electric grid during the long PTO time of nuclear as compared with that of wind, emissions from mining and refining uranium, emissions from constructing and decommissioning a reactor, and heat and water-vapor emissions during reactor operations.

Weapons Proliferation Risk

The growth of nuclear electricity has historically increased the ability of several nations, most recently Iran, to enrich uranium or harvest plutonium to build or attempt to build nuclear weapons. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states, with “robust evidence and high agreement,” that “barriers to and risks associated with an increasing use of nuclear energy include…nuclear weapons proliferation concerns…” Building a reactor allows a country to import and secretly enrich uranium and harvest plutonium from uranium fuel rods to help develop nuclear weapons. This does not mean every country will, but some have. Small modular reactors (SMRs) increase this risk, because SMRs can be sold more readily to and transported to countries without nuclear power.

Meltdown Risk

To date, 1.5 percent of all nuclear power plants built have melted down to some degree. Meltdowns have been either catastrophic (Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986; three reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi, Japan, in 2011) or damaging (Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979; Saint-Laurent, France, in 1980). The nuclear industry claims that new reactor designs are safe. But new designs are generally untested, and there is no guarantee that a new reactor will survive a disaster.

Waste Risk

Consumed fuel rods from nuclear reactors are radioactive waste. Most rods are stored near the reactor that used them. This has given rise to hundreds of radioactive waste sites that must be maintained for at least 200,000 years. The more nuclear waste that accumulates, the greater the risk of a leak that damages water supply, crops, animals, and/or humans.

Miining Lung Cancer Risk

Underground uranium mining, which is about half of all uranium mining, causes lung cancer in miners because uranium mines contain radon gas, some of whose decay products are carcinogenic. Wind and solar do not have this risk because they do not require continuous fuel mining, only one-time mining to produce the infrastructure, and such mining does not involve radon.

In sum, new nuclear takes seven to twenty-one years longer, costs two to 6.2 times as much, and emits nine to thirty-seven times the pollution per unit of electricity as new wind or solar. Beyond simply not being “green,” nuclear energy also has weapons proliferation risks, meltdown risks, waste risks, and mining lung cancer risks, which clean renewables avoid. SMRs will continue most of these problems and increase the risk of proliferation. In 2024, China added 378 gigawatts of wind, solar, and hydropower, ninety-five times the nuclear power it finished. Thus, even where nuclear is growing fastest, renewables are beating it by two orders of magnitude.

Finally, many existing reactors are so costly, their owners are demanding subsidies to stay open. But subsidizing existing nuclear may increase carbon emissions and costs versus replacing the plants with wind or solar.

August 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Radiocarbon Dispersion around Canadian Nuclear Facilities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/radiocarbon-dispersion-around-canadian-nuclear-facilities/3BEF0553EC67E4951B9D5EF132D7EDCA

G. M. Milton, S. J. Kramer, R. M. Brown, C. J. W. Repta, K. J. King and R. R. Rao

Abstract

Canadian deuterium uranium (CANDU) pressurized heavy-water reactors produce 14C by neutron activation of trace quantities of nitrogen in annular gas and reactor components (14N(n,p)14C), and from 17O in the heavy water moderator by (17O(n,α)14C). The radiocarbon produced in the moderator is removed on ion exchange resins incorporated in the water purification systems; however, a much smaller gaseous portion is vented from reactor stacks at activity levels considerably below 1% of permissible derived emission limits.

Early measurements of the carbon speciation indicated that >90% of the 14C emitted was in the form of CO₂. We conducted surveys of the atmospheric dispersion of 14CO₂ at the Chalk River Laboratories and at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. We analyzed air, vegetation, soils and tree rings to add to the historical record of 14C emissions at these sites, and to gain an understanding of the relative importance of the various carbon pools that act as sources/sinks within the total 14C budget. Better model parameters than those currently available for calculating the dose to the critical group can be obtained in this manner. Global dose estimates may require the development of techniques for estimating emissions occurring outside the growing season.

Information

TypeIV. 14C as a Tracer of the Dynamic Carbon Cycle in the Current EnvironmentInformation

Radiocarbon , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , 1995 , pp. 485 – 496

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033822200030964

References…………………………………………………………………….

August 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Do heatwaves, wildfires and travel costs signal the end of the holiday abroad?

It was a prediction nobody wanted to hear. On the main stage of the world’s
biggest tourism fair, Stefan Gössling, a leading researcher in sustainable
transport, had just calmly announced the looming death of the holiday
industry. “We have already entered the beginning of the age of
non-tourism,” said Gössling, to an uneasy audience of travel agencies,
car rental companies, cruise operators and hoteliers. That prophecy may
sound fanciful to holidaymakers in Europe and North America who have been
jetting off this summer – as well as to industry executives delighted to
see international tourism return to pre-pandemic highs last year – but
Gössling argues that as carbon pollution stokes heatwaves, fuels wildfires
and ruins harvests, the cost of foreign travel will soar, and fewer people
will be able to afford it. Gössling is not short of examples of
destinations already feeling the squeeze. Warm weather is melting snow that
keeps Alpine ski resorts alive. Coastal erosion is stripping sand from
southern European beaches. Droughts are forcing Spanish hotels to ship in
fresh water as swimming pools lie empty, while wildfires are setting scenic
Greek islands ablaze.

Guardian 23rd Aug 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/23/do-heatwaves-wildfires-and-travel-costs-signal-the-end-of-the-holiday-abroad

August 25, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Wildfire smoke far more dangerous to health than thought, say scientists.

Deaths from short-term exposure to fine particulates spewed by forest fires underestimated by 93%

Ajit Niranjan, Guardian, 19 Aug 25

Choking smoke spewed by wildfires is far more dangerous than previously thought, a new study has found, with death tolls from short-term exposure to fine particulates underestimated by 93%.

Researchers found that 535 people in Europe died on average each year between 2004 and 2022 as a result of breathing in the tiny toxic particles known as PM2.5 that are released when wildfires rage.

Under standard methods, which assume PM2.5 from wildfires is as deadly as from other sources, such as traffic, they would have expected just 38 deaths a year.

The study comes as wildfires ravage southern Europe, and new data from EU fire monitors shows that 895,000 hectares (2.2m acres) have burned so far in 2025, breaking records for this time of year. They have pumped out more than twice the amount of PM2.5 that wildfires have generated on average by this point in the year over the last two decades.

“Previously, people assumed the same toxicity for wildfire particles and all particles,” said Prof Cathryn Tonne, an environmental epidemiologist at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) and co-author of the study.

“Our paper shows evidence that – although it happens less often – the health impact for the same amount of particles is stronger for wildfire particles,” she added.

Dirty air is one of the biggest threats to human health, and research suggests wildfires are a significant contributor to the vast death toll. In December, a study attributed 1.53 million deaths around the world each year to short-term and long-term exposure to air pollution from wildfires.

The ISGlobal researchers, who looked only at the smoke’s short-term effects, for which the evidence base is stronger, combined daily mortality records from 32 European countries with estimates of PM2.5 pollution from 2004 to 2022.

Using models that account for an expected lag in deaths, they found exposure to wildfire smoke increased the risk of death in the following week………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/19/wildfire-smoke-far-more-dangerous-than-thought-say-scientists

August 22, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

We’re having a heatwave -and nuclear power can’t cope.

Nuclear power ……….is a sitting technological duck when extreme temperatures strike.

   July 27, 2025 by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/07/27/were-having-a-heatwave/

And nuclear power can’t cope. Worse still, it’s actually a liability under ever more extreme climate conditions, write Karl Grossman and Harvey Wasserman

At the core of the latest attempted “renaissance” of nuclear power is the Big Lie that atomic reactors are an answer to global warming. In fact, they are significant sources of heat.

There are more than 400 nuclear power plants in the world today that fission atoms at 300 degrees Centigrade, (572 degrees Fahrenheit). More are under construction or proposed. As the International Atomic Energy Agency states, “water-cooled reactors offer heat up to 300 degrees Celsius. These types of reactors include pressurized water reactors (PWRs), boiling-water reactors (BWRs), pressurized heavy-water reactors, and light-water-cooled graphite-moderated reactors (LWGRs).”

Some heat is absorbed in the water—drawn from water bodies—used to cool these nuclear power plants and then returned, still with considerable heat, to rivers or seas.

The heatwave going on in recent weeks in Europe, in combination with this discharge of heated water from nuclear plants, has caused nuclear plants there to shut down.

Consider these headlines from recent days:

“France and Switzerland shut down nuclear power plants amid scorching heatwave,” was the July 3rd headline on Euronews. As the piece explained: “To cool down, nuclear power plants pump water from local rivers or the sea, which they then release back into water bodies at a high temperature. However, Europe’s ongoing heatwave means that the water pumped by nuclear sites is already very hot, impacting the ability of nuclear plants to use it to cool down. On top of this, nuclear sites run the risk of posing a dangerous threat to local biodiversity, by releasing water which is too hot into rivers and seas.”

A New York Times article, also dated July 3^rd, related how in Europe, “operators shut down one of the two reactors at the Golfech nuclear power plant in southern France after forecasts that the Garonne River, from which it draws water and then discharges it after it is used in the plant as coolant, “could top…82 degrees Fahrenheit.” The Times continued: “The Beznau Nuclear Power Plant in Switzerland, built along the Aare River followed suit, shutting down one of its reactors on Tuesday and the other on Wednesday.”

It quoted its European program director, Pawel Czyzak, saying: “Heatwaves will not go away—they will only get more severe in the future…Luckily, there is no lack of sunshine during heatwaves. The biggest opportunity is to store solar electricity…”

“The French nuclear fleet has been impacted the most, with all but one of the 18 facilities experiencing some type of capacity reduction,” said the report.

It continued: “While heatwaves bring major changes, these are partially offset by the large volumes of solar energy available during daytime. In fact, June 2025 was the highest European Union solar electricity production month on record.” And this “kept the grid well-supplied during daytime hours.”

The Ember report also pointed out, “Solar power is one of the cheapest forms of electricity that Europe has.”

Nuclear power, beyond being subject to catastrophic accidents such as those that occurred at Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, extreme cost, substantial carbon emissions during the nuclear “lifecycle”—mining of uranium, milling it, enrichment of the uranium fuel and other operations—is a sitting technological duck when extreme temperatures strike.

Ember, an independent London-based global energy think tank, on July 4^th issued a report headed: “Heat and power: Impacts of the 2025 heatwave in Europe.” It noted: “Heatwaves are becoming more frequent in Europe, putting electricity grids under severe stress.”

“Europe embraces its new reality with heatwaves: ‘They are no longer an exception,’” was the headline of a July 3^rd El Mundo article. “Heatwaves in Southern Europe are becoming increasingly early and intense,” it reported.

It quoted Meto-France climatologist Christine Berne saying: “Heatwaves are no longer an exception. They are now more frequent, longer, and spread over larger geographical areas…The phenomenon is directly related to global warming, which is profoundly altering weather patterns, both in France and elsewhere.”

In California, a “bait and switch” to continue operation of the Diablo Canyon atomic reactors is super-heating the Pacific Ocean. In 2018, Pacific Gas & Electric was being forced to stop violating state and federal water protection laws with its massive heat emissions from the twin nuclear power plants. Facing the expensive requirement to build cooling towers, the company agreed to shut down Diablo in 2024 and 2025, ushering in a transition to cheaper, safer, cleaner, more reliable and more job-producing renewables. But in 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom killed the phase-out agreement he had signed as Lieutenant-Governor. So, Diablo still pours billions of gallons of irradiated super-heated water into the Pacific, joining the billions of gallons of irradiated liquid that are pouring in from the site of the Fukushima catastrophe.

In addition to that heat, all nukes emit radioactive fallout, including a radioactive form of carbon, Carbon 14, along with other lethal pollutants, while costing ratepayers up to 10 times more than solar, wind, geothermal and battery backup.

Solar energy, its cost having plummeted in recent years, is now 90 percent cheaper per watt than nuclear power. Further, its efficiency level — its efficiency in converting sunlight to electricity — has dramatically increased. Safe, clean, renewable energy sources — primarily in the form of solar panels and wind turbines — now account for more than 80 percent of the world’s new electric generating capacity.

What’s gone on in the last several weeks in Europe is no exception. The heat is on all over the globe. But there’s solar (and wind) power continuing to function well, while adding no heat, radiation or carbon of its own — unlike the planet’s hyper-lethal nuke reactors.

Meanwhile, the nuclear industry is pushing a new kind of reactor — a fusion reactor that would operate at an astronomical level of heat. It would utilize, instead of fission, the fusion of atoms — the process that happens on the sun, and notes the World Economic Forum: “Temperatures in excess of 150 million degrees Celsius — 10 times hotter than the center of the sun — re required for fusion to occur on Earth.”

“Unsurprisingly,” says the Geneva, Switzerland-based organization, “achieving and controlling these enormous temperatures is a substantial technological challenge. This usually requires using incredibly powerful magnets to contain a hot plasma, preventing it from touching and melting the sides of vessels. Fusion research reactors have achieved temperatures in excess of 300 million degrees Celsius.”

The World Economic Forum’s 2020 analysis is headed: “What is fusion energy, and what will it take for it to go mainstream?”

What does 150 million degrees Celsius convert to in Fahrenheit: 270 million degrees!

To fantasize that Earth-threatening global warming happening now and gaining in intensity can be dealt with by fission nuclear power plants operating at 572 degrees Fahrenheit or fusion nuclear power plants operating at 270 million degrees Fahrenheit is among the great follies in human history.

Harvey Wasserman wrote the books Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth and The Peoples Spiral of US History and co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition . Karl Grossman is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power and Power Crazy. He the host of the nationally-aired TV program Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman.

July 29, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | 1 Comment

‘Keeping us hooked on fossil fuels’: how can we negotiate with autocracies on the climate crisis?

 When it comes to the climate crisis, how do you negotiate with an
autocracy? It is the case today, and it is almost certain to remain so for
the dwindling number of years in which we can hope to stave off the worst
of climate breakdown, that the bulk of the world’s greenhouse gas
emissions come from countries that are not democratic. Add to that, many of
the major suppliers of oil and gas – the Gulf petrostates for instance,
plus Russia, Venezuela and a few others – are likewise authoritarian.
Their outsize impact puts autocratic nations in the spotlight when it comes
to global climate talks. How their governments decide to act will be
crucial to the planet’s future. But while democracies are subject to the
whims of electorates, which can often be unpredictable, autocratic nations
tend to be far more inscrutable. Take the small handful of the world’s
biggest fossil fuel companies, referred to as the “carbon majors”. They
hold our future in their hands, and of the top 20 with the biggest carbon
output globally, 16 are state-owned and were responsible for 52% of global
emissions in 2023.

 Guardian 18th July 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/18/climate-crisis-fossil-fuels-autocracies-authoritorian-countries

July 19, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment