When did nuclear power become “clean”?
A lunge towards nuclear is the worst possible path for a world aspiring towards “clean” energy. It poses a major security risk too.
Gerald Warner, Former special adviser to the Scottish Secretary, 13June, 2025
When, exactly, did nuclear power become “clean” energy? Even in our post-truth society, it remains mind-boggling that the most dangerous and enduringly toxic technology known to man should have been repackaged and presented as “green”, “safe” and “clean”. This imposture puts Orwell’s “War is peace, freedom is slavery” very much in the shade.
Rachel Reeves’s statement on Wednesday included £14bn of funding for the construction of the new Sizewell C nuclear plant, as well as the announcement that three small modular reactors (SMRs) would be built by Rolls Royce. While this reflects government awareness of the inadequacy of “renewables” for energy supply, this lunge towards nuclear is the worst possible path we could have taken. A world aspiring to clean energy should be phasing out nuclear power, not expanding it………… (subscribers only) https://www.reaction.life/p/when-did-nuclear-power-become-clean
The media, scientific consensus, and toxic nuclear waste
Not to be outdone by more modern means of propaganda, Nuclear Waste Services has continued the tradition of only providing the audience with the information that suits their argument.
The only way to reduce waste is to reduce the activities that cause it.
There is no other logical way.
News media tends to use ‘scientific consensus’ as if it is the end point of the discussion.
The implication that ‘this is the only way’ serves to quash dissenting voices and validate the overall message of the article.
When government agencies are hard to trust, who do we look to? Scientists. But what job is the concept of scientific consensus doing in the marketing of the GDF?
A Quiet Resistance, 8 May 2025
‘Scientific consensus’ carries a lot of weight in news media discussing the proposed Geological Disposal Facilities (GDFs) (nuclear waste dumps) in West Cumbria.
This consensus is also being used as a persuasion tool in the official literature handed out to communities by Nuclear Waste Services (NWS).
Since most of us aren’t scientists in either the nuclear industry or geodisposal, we have to turn to those who are if we’re to understand what’s going to happen to our community. Alongside the regular newsletters and other marketing from NWS, we usually access those people through articles in the news and on the internet.
But it’s important to keep asking questions about what we’re reading.
‘Scientific consensus’ doesn’t mean the science is settled; articles can contain facts and still be biased.
Biases in news media
The news media are paid for by advertisers. If they publish articles that make arguments against their advertisers’ interests, they lose advertising money. Their advertisers’ interests may not be clear. For example, they may be companies that have money invested in hedge funds, which in turn invest in nuclear power.
News media also come up against political pressure, as The Guardian found out a few years ago, to its long-term detriment.
There’s also the question of audience. News media write to a specific audience, one already sold on the ideas they are promoting, or at the very least, suggestible. Most people are aware of ‘climate change’. If someone authoritative tells them it’s important for us to have a GDF because nuclear energy will help us ‘beat climate change’, they are likely to accept that, unless they have some wider knowledge.
Bias can be edited into an article by keeping the facts, but leaving out certain contexts. They can also cherry pick facts, so that the only ones they use are those which suit their argument.
Biases and misinformation across the internet
Misinformation across the web is an endemic problem now, brought on by too little regulatory oversight, too late. A bitter combination of an advertising free-for-all, empty content for the sake of it, and algorithmic twists that feed on themselves has come together to make an internet that doesn’t run the kind of useful searches it did just 12 years ago.
On top of this, a type of information warfare has been raging, hidden in plain sight from the eyes of everyday people, and the proliferation of GenAI has made the situation much worse. Social media, news media, every place we get our information from has been seeded with doubt.
All of this means that when we read information anywhere, from both respectable and dubious sources, we have to take time to process what we’ve read before we lead with our emotions.
Bias and messaging in public information
Not to be outdone by more modern means of propaganda, Nuclear Waste Services has continued the tradition of only providing the audience with the information that suits their argument.
In the case of the Community Partnership newsletter this month, this includes a soothing word salad introduction from the outgoing Community Partnership Chair explaining that he has resigned, and our local Town Council has withdrawn from the group. There are then several pages on how the Community Investment Fund money has been spent recently.
From that messaging, it is clear they’re seeking to reassure the community – talk quietly, you don’t want them to startle – and remind us that we’re getting plenty of money for the deal.
So, what’s the problem with the scientific consensus on the idea of a geological disposal facility (GDF), more prosaically known as a nuclear waste dump?
What is ‘scientific consensus’?
Scientific consensus refers to an agreement amongst scientists in a specific, very narrow field of study.
In the consideration of a GDF, that field would be geology, and most likely a particular area of geology, such as geodisposal.
Why do we need ‘scientific consensus’?
For most of us, despite our education and our wide understanding of the world, we don’t have intensive scientific training. Even if we do, it may not be in the narrow field in question.
Ethan Siegel at Forbes.com explained this really clearly:
… Unlike in most cases, unless you are a scientist working in the particular field in question, you are probably not even capable of discerning between a conclusion that’s scientifically valid and viable and one that isn’t. Even if you’re a scientist in a somewhat related field! Why? This is mostly due to the fact that a non-expert cannot tell the difference between a robust scientific idea and a caricature of that idea.
Why should we believe ‘scientific consensus’?
Although a consensus is an impossible number to quantify, the argument for a consensus is that a lot of related research is borne out by the agreement, so if it isn’t correct – e.g. if a GDF isn’t a safe and complete solution for nuclear waste – then a lot of other research is also wrong.
That sounds reassuring, but there’s more to it.
What do we have to consider behind the messaging of ‘scientific consensus’?
News media tends to use ‘scientific consensus’ as if it is the end point of the discussion.
The implication that ‘this is the only way’ serves to quash dissenting voices and validate the overall message of the article.
This is also how Nuclear Waste Services is using ‘scientific consensus’. The inference is that there is only one solution, and a GDF is it.
But scientific consensus is not the end position of the science. It’s the starting position from which further investigation can arise.
While that future studying may not set out to prove early scientific reasoning wrong, it should seek to improve or refine our understanding of the science.
And the main problem with scientific investigation?
Take a look at this quote. It’s from the article Development in Progress, from the Consilience Project.
It is also important to consider how existing biases and values ‘prime’ us towards certain starting points when we seek to understand the world through science. Before we formulate questions of design experiments, we often have preconceived notions as to what we imagine as likely to be important to the question at hand.
You’ve got to ask what their starting point is, before you can evaluate the idea.
Or, to put it another way: if you ask a geodisposal specialist what the best way is to deal with a higher activity nuclear waste problem, they’re going to tell you to bury it underground.
What’s the motivation for a GDF? Why the bias? Where’s the starting point of the plan?
Waste is a massive issue for modern Western societies. Everything we do, everything we buy creates waste. The only way to reduce waste is to reduce the activities that cause it.
There is no other logical way.
Government and the nuclear industry are motivated towards using a geological disposal facility to store higher activity nuclear waste because:
- There’s almost seventy years’ worth of higher activity nuclear waste to store
- Nuclear appears to offer a solution to the legal requirements of Net Zero.
The more we use nuclear technology, the more toxic waste we will produce. It’s inevitable without social, political, and industrial change.
The nuclear industry
The nuclear industry’s back is against the wall. It urgently has to put the accruing waste somewhere permanently safe.
Nuclear waste is produced in solid, aqueous, and gaseous forms. If the industry reduces some of the gaseous waste, that means that it increases it in another form, e.g. aqueous. There is no escaping the waste issue without stopping the industry.
There’s a lot of money in nuclear.
The UK Government
The government has to enable the production of electricity, but having effectively phased out coal-fired power stations, it has brought in gas-fuelled hydrogen plants which are arguably just as greenhouse-gas-intensive as coal. Natural gas is still a fossil fuel, it still causes huge emissions, and it still presents supply problems.
For the government, nuclear represents a lower carbon option, with political expediencies, such as being free of Russian fossil fuel pressures (Russian uranium is still unsanctioned and likely part of the ‘diversified’ fuel mixes used in the UK).
There is also a disturbing link between civil nuclear skills and military nuclear skills which doesn’t get much media time:
Other countries tend to be more open about it, with the interdependence acknowledged at presidential level in the US for instance. French president Emmanuel Macron summarises: “without civil nuclear power, no military nuclear power, without military nuclear, no civil nuclear”.
This is largely why nuclear-armed France is pressing the European Union to support nuclear power. This is why non-nuclear-armed Germany has phased out the nuclear technologies it once lead the world in. This is why other nuclear-armed states are so disproportionately fixated by nuclear power.
In 2022, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) published a Radioactivity Waste Inventory with a timeline for the phasing out of nuclear power by 2136. But in early 2025, the Labour government announced it was keen to rapidly start up the building of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) across the UK. Going forward from this year, nuclear waste will continue to be produced in the UK beyond the 100-year lifetime of the current GDF project. Waste is inevitable.
Waste isn’t the only issue for nuclear power, either. There is the question of what happens to nuclear power plants in the face of climate catastrophe. Fukushima wasn’t an anomaly, and it wasn’t avoidable. It could be seen as a foreshadowing of future possibilities.
Back to scientific consensus
So, when Nuclear Waste Services and other media proponents talk about scientific consensus being in agreement that a GDF is the best solution available for toxic nuclear waste, what they mean is:
- there is an inexorable accumulation of nuclear waste, both historical and into the future
- there are going to be more GDFs in the future
- they aren’t looking for other methods of storage
- they absolutely will not consider a non-nuclear future
- and they don’t want to argue about it.
And, for some reason, despite a GDF apparently being the safest possible housing for nuclear waste – and despite there being many geologically suitable locations – they don’t want to locate it under Westminster.
Ultimately, despite the focus given to the science, this isn’t about the science.
It’s about burying a waste product that they have no other solution for. Sweeping it under the carpet. And calling it common sense!
Common sense as a message, in an area of study called Semiotics, is a problematic idea. Although it is dressed up as the common, standard, everyday way of thinking, it is often used in marketing and media to promote the ideas of those in power.
As the future beckons, common sense should be saying no to nuclear. Just like with plastic, nuclear has no end and no sure way of getting rid of its byproducts.
For communities that ‘host’ a nuclear waste dump, the GDF solution represents a forever risk with inter-generational risks and costs along the way.
Somehow, West Cumbria always seems to be saddled with nuclear detritus.
The potential collateral damage, seen already across the United States and South America, is similar to that experienced around mining and climate solution industries.
It starts with
- environmental destruction,
- contamination of water sources and land,
- loss of biodiversity,
- loss of human rights,
- loss of health, and
- upheaval of established communities.
These may be experienced just in the construction of a GDF.
Who knows where it ends?
Further information on the proposed GDFs in West Cumbria:
New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s Major Nuclear Power Push
What the nuclear industry and nuclear believers in government are calling “advanced” nuclear power plants are, as the Union of Concerned Scientists has found in an extensive report, not improved and no better—”and in some respects significantly worse”—than current nuclear plants.
the nuclear industry now is seeking large amounts of government financial support including in the forms of tax credits and loan guarantees to cover cost overruns.
Karl Grossman, May 14, 2025, https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/14/new-york-governor-kathy-hochuls-major-nuclear-power-push/
“Governor [Kathy] Hochul is making a major push to not only build new nuclear plants in New York State but to make N.Y. the center of a nuclear revival in the U.S.,” declared Mark Dunlea, chair of the Green Education and Legal Fund, and long a leader on environmental issues in the state and nationally, in a recent email calling on support to “stop Hochul’s nuclear push.”
Dunlea is author of the book “Putting Out the Planetary Fire: An Introduction to Climate Change and Advocacy.” An Albany Law School graduate, he co-founded both the New York Public Interest Research Group and national PIRG. In an interview last week from his home in Poestenkill in upstate New York, Dunlea charged that Governor Hochul has “bought into nuclear power.”
He said, “She buys the argument that nuclear is carbon-free, avoiding looking at the life cycle of nuclear and its carbon footprint,” which includes, he noted, significant emissions of carbon in uranium mining, milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication and at other points. “The nuclear industry has been lobbying her to go along with it, and she has,” he said.
Hochul has also become involved in promoting nuclear power nationally.
The Clean Air Task Force, based in Sunnyside in Queens, New York, which advocates nuclear power, issued a press release in February stating: “The National Association of State Energy officials announced a multi-state initiative to accelerate advanced nuclear energy projects. The initiative was first previewed by Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York last month and will be co-chaired by New York.”
The heading of the release: “New York leads multi-state consortium to drive nuclear energy deployment …”
Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), based in Mount Rainier, Maryland, and formerly of Syracuse, New York, pointed out in an interview that Hochul made nuclear power “a specific priority in her State of the State speech” in January.
Hochul in the speech declared: “The economy of the future: microchips fabs [fabrication plants], data centers and the supercomputers that power AI need tremendous amounts of energy. To support these industries, we’ve already started developing an advanced nuclear strategy. This is a good investment. Artificial Intelligence alone is projected to drive $320 billion of economic growth in our state by 2038.”
What the nuclear industry and nuclear believers in government are calling “advanced” nuclear power plants are, as the Union of Concerned Scientists has found in an extensive report, not improved and no better—”and in some respects significantly worse”—than current nuclear plants. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based organization has detailed this in an article headlined: “Report Finds That ‘Advanced’ Nuclear Reactor Designs Are No Better Than Current Reactors—and Some Are Worse.”
Hochul is a Democrat. But also, said Judson, the “New York Republican Party has been rabidly pro-nuclear.” In a time of extreme partisan polarity, there is a “bipartisan consensus among the political elite in favor of nuclear power,” and thus is one thing in government for which “there are bipartisan votes.”
As the Syracuse.com website has reported: “Fort Drum, the U.S. Army base outside Watertown, could become the first New York site to try advanced nuclear power technology if the Army goes along with pleas from congressional representatives. U.S. Reps. Elise Stefanik and Claudia Tenney, both upstate Republicans, issued a joint letter October 25 urging the Army to put Fort Drum first in line for one of the small modular nuclear reactors that President Joe Biden and Department of Defense officials are promoting as a clean source of resilient energy.”
Stefanik is a Republican front-runner to challenge Hochul in election for governor in 2026. Democrat Biden has supported nuclear power.
Hochul’s predecessor as New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, also a Democrat, now seeking to be the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor in the 2025 election, has a mixed record on nuclear power.
As governor Cuomo was instrumental in closing down in 2021 the two Indian Point nuclear power plants 26 miles north of New York City, but in 2016 he engineered a $7.6 billion bail-out to allow four aged nuclear plants in upstate New York to continue to operate. Their owners then deemed them uneconomical to continue to operate.
The plants—Fitzpatrick, Nine Mile Point 1 and 2, and Ginna—are now owned by Constellation Energy, the largest nuclear power plant operator in the United States.
The $7.6 billion bail-out is being paid for over a 12-year period as a surcharge on electric bills of all residential and industrial customers in New York State.
So far, Dunlea said, Hochul has been focusing on upstate New York for new nuclear development, particularly targeting areas where nuclear plants are now located, rather than, “at the moment,” downstate.
For decades, a battle raged that stopped the plan of the Long Island Lighting Company to build a large collection of nuclear power plants—seven to 11 nuclear plants—downstate, on Long Island, the 120-mile island east of Manhattan.
If there is again a plan for placement of nuclear power plants on Long Island, said Dunlea, “hopefully, Long Islanders would stand up and beat it back.”
Grassroots citizen action was a key in the decades long fight to block to the scheme to, in the parlance of promoters of it at the time, turn Long Island into a “nuclear park.” The only plant built was Shoreham 1 which was stopped from going into commercial operation.
The October Syracuse.com piece said: “Gov. Kathy Hochul has expressed an interest in exploring the potential for new nuclear power in New York” highlighted by her having “hosted an energy summit last month [September 2024] in Syracuse that focused heavily on nuclear power.”
Judson, of NIRS, said the nuclear industry now is seeking large amounts of government financial support including in the forms of tax credits and loan guarantees to cover cost overruns.
Laura Shindell, New York State director of the Washington-headquartered organization Food & Water Watch, has scored in a piece in the Times Union newspaper of Albany what she terms “Governor Hochul’s nuclear embrace” and said Hochul should commit to “real climate and affordable energy solutions.” Shindell’s piece was headlined, “Commentary: No place for nuclear in New York’s energy plants.” Its subhead: “Nuclear power is a dirty, dangerous, expensive distraction to the essential work of transitioning to clean energy.”
New York State’s emphasis on nuclear power under Hochul has been recognized by World Nuclear News, a publication of the World Nuclear Association, a London-based group that describes itself as an “international organization that promotes nuclear power.”
A January article was headlined “New York State looks to advanced nuclear.”
It began: “As New York Governor Kathy Hochul announces a master plan for advanced nuclear development,” the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, NYSERDA “has joined Constellation [Energy] on a grant proposal to help it pursue an early site permit for advanced nuclear reactors at its Nine Mile Point Clean Energy Center.” That’s the site of the Nine Mile Point 1 and 2 nuclear power plants.
Anne Rabe, volunteer coordinator of the group Don’t Waste New York, charged in an interview that Hochul “is recklessly and deliberately telling NYSERDA to pursue advanced reactors.” A resident of Castleton-on-Hudson in upstate New York, she said “the nuclear industry for years has worked to lay the groundwork for this.”
Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, and is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, and the Beyond Nuclear handbook, The U.S. Space Force and the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war in space. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.
Status and Trends of the Global Nuclear Industry: A Cruel Reality Check
May 13, 2025, By: Mycle Schneider, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-world/status-and-trends-of-the-global-nuclear-industry-a-cruel-reality-check
Trends in the global nuclear industry indicate a high probability that its ferocious rivals have digested its lunch before it has demonstrated that it can actually keep its promises on the ground. That’s the cruel reality.
The excitement is palpable. Enthusiasm in the nuclear community is overwhelming. Red tape is being cut. The nuclear revival is on its way. The New York Times reported that the Administration “formally specified the steps it will take to revive commercial nuclear power, an industry whose current problems the Administration regards as largely due to overregulation by the Government.” The President ordered the Secretary of Energy “to give high priority to recommending ways to speed the regulatory and licensing process for new plants.”
That was in 1981, and the president was Ronald Reagan. Ever since, at least once every decade, a global nuclear renaissance has been proclaimed by industry representatives and policymakers.
What happened in the real world? For the past eighteen years, the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report, researched by an international team of interdisciplinary experts from universities and think tanks around the world that I coordinate, attempts just that: a periodical reality check on the status and trends of the industry.
Trends in the Global Nuclear Industry
Most of the industry indicators peaked a long time ago. The largest number of units, 438, operated in 2002. With regards to commercial power, nuclear’s slice of the energy pie reached its zenith in 1996 at 17.5 percent. Startups of new reactors peaked in 1984-1985 at thirty-three per year, with only three closed in each of those years. The most units, 234, were under construction in 1979, and the number of construction starts saw its historic maximum at forty-four in 1976.
In comparison, in 2024, seven new reactors started up in the world, while four were closed. That is a net addition of three units, one-tenth of the level seen in the mid 1980s. The share of nuclear declined to around nine percent, about half of the level that existed three decades ago. As of the beginning of 2025, there were 411 reactors operating, and sixty under construction, of which twenty-nine are in China, but not a single one is on the entire American continent from Alaska to Cape Horn. The only indicator in 2024 that marginally exceeded a previous record set in 2006 is operating nuclear capacity – by four gigawatts (GW) or a one percent increase in eighteen years. Total global nuclear electricity generation also has likely exceeded the previous 2006-peak by two percent or so, but official numbers are not yet available.
In the United States, over the past forty years since Reagan’s nuclear revival efforts, Westinghouse started construction on just four AP1000 reactors, all in 2013 – two in South Carolina and two in Georgia. The builder claimed that “by using modular construction methods, Westinghouse and its project partners will be able to build the AP1000 in 36 months.” Four years later, after an investment of nearly $10 billion and nine rate increases for local electricity customers, Westinghouse went bankrupt and abandoned the construction at the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina.
The economic disaster had a serious legal aftermath, and four former utility and industry executives were sentenced to prison or home detention. The last one was Jeffrey Alan Benjamin, former senior vice president for new plants and major projects at the Westinghouse Electric Company who “directly supervised all new nuclear projects worldwide during the V.C. Summer project” and who, in November 2024, was sentenced to federal prison for causing the builder-utility SCANA “to keep false records in connection with the failed V.C. Summer nuclear construction project.”
Historically, on a global average, one in nine reactors listed as under construction at some point in time have been given up at various stages of advancement.
In the United States, the other two AP1000s at the Vogtle site in Georgia made it to the grid after, respectively, ten and eleven years of construction at an all-in cost of around $35 billion. Georgia Public Services Commission staff calculated that “the cost increases and schedule delays have completely eliminated any benefit [of Vogtle-3 and -4] on a life-cycle cost basis.”
In 2025, ninety-three percent of the capacity added to the U.S. grid is expected to come from solar (fifty-two percent), wind (twelve percent), and battery storage (twenty-nine percent). For 2025, the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts a twenty-six-percent growth of solar capacity to exceed 150 GW in total. Texas alone is on track to host, by the end of the year, forty GW of solar, over forty GW of wind, and twenty GW of grid-connected battery storage.
Over the past two decades, 2005-2024, we have seen 104 reactor startups and 101 closures in the world. However, fifty-one of the new grid connections were in China, where no closures have occurred. In other words, the world outside China saw only fifty-three startups but 101 closures, a significant net decline of forty-eight units.
Changes in Nuclear Power
Were there any fundamental changes towards the end of the twenty-year period? Yes, Russia became the dominant international vendor. Over the past five years, 2020–2024, forty construction starts took place, of which twenty-six were in China, one was in Pakistan (by Chinese companies) and the remaining thirteen were implemented by Russian companies in Egypt, India, Türkiye, and at home. Basically, recent nuclear construction efforts can be summed up by saying China builds at home and Russia abroad.
Even China’s nuclear expansion is dwarfed by its renewables buildout. Three new reactors totaling 3.5 GW were connected to the Chinese grid in 2024 – just 0.8 percent of total capacity additions – while 357 GW of solar (278 GW) and wind (seventy-nine GW) capacity – together eighty-three percent of the total – was added at the same time, according to National Energy Administration data. Even if nuclear plants in China generate on average seven times more power per GW than solar and close to four times more than wind, solar and wind each generated two times more electricity than nuclear in 2024. Consequently, the share of nuclear power in the national electricity mix shrunk slightly to around 4.5 percent.
There are countless announcements of nuclear projects around the world, policy decisions, budget allocations, and design developments – especially on SMRs, which seem to be more appropriately called small miraculous reactors – but in the end, the question is what happens on the ground. For the time being, nuclear power remains irrelevant in the world market for electricity generating machines. And potential builders, other than the Chinese and Russians, have yet to prove that they are able to design, build, and commission within tight time-frames and budget constraints. Competitors on the renewable and storage side are accelerating implementation now. The probability is high that these ferocious rivals have digested nuclear’s lunch before the atomic industry has demonstrated that it can actually keep its promises on the ground. That’s the cruel reality.
Mycle Schneider is an international energy and nuclear policy analyst based in Paris, France. He is the initiator, editor, and publisher of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report and has worked on these issues for over four decades.
Ontario’s Costly Nuclear Folly
May 12, 2025 • David Robertson, https://socialistproject.ca/2025/05/ontarios-costly-nuclear-folly/#more
The last time the nuclear industry got its way in the province, Ontario Hydro spent over two decades building 20 nuclear reactors. It was a mash-up of missed deadlines, cost overruns, and a troubling pattern of declining nuclear performance.
Even more troubling, the last generation of nuclear reactors forced Ontario Hydro to the edge of bankruptcy. And it saddled us with a mountain of nuclear debt that we are still paying off.
The Conservative government of Doug Ford is now repeating those costly mistakes in the largest expansion of the nuclear industry in Canada’s history. A nuclear blunder on steroids.
Part 1: Past Debt Due
In 1999, Ontario Hydro collapsed under the staggering weight of its nuclear debt. When the account books were opened, the reality hit home. At the time, Hydro’s assets were valued at $17.2-billion but its debt amounted to $38.1-billion. The government was faced with a stranded debt of $20.9-billion.
In response, the government of the day split Ontario Hydro into five separate organizations. Ontario Power Generation took over the generating facilities (hydro, coal, gas, nuclear) and Hydro One, later privatized, inherited the transmission grid. Neither of these organizations would survive if they had to carry the debt. The government was aware that any future hopes of privatizing the successors of Ontario Hydro would be scuttled if investors had to absorb the debt. The debt was transferred to Ontario families through special charges on electricity bills (until 2018), regular electricity bills, and the tax system. It was the world’s largest nuclear bailout, one we are still paying.
The Ontario Electrical Financial Corporation is one of the five Ontario Hydro successor entities. It was set up to manage and service the long-term debt of the former Ontario Hydro. According to its 2024 Annual Report, the total debt, twenty-five years later, is still $12.1-billion. In 2024, OEFC paid $626-million in interest charges alone, an amount that is recouped from taxpayers and ratepayers. In its financial statements the organization notes that its longest-term debt issue matures on December 2, 2050. In 2050, Ontario will still be paying the debt of the failed nuclear program of the 1970s and 80s.
Part 2: Repeating Past Mistakes
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is owned by the government of Ontario. OPG is leading Ontario’s nuclear resurrection. It is aided and abetted by the IESO (Independent Electricity System Operator) another surviving offshoot of the collapse of Ontario Hydro. And it is directed by a series of government policy announcements and legislative initiatives. These directives put nuclear on the fast track while shouldering aside clean, cost-effective, and safe renewables.
It is an astonishing nuclear industry coup. Without putting up their own money, without bearing the financial risks, the nuclear industry has captured Ontario’s energy policy and turned crown agencies into nuclear cheerleaders.
Even a few years ago this would have seemed impossible. The nuclear industry was on the ropes. Catastrophic nuclear accidents at Three Mile Isle in the US, Chernobyl in Ukraine, and Fukushima in Japan had severely tarnished the nuclear safety image. All around the world, the cost overruns and lengthy build times of nuclear plants had chilled utility and government interest in more nuclear plants. In Europe, only one nuclear plant has been built and come on line since 2000.
In Ontario, the last nuclear reactor went into operation in 1993. Nuclear plants that had been forecast to operate for 40 years showed major signs of early ageing after about ten years. Most of the existing nuclear fleet was rapidly reaching its best before dates. Safety and operational issues plagued the industry. The four units at Pickering had been shutdown because of safety reasons. And shut down again. By 1993, Bruce A’s performance, as a result of ‘fretting’ pressure tubes, had drastically declined. In 1997, Ontario Hydro announced that it would temporarily shut down its oldest seven reactors. By that time, the escalating costs of the newest reactors at the Darlington site were already a cautionary tale. Originally billed in 1978 at $3.9-billion, the final cost in 1993 had more than tripled to $14.4-billion (1993 dollars).
The first generation of nuclear plants had clearly demonstrated the failure of the nuclear industry to deliver electricity on time and on budget. It also demonstrated that nuclear reactors couldn’t provide affordable electricity. In fact, Ontario Hydro’s last public cost comparison (1999) revealed the cost of nuclear energy to be more than six times the cost of hydro electricity. (7.72 c/kWh vs $1.09)
Part 3: The Nuclear Resurrection
It seems that all those ‘hard lessons’ learned have been willfully forgotten. The Ford government has now launched a multipoint nuclear power offensive. It has passed legislation to ensure that nuclear is Ontario’s energy priority. It has made commitments to build untested and costly small modular reactors (SMRs). It has decided to refurbish antiquated nuclear plants (Pickering) when there is no business case to do so. It has announced as the centrepiece of its energy policy the irrational goal of becoming a nuclear energy superpower. And it has opened the public purse to the appetite of the nuclear industry.
It is a power play with some revealing features.
3a. A Propaganda Push
In 2023, OPG launched a series of propaganda ads. The ads, in bus shelters and transit, print, and television, were designed to overcome public skepticism and convince us that a new generation of nuclear was safe, reliable, and clean. The company behind the pubic relations campaign made the following claim: “For years, popular culture has distorted perceptions about nuclear power with false narratives that served to stoke fear.” They go on: “The campaign is intended to recast nuclear power as a “true hero” of the province’s clean energy mix.”
Some of the ads focused on Gen Z and Tik Tok with the cartoon character “Pelly the uranium pellet.” Others were tailored to older generations who were well aware of the problems with the nuclear industry and there were ads which simply made outrageous claims. For example, the ad for Small Modular Reactors declared that “SMRs are clean and reliable.” Quite the claim since none have been built.
The ad campaign effectively echoed the industry’s talking points, talking points that have become the mantra of the Ford government. Nuclear energy is now described by Ontario’s energy minister as “clean,” “non-emitting,” “reliable,” and “fundamental to our future.”
3b. A revolving door between the government and the industry
Back in June 2024, former Energy Minister Todd Smith left the government, after spending billions on the nuclear industry and promising billions more. Upon his departure, Todd Smith landed a job as a VP of CANDU Energy Inc. CANDU Energy Inc was created when SNC-Lavalin purchased the commercial reactor division of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited from the federal government in 2011. In an effort to distance itself from its scandal ridden past, SNC-Lavalin has since changed its name to AtkinsRealis. The company is heavily involved in the refurbishment of Ontario nuclear plants and the plans for new builds.
3c. The technological hype of SMRs
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are not small and they are not that modular. And they are not that new. The designs, of which there are about 54, have been kicking around for a long time. It’s just that no one wanted to build them, and investors were loathe to put up their own money. The fate of SMRs changed when the nuclear industry convinced governments in Canada to develop what it called the “SMR Roadmap.” The “Roadmap,” largely produced by the industry, was all hype and little substance, but it was enough to convince the Ford government to join the parade.
The World Nuclear Industry Status Review is an annual independent assessment of the global nuclear industry. In its 2022 review, it concluded:
“Small modular (nuclear) reactors or SMRs continue to hog the headlines in many countries, even though all the evidence so far shows that they will likely face major economic challenges and not be competitive on the electricity market. Despite this evidence, nuclear advocates argue that these untested reactor designs are the solution to the nuclear industry’s woes.”
In the 2024 edition of the review, the analysts note: “The gap between hype about Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and reality continues to grow. The nuclear industry and multiple governments are doubling down on their investments into SMRs, both in monetary and political terms.”
3d. Over-the-top visioning and ideological straw men
Stephen Lecce became the Minister of Energy in June 2024. Shortly afterwards, he travelled to the US where he made a pitch to western leaders and industry movers and shakers. He told them that Ontario is building a blueprint for a nuclear energy future.
A CP wire story put it this way: “Ontario is selling itself as the nuclear North Star to guide the direction of American power.”
Speaking to a largely American audience, he said it’s time to “rid our economies of any dependence on these foreign states that … do not share our democratic embrace,” (Oops).
The minister’s early charm offensive turned more aggressive back home when he criticized those who support renewable energy as” ideologues” who want to “romanticize certain resources.” As he told the National Post, “We are seeing forces on the left, the illiberal left, who cannot come to terms with the fact that in order to decarbonize we’re going to need nuclear.”
The commitment to nuclear was further baked into Ontario’s future when the Ford government released its energy vision in October 2024. The document ironically entitled “Ontario’s Affordable Energy Future” sets the stage for a massive build out of nuclear power.
It also makes it clear that Ontario has set its sights on becoming a nuclear energy superpower in the hopes of selling expensive nuclear electricity to the US and costly nuclear technology to the world.
Reflecting the grandiose aspirations of a would-be energy superpower the Minister declared that “this was Ontario’s moment.”
3e. The legislative lock-in
In December 2024, the government passed the misnamed “Affordable Energy Act” (Bill 214) The legislation has many troubling aspects. Various sections of the act restrict public consultation, further erode the independence of regulatory tribunals, and shifts more decision making to the government. But most alarming is how the government has used the Act to give preference and priority to nuclear power. Section 25.29 (2) of the Act refers to, “the prioritization of nuclear power generation to meet future increases in the demand for electricity …”
3f. The commitment to underwrite the costs of nuclear
The government is bankrolling the nuclear expansion with public money because investors don’t want their own money at risk. The costs of nuclear power have driven private investors away. Even with massive subsidies from governments, investors are reluctant to ante up.
A spokesperson for the government-owned Ontario Power Generation made the point very clear when commenting on small modular reactors.
Kim Lauritsen is a senior OPG vice-president. She told a Global Business conference audience that the crown corporation was willing to take the “first-mover risk.”
As she put it: “Because they (small modular reactors) take too long and the industry needs to see that these things can be built successfully, to give investors the confidence and really get the ball rolling for other jurisdictions.”
Because investors are nervous and because Ontario wants to show the way for other jurisdictions, the Ford government is prepared to saddle Ontario families and future generations with the exorbitant costs of nuclear power.
Part 4: The nuclear three-prong plug: Refurbishments, SMRs and New Large Scale Reactors
Refurbishments
The Ontario government is spending billions to refurbish old nuclear plants. Fourteen reactors are scheduled to be rejuvenated – 6 at Bruce, 4 at Darlington, and 4 at Pickering. The repair schedule for existing nuclear plants stretches out for decades. While these reactors are off line, the government plans to make up the electricity shortfall with more climate wrecking, fossil-gas generating plants.
The cost of the refurbishments will be in excess of $40-billion. That forty billion and the millions more in interest charges will find its way onto our electricity bills.
As our electricity bills go up, so does political pressure and when that pressure reaches a tipping point, the government steps in with subsidies to help reduce electricity bills. It is a repeated pattern in Ontario.
A recent report from the Government’s Financial Accountability Office (FAO) projected the cost of current electricity subsidies to be $118-billion over the next 20 years. These are not all nuclear electricity subsidies. But as we spend more on nuclear and nuclear increases the cost of electricity and governments are pressured to reduce the cost of electricity, there will be even more subsidies to shift the costs from our electricity bills to our taxes.
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)
In addition to the massive refurbishment program the Ford government has announced a series of nuclear new builds.
There will be four new small modular reactors (SMRs) built at the Darlington nuclear location. Site preparation work is already underway on the first one. OPG has convinced the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to forego an environmental impact assessment, relying instead on an assessment that had been done years ago on the site for a different project.
The government has selected the GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 design. This is based on a design that has been kicking around for about 20 years and has had to be redesigned about ten times. It still has never been built. The engineering designs for Darlington have again been changed, making the small modular reactor less small and even less modular.
OPG has not released a cost estimate for the reactors. But there are some indications of the probable magnitude. In the US, the only SMR project that had been approved by the US federal government was NuScale in the mid-west. The project was cancelled because of escalating costs. Originally estimated at $3-billion (US), it was terminated in 2024 when the projected costs reached $9.3-billion (US).
The Tennessee Valley Authority, a large power utility in the US, has partnered with the OPG to promote the GE-Hitachi SMR. The TVA recently provided some estimates of the costs of building the SMR in the US. It indicated that the cost of the first reactor could be about $5.4-billion (US). It hoped the costs could be reduced to about $3.7-billion (US) if more were built. These costs do not include any interest charges, cost overruns, or missed deadlines.
If we assume the lower cost and convert to Canadian dollars, the price tag for the four SMRs at Darlington would be about $20-billion before things go wrong. In 2019, the company’s indicated the costs would have to be below $1-billion (US).
New Large Scale Nuclear Reactors
In July 2023, the Ontario government announced its support to expand the capacity of the Bruce nuclear power plant near Kincardine. The Bruce nuclear generating station is owned by OPG but operated by Bruce Power, a private consortium. Bruce Power is planning a major expansion of the site’s generating capacity. At present, six of the eight reactors are being refurbished. This new development, if it goes ahead, will add an additional 4800 MW, which would require building four or five new reactors. Admittedly, it is early days, and no costs have been provided.
Port Hope
In January 2025, the Ontario government announced that it was in the preliminary stages of a massive new nuclear plant that could be built at the OPG site in Wesleyville, near Port Hope. Officials have suggested the plant could have a capacity of 8,000 to 10,000 megawatts and be in operation by the 2040s. Achieving that generating capacity would require building eight or more nuclear reactors.
Part 5: Calculating the Costs
Continue readingGoogle tries to greenwash massive AI energy consumption with another vague nuclear deal
The nuclear developer, founded in 2022, presents itself as a facilitator of advanced reactor projects. But it has not built any reactors to date and describes itself as a “technology-agnostic nuclear power developer
Elementl’s CEO and chairman, Christopher Colbert previously served as CFO, COO, and chief strategy officer at NuScale Power.
Chocolate Factory promises early-stage capital to atomic upstart Elementl
Brandon Vigliarolo, 7 May 25
Google has signed a strategic agreement with nuclear project developer Elementl Power to support the early development of three potential fission reactor sites in the US.
But with no selected reactor tech and no construction timeline, the announcement sounds more like a handwaving exercise to distract onlookers from the massive amount of energy that will be expended as Google and other companies race to capitalize on the AI boom.
Google and Elementl announced the partnership in a press release Wednesday. The tech giant will provide early-stage development capital to help prepare three sites for potential advanced atomic nuclear facilities, each targeting at least 600 megawatts of capacity, the pair said.
Typically, the term “advanced” refers to future nuclear fission plant designs that are meant to be quicker to build, but which generate less power than traditional nuclear stations. By way of comparison, the recently completed Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, which is the largest in the US, has four atomic reactors producing a total of 4,500 megawatts, according to the US Energy Information Administration. A 2024 McKinsey report claims that a “normal” datacenter being planned today consumes 200MW, up from 30MW a decade ago thanks partly to the AI boom.
Unlike burning natural gas or coal, nuclear power adds no climate-warming carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, allowing Elementl CEO Chris Colbert to claim in the release, “We look forward to working with Google to execute these projects and bring safe, carbon-free, baseload electricity to the grid.”
Elementl also claims the agreement supports its ambition to “bring more than 10 gigawatts online in the United States by 2035.” But since Google’s involvement only covers three sites, that 10 GW target clearly extends beyond this deal. The companies didn’t disclose locations, reactor vendors, nor the specific technologies under consideration.
Google declined to provide further details beyond its joint statement with Elementl.
Elementl didn’t respond to questions by press time. Its public materials offer little clarity on its actual operations—aside from broad claims about providing “turn-key project development, financing and ownership solutions customized to meet our customers’ needs while mitigating risks and maximizing benefit.”
The nuclear developer, founded in 2022, presents itself as a facilitator of advanced reactor projects. But it has not built any reactors to date and describes itself as a “technology-agnostic nuclear power developer and independent power producer,” signaling it does not back any specific reactor design.
This approach aligns with the background of Elementl’s CEO and chairman, Christopher Colbert, who previously served as CFO, COO, and chief strategy officer at NuScale Power.
NuScale was the first (and so far only) company in the United States to receive regulatory certification for a small modular reactor (SMR) design. Despite this approval, NuScale has not yet built an operational reactor. Its flagship Carbon Free Power Project in Idaho was canceled in 2023 due to escalating costs and insufficient customer commitment.
Ambitions vs. reality
This is the second nuclear power deal that Google signed in recent months. The first came in October of last year when the search giant partnered with Kairos Power to advance its molten salt SMR design as a potential source of datacenter fuel.
- Microsoft cash to help reignite Three Mile Island atomic plant
- Day after nuclear power vow, Meta announces largest-ever datacenter powered by fossil fuels
- Amazon’s nuclear datacenter dreams stall as watchdog rejects power deal
- Tech giants set to pay through the nose for nuclear power that’s still years away
Kairos has received construction permits from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its Hermes and Hermes 2 demonstration reactors in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with the first reactor projected to be operational by 2027. The agreement with Google aims to bring the first reactor online by 2030, followed by additional deployments through 2035.
But as The Register pointed out recently, Google’s nuclear plans – along with those backed by Meta, Amazon, and others – may be too little too late to address the growing concerns that there isn’t enough power to fuel the growing demand from datacenters and AI. Experts predict an “unprecedented” spike in demand, driven in part by datacenter and AI growth, that could require 3,500 TWh of new energy generation by 2027.
Google’s own plans for AI expansion are gigantic. Google parent company Alphabet said in its most recent earnings call last month that it intended to invest $75 billion in CapEx in 2025, much of that going to servers and datacenters to support the expansion of Google services and DeepMind AI products. At least a portion of the electricity going into those data centers is generated by burning fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming: Google itself admitted in its 2024 environmental report AI investments were a big factor as Google’s carbon emissions to increase by 13 percent year-over-year, writing “Overall, our total GHG emissions increased by 13% — highlighting the challenge of reducing emissions while compute intensity increases and we grow our technical infrastructure investment to support this AI transition.” Overall, the report said, its emissions grew 48% between 2019 and 2024.
Google isn’t alone, either: Microsoft has admitted its AI aspirations were pushing its attempts to be sustainable further out of reach, and the datacenter industry as a whole is being increasingly blamed for allowing AI growth to trump concerns about climate change.
Another abstract agreement to bring 1,800 MW of energy online by 2035 through a company that has yet to build anything is unlikely to help now, when we really need it to, but that’s par for the course with the tech industry’s clean energy investments in the AI era. ®
Atomic lobby seizes on Spanish blackout
Spain has rejected claims that
more nuclear power would have helped as recriminations erupt over last
week’s outage. Europe’s nuclear advocates are pushing their favorite
energy source as a deterrent against the type of blackout that seized Spain
and Portugal last week — even if the facts paint a muddied picture. The
EU’s atomic allies are claiming that having more nuclear energy coursing
through the grid can help ensure a stable power supply to back up renewable
sources like wind and solar. “If you want a lot of power and you want it
to be fossil-free, then nuclear is your pick,”
Swedish Industry and
Energy Minister Ebba Busch said in an interview. Specialists and other
officials, including those in Spain, aren’t convinced. While they concede
that having more overall power can aid in certain circumstances, they
aren’t convinced nuclear energy would have prevented Monday’s outage,
which was caused by a sudden loss of power in the Iberian grid. Europe’s
grids, like those in Spain, need upgrades, better linkages and more storage
tech like batteries to keep power stable, they stress.
Politico 8th May 2025 https://www.politico.eu/article/nuclear-power-push-europe-spain-portugal-outage-energy-security/
Who are Britain Remade?
Britain Remade is a Tory think-tank and lobby group campaigning on behalf of nuclear power.
By Mike Small, https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2025/05/01/who-are-britain-remade/
There’s a concerted attempt to attack Scotland’s long-standing commitment to no new nuclear power, alongside a full-scale assault on the idea of Net Zero, and the very basics of climate policy (however inadequate mainstream policy is).
This is being led by Nigel Farage who has called Net Zero ‘the New Brexit’, whatever that means. All this has been echoed by Tony Blair’s intervention this week where he argued that any attempt to limit fossil fuels in the short term or encourages people to limit consumption is “doomed to fail”. Alongside this we can see Scottish Labour’s recent commitment to the cause of new nuclear power in Scotland.
Today The Scotsman ran with a front-page splash all about how ‘SNP voters back nuclear power’ by Deputy Political Editor David Bol and Alexander Brown.
he article was replete with quotes from Labour MSP for East Lothian, Martin Whitfield, Scottish Conservative MP, John Lamont, who said the Scottish Government embracing nuclear power would be “basic common sense”. Then there’s a quote from Sam Richards, founder and campaign director for Britain Remade, who, it turns out commissioned the poll and was also enthusiastically pro-nuclear.
What The Scotsman didn’t explain though, was who ‘Britain Remade’ are? They’re presented as if they’re maybe pollsters or some independent think-tank.
But Britain Remade is a Tory think-tank and lobby group campaigning on behalf of nuclear power. Jason Brown is Head of Communications for Britain Remade, a former No. 10 media Special Adviser and Ben Houchen’s comms Adviser.
Jeremy Driver is the Head of Campaigns at Britain Remade, a former Lloyds Banker and Parliamentary Assistant to Ann Soubry. Sam Dumitriu is Head of Policy at Britain Remade who formerly worked at the Adam Smith Institute. These are Tory SPADS working on their own campaign to support new nuclear in Scotland: Lift The Ban On New Scottish Nuclear Power.
Britain Remade claimed they are not affiliated: “We’re an independent grassroots organisation. We are not affiliated with, or part of, any political party” their website says. They may not be officially affiliated to any party, but it’s very clear where their politics (and their staff) come from.
So here we have the Scotsman giving over its front-page to a Tory lobby group to promote their campaign. On the same day they published a similar piece in the Telegraph “SNP’s ‘senseless’ nuclear ban ‘damaging Scotland’” so it’s really working for them.
This is not just a question of client journalism, it’s a question of how far right-wing forces, often working with dark money, will attempt to derail even the most modest (and completely inadequate) environmental policies. Quite why Saudi-funded Tony Blair should jump on the anti Net Zero bandwagon is anybody’s guess, but it’s quite clear there is a coordinated pro-nuclear lobbying group in action in Scotland that pans across the Conservatives and Labour parties, and is supported by astroturf groups and pliant media friends. Watch this space for more on the new nuclear lobby.
TONY BLAIR: STILL A NUCLEAR NUTTER!
https://jonathonporritt.com/tony-blair-nuclear-energy-failure/ 6 Dec 24
Earlier in the week, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change brought out a new report grandiloquently titled: “Revitalising Nuclear: The UK Can Power AI And Leave The Clean Energy Transition”.
In essence, it’s little more than a re-run of today’s standard nuclear propaganda – plus two things:
First, a highly flaky retrospective looking back to 1986 to calculate what would have happened to the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions if anti-nuclear campaigners’ “inaccurate post-Chernobyl narrative” hadn’t reduced us to a nation of nuclear sceptics; second, an even more flaky look ahead to the ‘new nuclear age’ that is now so desperately needed to provide the electricity to “power AI”.
It’s total tosh – and, as such, I really do urge you to read it!For me, however, reading it was a weird experience, transporting me back 20 years to Tony Blair’s premiership and his evangelical conversion to the cause of nuclear energy in 2005. Before that, he’d more or less gone along with his own Government’s Energy White Paper of 2003, which was distinctly nuclear-sceptic – interpreted widely at the time as “kicking nuclear into the long grass”.
During those two years, however, the “deep nuclear state” duly “put him right” (on military as much as on energy grounds), and although the Sustainable Development Commission (of which I was then the Chair) and many other think tanks and expert advisers were assiduously reinforcing the 2003 White Paper’s non-nuclear priorities, Tony Blair duly announced that he obviously knew better than everybody else, and that “nuclear was back on the agenda with a vengeance”.
The consequences of that decision are obviously not as severe as Tony Blair’s ineffable arrogance in enthusiastically backing George Bush’s insane decision to invade Iraq in 2003 – which he still argues was the “right thing to do”, despite more than 20 years of consequential mayhem in the Middle East.
It can be argued, however, that his nuclear fantasies at that time have screwed up energy policy in the UK ever since. That nuclear baton was passed on to Gordon Brown and on and on through to Kier Starmer, with all Prime Ministers in between espousing a fantastical faith in the future of nuclear power and the contribution it will make to our low-carbon energy future.
Quick reality check: by way of electrons from NEW nuclear power stations feeding into the grid, the UK’s vengeance-driven nuclear industry has delivered NOT ONE throughout those 20 years. NOT ONE! And it will still be not NOT ONE until 2030 at the earliest.
(EDF’s PWR at Sizewell B came online in 1995). The only new power station under construction (at Hinkley Point C in Somerset) will not come online until 2030 at the earliest.
According to the Tony Blair Institute, this is all the fault of the UK’s mind-blowingly powerful anti-nuclear movement, with all its incredibly well-funded campaigns (only joking!), persuading otherwise intelligent people that even to talk about nuclear power will cause severe radiation sickness (still only joking!). What are Blair’s wonks on? How can otherwise intelligent people just wish away 20 years of chronic incompetence, financial mismanagement and engineering inadequacies on the part of the nuclear industry itself?
I jest, but only because it’s so serious. One can only speculate how much further down the road to a Net Zero future we’d be if we hadn’t had this nuclear cloud hanging over us all this time – in terms of accelerated investments in energy efficiency (particularly housing retrofits), renewables, storage (both short-term and long-term) and reconfigured grids. The Institute’s report claims (straight off the back of its very big envelope) that the UK’s emissions would be 6% lower if we’d just listened to Tony Blair at the time. I do hope someone will do a counterfactual analysis of how much lower they’d be if we’d just gone down that alternative route.
But the dysfunctionality just goes on and on. GBNF (Great British Nuclear Fiasco) now presides over one costly decision after another. Because Hinkley Point C won’t be coming online until after 2030, EDF has had to persuade the Office For Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to extend the lifetime of its remaining fleet of AGRs – which I’m not necessarily opposed to, by the way, as long as the safety case for so doing is as robust as ONR/EDF would have us believe.Rather more problematically, the ONR has also agreed to extend the operating lifetime of Sizewell B to 60 years – through to 2055. That’s a bit different.
What people don’t realise is that when you extend the lifetime of a nuclear reactor you’re also extending the lifetime of all the waste it’s produced in operation being stored on site for decades after it comes offline. Let’s just say, with Sizewell B, through to the end of the century.
Which brings me on to Sizewell C.
On Tuesday (3rd December), I was sitting there in Court 46 in the Royal Courts of Justice in London listening to what at first hearing sounded like a very geeky legal argument about how to interpret a particular clause in the 1965 Nuclear Installation Act: does the ONR, or does it not, have an obligation, in its issuing of a licence for a new reactor, to impose conditions at the time of issuing the licence on the operator (i.e. EDF) covering material safety risks that should be taken into consideration?
“Yes it does”, in the opinion of Stop Sizewell C, bringing the challenge to ONR’s decision not to attach specific conditions to its licence for Sizewell C. The material safety risk at the heart of this challenge relates to the sea defences that will be required to protect Sizewell C into the future, about which there is nothing explicit in the license.
A bit of maths: IF Sizewell C ever gets a Final Investment Decision from the Government (mid-2025 at the earliest), and IF EDF hasn’t run out of money by then, construction could start in 2027/2028. Allow ten years for construction (I’m being kind). So, Sizewell C comes online in 2037, with a projected lifetime of 60 years – as with Sizewell B – through to 2097.
Set that against the latest projections from the (super-conservative) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that we should be anticipating a minimum of a one metre sea level rise by 2100.
And then try and imagine the scale of sea defences that will be required to ‘defend’ Sizewell C through to the end of the century from at least a metre higher sea levels, plus storm surges and so on – let alone to whatever time will be required to store the nuclear waste arising from its operations. A ‘material risk’? I think so.
But that was not the opinion of Mrs Justice Lieven, the Judge hearing Stop Sizewell C’s challenge. She obviously ‘knew her stuff’ ( as she should, having worked previously as a lawyer for Hinkley Point C!), but her perfunctory dismissal of the challenge was quite astonishing.
I blame both Tony Blair – a critical part of the whole deep nuclear state working away behind the scenes – as well as the UK’s astonishingly gullible media which just goes along with all this nuclear crap, year after year after year.
Campaigner hits out at ‘PR trick’ nuclear energy poll of SNP members
By Laura Pollock, Multimedia Journalist, 1 May 25, https://www.thenational.scot/news/25131226.campaigner-hits-pr-trick-nuclear-energy-poll-snp-members/
A LEADING independence activist has hit out at a recent poll suggesting roughly half of the SNP’s voters believe nuclear power should be part of Scotland’s mix of clean energy generation.
Robin McAlpine, founder of pro-independence think tank Common Weal, has branded the polling a “PR trick based on deliberately withholding crucial information”, claiming people who responded were not given “the basic facts”.
Polling for the campaign group Britain Remade, founded by a former energy adviser to Boris Johnson, found 52% of those who voted for the party in 2021 believe nuclear power should be included in Scotland’s energy mix to meet the 2045 net zero target.
Meanwhile, 57% of those who voted for the party in last year’s general election felt the same way, the poll found. A total of 56% of Scots thought nuclear power should be part of Scotland’s clean energy mix to meet the targets, while 23% disagreed, and 21% said they did not know.
Opinium surveyed 1000 Scottish adults between April 22 and 25.
However, McAlpine argues those quizzed on the topic were not aware of key points as laid out in a blog post for pro-independence Common Weal Common Weal.
He highlights the price of hydrogen electricity being cheaper than nuclear, as well as the hidden costs of building and decommissioning nuclear infrastructure.
“Would SNP voters back nuclear if it was explained that it will cost them three times as much as renewables and then also cost nearly £5000 per household just to clean them up?” McAlpine told The National.
He further questioned: “Do people know that it is much cheaper to run a renewable system with battery storage for short-term load balancing and hydrogen storage for long term battery storage? Are they aware that you can’t turn nuclear power on and off and that it has to run at full power all the time? So it can’t balance renewables when the wind isn’t blowing, it can only displace renewables from the grid.
“The only conceivable purpose of nuclear in Britain is to power the south of England. Look at Fukushima, look at the power stations in Ukraine, how much risk do you want to take when you have absolutely no need to do it?
“If people are told ‘more expensive, much more dangerous, can’t be switched up or down or turned off, costs an absolute fortune to decommission at the end’, I think you’ll find they answer differently.”
Britain Remade has been approached for comment.
The SNP have argued nuclear power projects remain too expensive to be a viable alternative to renewable power.
Responding to the polling, SNP MSP Bill Kidd said: “Our focus is delivering a just transition that supports communities and creates long-term economic opportunities to build a truly sustainable future.
“Nuclear remains one of the most costly forms of energy with projects like Hinkley Point C running billions over budget and years behind schedule.
“In contrast, Scotland’s net zero transition is already delivering thousands of green jobs across energy, construction, innovation, and engineering. This number will continue to grow.
“Simply, renewables are cheaper to produce and develop, create more jobs, and are safer than nuclear as they don’t leave behind radioactive waste that will be deadly for generations.
“While Labour funnels billions into slow, centralised projects, the SNP is focused on creating real, sustainable jobs in Scotland now.”
Awash in AI propaganda
we have been here before. Consider, for example, the arguments made for building the V. C. Summer nuclear project in South Carolina.
“our technocrats are so committed to the worship of the sacred cow of technology that they say in effect: Let the machine prevail, though the earth be poisoned, the air be polluted, the food and water be contaminated, and mankind itself be condemned to a dreary and useless life, on a planet no more fit to support life than the sterile surface of the moon”.
by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/04/21/awash-in-ai-propaganda/
The hype about massive data centers delivered by nuclear companies eager to power them, is probably just that, writes M.V. Ramana
One bright spot amidst all the terrible news the last couple of months was the market’s reaction to DeepSeek, with BigTech firms like Nvidia and Microsoft and Google taking major hits in their capitalizations. Billionaires Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Oracle’s Larry Ellison—who had, just a few days back, been part of Donald Trump’s first news conference—lost a combined 48 billion dollars in paper money. As a good friend of mine, who shall go unnamed because of their use of an expletive, said “I hate all AI, but it’s hard to not feel joy that these asshats are losing a lot of money.”
Another set of companies lost large fractions of their stock valuations: U.S. power, utility and natural gas companies. Electric utilities like Constellation, Vistra and Talen had gained stock value on the basis of the argument that there would be a major increase in demand for energy due to data centers and AI, allowing them to invest in new power plants and expensive nuclear projects (such as small modular reactors), and profit from this process. [The other source of revenue, at least in the case of Constellation, was government largesse.] The much lower energy demand from DeepSeek, at least as reported, renders these plans questionable at best.
Remembering Past Fanfare
But we have been here before. Consider, for example, the arguments made for building the V. C. Summer nuclear project in South Carolina. That project came out of the hype cycle during the first decade of this century, during one of the many so-called nuclear renaissances that have been regularly announced since the 1980s. [In 1985, for example, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Alvin Weinberg predicted such a renaissance and a second nuclear era—that is yet to materialize.] During the hype cycle in the first decade of this century, utility companies proposed constructing more than 30 reactors, of which only four proceeded to construction. Two of these reactors were in South Carolina.
As with most nuclear projects, public funding was critical. The funding came through the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the main legislative outcome from President George W. Bush’s push for nuclear power, which offered several incentives, including production tax credits that were valued at approximately $2.2 billion for the South Carolina nuclear plant project at V. C. Summer.
The justification offered by the CEO of the South Carolina Electric & Gas Company to the state’s Public Service Commission was the expectation that the company’s energy sales would increase by 22 percent between 2006 and 2016, and by nearly 30 percent by 2019.
In fact, South Carolina Electric & Gas Company’s energy sales declined by 3 percent by the time 2016 rolled in. [Such mistakes are standard in the history of nuclear power. In the 1970s, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and utility companies were projecting that “about one thousand large nuclear power reactors” would be built “by the year 2000 and about two thousand, mostly breeder reactors, by 2010” on the basis of the grossly exaggerated estimates of how rapidly electricity production would grow during the same period. It turned out that “utilities were projecting four to nine times more electric power would be produced in the United States by nuclear power in 2000 than actually happened”.] In the case of South Carolina, the wrong projection about energy sales was the basis of the $9 billion plus spent on the abandoned V. C. Summer project.
The Racket Continues
With no sense of shame for that failure, one of the two companies involved in that fiasco recently expressed an interest in selling this project. On January 22, Santee Cooper’s President and CEO wrote, “We are seeing renewed interest in nuclear energy, fueled by advanced manufacturing investments, AI-driven data center demand, and the tech industry’s zero-carbon targets…Considering the long timelines required to bring new nuclear units online, Santee Cooper has a unique opportunity to explore options for Summer Units 2 and 3 and their related assets that could allow someone to generate reliable, carbon emissions-free electricity on a meaningfully shortened timeline”.
A couple of numbers to put those claims about timelines in perspective: the average nuclear reactor takes about 10 years to go from the beginning of construction—usually marked by when concrete is poured into the ground—to when it starts generating electricity. But one cannot go from deciding to build a reactor to pouring concrete in the ground overnight. About five to ten years are needed before the physical activities involved in building a reactor to obtain the environmental permits, and the safety evaluations, carry out public hearings (at least where they are held), and, most importantly, raise the tens of billions of dollars needed. Thus, even the “meaningfully shortened timeline” will mean upwards of a decade.
Going by the aftermath of the Deepseek announcement, the AI and data center driven energy demand bubble seems to have crashed on a timeline far shorter than even that supposedly “meaningfully shortened timeline”. There is good reason to expect that this AI bubble wasn’t going to last, for there was no real business case to allow for the investment of billions. What DeepSeek did was to also show that the billions weren’t needed. As Emily Bender, a computer scientist who co-authored the famous paper about large language models that coined the term stochastic parrots, put it: “The emperor still has no clothes, but it’s very distressing to the emperor that their non-clothes can be made so much more cheaply.”
But utility companies are not giving up. At a recent meeting organized by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying organization for the nuclear industry, the Chief Financial Officer of Constellation Energy, the company owning the most nuclear reactors in the United States, admitted that the DeepSeek announcement “wasn’t a fun day” but maintained that it does not “change the demand outlook for power from the data economy. It’s going to come.” Likewise, during an “earnings call” earlier in February, Duke Energy President Harry Sideris maintained that data center hyperscalers are “full speed ahead”.
Looking Deeper
Such repetition, even in the face of profound questions about whether such a growth will occur, is to be expected, for it is key to the stock price evaluations and market capitalizations of these companies. The constant reiteration of the need for more and more electricity and other resources also adopts other narrative devices shown to be effective in a wide variety of settings, for example, pointing to the possibility that China would take the lead in some technological field or other, and explicitly or implicitly arguing how utterly unacceptable that state of affairs would be, while never asking whether it even matters who wins this race for AI. These tropes and assertions about running out of power contribute to creating the economic equivalent of what Stuart Hall termed “moral panic”, thus allowing possible opposition to be overruled.
One effect of this slew of propaganda has been the near silence on the question of whether such growth of data centers or AI is desirable, even though there is ample evidence of the enormous environmental impacts of developing AI and building hyperscale data centers. Or for that matter the desirability of nuclear power.
As Lewis Mumford once despaired: “our technocrats are so committed to the worship of the sacred cow of technology that they say in effect: Let the machine prevail, though the earth be poisoned, the air be polluted, the food and water be contaminated, and mankind itself be condemned to a dreary and useless life, on a planet no more fit to support life than the sterile surface of the moon”.
But, of course, we live in a time of monsters, a time when the levers of power are wielded by a megalomaniac who would like to colonize Mars, and despoil its already sterile environment.
M. V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia and the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India.
Ministry of Defence awards £2.6m contract for nuclear apprentice training
The Ministry of Defence has awarded a contract worth nearly £2.6 million
to Bridgwater & Taunton College for the provision of nuclear degree
apprentice training, according to a contract award notice published on 15
April 2025. The contract supports the enrolment of up to 30 students per
year, over three annual cohorts, into the ST0289 Nuclear Scientist and
Nuclear Engineer integrated degree programme—an apprenticeship standard
recognised by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education
(IfATE).
UK Defence Journal 19th April 2025,
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/mod-awards-2-6m-contract-for-nuclear-apprentice-training/
Westinghouse and McMaster University deepen eVinci microreactor collaboration
WNN, 17 Apr 25
A memorandum of understanding and a master services agreement signed by Westinghouse Electric Company and McMaster University aim to move the eVinci microreactor towards commercialisation.
Under the agreements Westinghouse and McMaster University, which is based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, will collaborate on the research and development of the eVinci microreactor, including material irradiation and examination studies.
They build on existing collaboration since 2022 which has included McMaster “completing a material properties literature review along with corresponding material handbooks to inform engineering design and determine future testing needs”………………………………………….. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/westinghouse-and-mcmaster-university-mou-on-evinci-microreactor
Hinkley C nuclear power station site teaches A Level students about “clean” energy !!
By John Thorne Wednesday 2nd April 2025 ,https://www.wellington-today.co.uk/news/hinkley-c-nuclear-power-station-site-teaches-a-level-students-about-clean-energy-780053
A LEVEL students from Bridgwater and Taunton College (BTC) explored the UK’s clean energy future during an educational tour of the under-construction Hinkley Point C nuclear power station.
The trip was an opportunity for students studying subjects such as business, economics, mathematics, physics, and chemistry to witness first hand one of Europe’s most significant infrastructure projects.
1 This Month
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com/
12 February – Webinar The Big Push: New Nuclear Projects in Canada
Thursday, February 12, 7 pm Eastern | 2nd of 4 sessions in the 2026 Nuclear Waste Online webinar series
Join a webinar on the push for new nuclear generation in Canada. Go to Northwatch.org to register or use the registration link https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZfWOf1GITqSRIZX8CB-A9w
-
Archives
- February 2026 (115)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (258)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
- March 2025 (319)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 