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A dump, not a future

We’re not buying it. This is a nuclear dump dressed up as an “innovation campus,” and DOE is simply hoping that the temptation of jobs and billions of dollars will convince us to turn Idaho into America’s nuclear waste dump.

   by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2026/09/13/a-dump-not-a-future/

The “innovation” pitch for Idaho doesn’t match the radioactive reality, writes Leigh Ford

The Department of Energy (DOE) has a problem. They have a nuclear addiction and a growing mountain of toxic, radioactive waste. To solve it, they are eyeing Idaho once again. Governor Little recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the DOE, and they are trying to sell it to us as a “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Hub.”

We’re not buying it. This is a nuclear dump dressed up as an “innovation campus,” and DOE is simply hoping that the temptation of jobs and billions of dollars will convince us to turn Idaho into America’s nuclear waste dump.

Recently, I sat down with Roland Beres, who wanted to get the Snake River Alliance’s reaction to the governor’s signing the MOU with DOE. Roland has a lot of experience following nuclear issues.

Notably, he covered events leading up to the Idaho Settlement Agreement, when Govenors Batt and Andrus were fighting the feds for sending out-of-state radioactive waste into Idaho. That history matters, because it tells us this isn’t a new fight — it’s the same fight, with slicker marketing.

Today’s political machinery is quickly paving the way for Manhattan Project 2.0, endangering our health and silencing local opposition. Per Executive Order 14300, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is revising radiation standards and reducing protections for workers and communities. Idaho’s Senate passed SCR 120 to claim that reprocessing nuclear waste fits into the Idaho Settlement Agreement framework. Not to be left out, Idaho’s House passed HB 714, which prohibits local governments from saying “NO” to these dumps and reprocessing facilities in their communities.

The Nuclear Myths

The first myth is money. The DOE isn’t handing Idaho billions of dollars. According to their own request for proposals, they are looking for projects that *prioritize private and state capital*. They offer “targeted, conditional, and time‑limited federal support.” In other words, Idaho taxpayers are on the hook for the cost, while the feds offer a loan and a promise to protect themselves from “open-ended liabilities.”

The second myth is the jobs. Idaho’s response to DOE’s request states we already have the infrastructure and can start fast. That translates to fewer construction jobs. And while the Tech bros designing these untested reactors are boasting that they “practically run themselves,” that means they aren’t going to hire many permanent workers. The promise of “thousands of jobs” is a mirage. We might fix a few roads, but beyond that, thousands of long-term jobs are far-fetched.

The third myth is the waste. Our radioactive legacy can still be seen out at the site in the Arco Desert. Last year, when the Snake River Alliance visited Idaho National Lab I noticed the waste we got from the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979 is still there, sitting in huge concrete sarcophagi. We saw a warehouse stacked with barrels of waste, much from the Rocky Flats bomb factory—barrels that needed to be recategorized because we have no idea what Colorado actually shipped us. We drove around the 90-acre burial grounds, where a “thousand-year cap” will be placed.

Governor Little might say “that’s all been cleaned up,” but that is dangerously deceptive. We can’t completely clean up nuclear waste. INL has done a good job mitigating a lot of it, but the truth is there is no permanent nuclear waste repository in the country. The waste just keeps piling up, mostly at nuclear power plants back east, and if that waste comes here, it will stay in Idaho permanently. The DOE has a track record of broken promises, and they are not to be trusted.

A Dangerous Bet 

Some politicians and nuclear cheerleaders claim we can reprocess our way out of this. We cannot. Some point to the DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) facility in New Mexico, but it only takes defense-related transuranic waste, and was never meant to be permanent. There have already been two 10-year extensions since 2010, and New Mexico isn’t a solution for Idaho’s burden. New Mexicans don’t want a permanent nuclear dump either.

Idaho is being asked to accept a permanent nuclear burden in exchange for a few temporary construction jobs and mythical money. The waste isn’t leaving. The feds and the nuclear industry have had decades to solve this, and they haven’t. We shouldn’t be the dumping ground for their failures. It is time to reject this dangerous bet and demand a real plan that doesn’t put our people, water, and land at further risk.

Idaho is not America’s dumping ground – not for cash, not for jobs, and not for nuclear waste that outlives our great, great grandchildren’s grandchildren.

September 16, 2026 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

The Race to Solve Nuclear Energy’s Biggest Problem

By Felicity Bradstock – Sep 12, 2026,
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/The-Race-to-Solve-Nuclear-Energys-Biggest-Problem.html
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/The-Race-to-Solve-Nuclear-Energys-Biggest-Problem.html

  • Nuclear expansion is increasing pressure on governments to establish permanent disposal facilities for spent fuel.
  • Canada is advancing a deep geological repository near Ignace, Ontario, using copper-coated containers, bentonite clay, and hundreds of metres of rock.
  • The United States still lacks an operating permanent repository and is exploring new nuclear-waste arrangements beyond the stalled Yucca Mountain project.

Nuclear power is growing in popularity once again as governments worldwide look to diversify their energy mix and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Several countries are now looking to develop or expand their nuclear energy capacity over the coming decades. However, one challenge remains – nuclear waste. Disposing of waste materials from nuclear energy operations remains a complex task with no perfect solution.

As countries worldwide have grown their nuclear power capacity, many governments are still struggling to decide on the best solution for disposing of nuclear waste. There are three types of nuclear waste: low-, intermediate-, and high-level radioactive waste. Most of the waste produced by nuclear plants consists of lightly contaminated items, such as tools and work clothing, with radioactivity levels of around 1 per cent. High-level waste consists of spent fuel, which accounts for around 3 per cent of the total volume of waste from nuclear energy production, yet contains 95 per cent of the radioactivity.

Nuclear facility operators are responsible for the safe disposal of any radioactive waste they produce. Nuclear power plants generate relatively little waste compared to many other energy sources; however, it is some of the most difficult to manage. Nuclear fuel is very energy-dense, meaning little is required to generate large quantities of electricity and just 5 grammes of high-level waste is produced to provide for an individual’s annual energy needs. A conventional 1 GW nuclear plant, which can supply over one million people with electricity, produces around three cubic meters of vitrified high-level waste per year.

In Oakville, Canada, the Nuclear Waste Management Organisation (NWMO) has developed a test site for nuclear waste storage. The site is situated in a warehouse, where a driverless forklift stacks 8,000 kg of bentonite clay blocks into a narrow rock tunnel, and another autonomous machine fills the gaps around the blocks with crumbled clay. Each one encases a copper-coated steel container created to hold spent nuclear fuel. These blocks are then sealed behind additional clay and concrete in tunnels deep underground, so that the radioactive material can slowly decay over thousands of years with no risk to the public.

The metal fuel containers are designed to withstand the pressure of being buried beneath a 3-kilometre-thick glacier, should the next ice age arrive before the radiation has fully decayed. They have also been successfully tested for resistance to crushing under an extremely strong force, equivalent to being over 6 km underwater. The NWMO team aims to build the final site 1,600 km northwest of the test facility, in the town of Ignace. It will be buried at a depth of around 750 metres in the hard rock of the Canadian Shield. Once complete, around 2040, it is expected to be capable of storing nearly 6 million bundles of spent fuel produced by Canada’s four nuclear power plants over their operational lives.

Similar sites are also being developed in other countries, such as Finland, Sweden, and Japan. Scientists have overcome several technical challenges associated with developing deep geological repositories over the years, making them a viable site for nuclear waste storage. However, securing political and public support for these facilities remains a challenge due to fears of contamination.

The United States government began exploring potential deep geological repository sites in the 1980s but has now fallen behind other countries in development due to widespread local opposition. The government chose Yucca Mountain in northern Nevada as the location for the development of its first geological repository, becoming the first in the world to submit a licence application for such a site. 

There are several concerns about developing a facility at this location, including the nearby volcano, which geologists still consider active. The proposed location is in an active earthquake zone and lies above the water table, posing a risk of radioactive particles, known as radionuclides, being released into the environment. However, the biggest challenge has been political opposition. When Nevada Senator Harry Reid became the U.S. Senate’s majority leader in 2007, he put the project on permanent hold.

In the age of the nuclear renaissance in the United States, the lack of progress in Nevada has led the Department of Energy (DoE) to return to the drawing board. The DoE selected sites in Utah, Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Tennessee as possible locations, but Yucca Mountain remains the only legal option for permanent storage at present. The Trump administration would need to pass legislation to remove Yucca Mountain from its designation as a federal site to develop a repository elsewhere. Meanwhile, the U.S. has built up around 95,000 metric tonnes of nuclear waste over the years, which needs to be suitably managed. 

Several deep geological repositories are expected to commence operations in various countries over the coming decades. Meanwhile, scientists are continuing to explore alternative waste management solutions. However, as multiple governments are now exploring the potential to develop their nuclear power capacity, they must also address the waste problem and construct safe disposal facilities alongside new nuclear power projects.

September 16, 2026 Posted by | Canada, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Public Interest Groups Warn National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) on Plutonium Giveaway

South Carolina Environmental Law Project, Savannah River Site Watch & Nuclear Watch New Mexico September 8, 2026, https://www.scelp.org/news/groups-warn-nnsa-on-plutonium-giveaway

South Carolina – Today, the South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP) sent a letter of demand to the Department of Energy (DOE) and its semi-autonomous agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), about their proposed unsound and dangerous management of U.S. plutonium. The letter notified them that they must comply with the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirement for public review of the Trump Administration’s troubling plan to give away 19.7 metric tons of nuclear weapons-grade plutonium to private corporations.

SCELP’S letter, on behalf of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch, and a private citizen who lives near the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, outlines why NNSA must be held to its legal NEPA obligations. The letter describes how recently issued presidential executive orders:

…constitute a vast change in the prior decisions and purposes of the DOE/NNSA surplus plutonium disposition program that has been in place since at least 1996… This change is also contrary to the larger nuclear non-proliferation policy of the United States restricting the commercial use of plutonium that has been in place for approximately fifty years.

This action follows SCELP’s earlier NEPA lawsuit on behalf of SRS Watch and Nuclear Watch New Mexico. In a landmark settlement, that litigation successfully compelled the NNSA to prepare a nationwide programmatic environmental impact statement on the production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores for nuclear weapons (the “Pit Production PEIS”).

SCELP’s new letter of demand states as follows:

In a generally analogous NEPA situation, my clients are concerned that the Department of Energy and NNSA are radically changing course in their surplus plutonium disposition program without preparing a necessary supplemental programmatic environmental impact statement.

On May 23, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14302 “Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base” which officially terminated DOE’s previous “dilute and dispose” program for excess weapons-grade plutonium. In that program, 40 metric tons of plutonium were to be treated as nuclear waste for underground disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, as analyzed in several earlier NEPA documents.

President Trump’s 2025 decree directed DOE to establish a program to supply surplus plutonium in a form usable by the commercial sector—specifically for advanced nuclear technologies and small modular reactors. Notably, the Executive Order focused extensively on “recycling” and “reprocessing” spent nuclear fuel to remove plutonium for use in reactors. It then contemplated agreements “with domestic nuclear energy companies” that “implement methods to enhance the capacity to manage spent nuclear fuel, including the recycling and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel….” Not only was this significant shift in policy done without required NEPA analysis, but there is no justified demand to use plutonium as nuclear fuel.

In addition to serious proliferation, environmental and radioactive waste concerns, this planned giveaway of weapons-grade plutonium is also linked to the increasingly controversial issues of artificial intelligence and data centers. Still hypothetical and untested advanced nuclear reactors and speculative small modular reactors are being eyed to power future data centers across the country. This urgently underscores the need for a nationwide public programmatic review, which SCELP’s letter of demand seeks.

In May 2026, NNSA announced yet another major policy shift in the plutonium disposition program, again without mandated NEPA review. The government agency selected five private companies to receive the 19.7 metric tons of plutonium: Oklo Inc., Exodys Energy, Shine Technologies, Standard Nuclear, and Flibe Energy, Inc. The current Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, had to resign from the Oklo board of directors to assume his job as the head of DOE. That continues to raise eyebrows as DOE funnels money to Oklo, a private corporation, for its ill-defined program which will purport to use some of the government’s weapons-grade plutonium.

The Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina is key to the Trump Administration’s plans to give away weapons-grade plutonium to private corporations. As the SCELP letter notes:

[I]n support of its new plutonium utilization program, DOE announced in March its ‘decision to restart HB-Line operations at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.’ This activity was stated to provide ‘the capability to power America’s nuclear future by recycling surplus plutonium and partnering with industry to produce uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for advanced nuclear reactors. The facility is an integral part of H-Canyon, the only chemical separations facility of its kind in the United States.’

This is ironic. DOE and NNSA have been on the Government Accountability Office’s High Risk List for project mismanagement and waste of taxpayers’ dollars ever since GAO started the List in 1991. An ill-conceived MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility at SRS—terminated in 2017—was a ~$7 billion failure for which there has been no government accounting. That boondoggle plutonium MOX fuel facility is now being “repurposed” by NNSA into a new $30 billion production facility to produce plutonium “pit” bomb cores for new-design nuclear weapons, which will be the most expensive building in U.S. history.

SCELP’s letter of demand concludes:

Before bringing suit on the Pit Production PEIS, my clients wrote to NNSA five times reminding the agency of its legal obligations under NEPA. They never received a response. It is my hope that we can avoid a similar predicament. My clients request that DOE and NNSA respond to this letter within 30 days. If NNSA and DOE do not elect to engage, my clients will evaluate what legal actions may be necessary and proceed accordingly. 

Ben Cunningham, SCELP Attorney, commented, “Since the mid ‘90s, DOE and NNSA have scrutinized how to address the surplus plutonium issue many times across several administrations. The public has been engaged in the process each time. NEPA continues to require that same level of scrutiny and public engagement before these agencies commit to a course of action that would place plutonium in private hands.

Tom Clements, Director of SRS Watch, added, “It is imperative that DOE and NNSA immediately halt questionable plans to introduce weapon-grade plutonium into civilian reactors and other nuclear facilities and affirm that it will now begin preparation of the legally required environmental review.”

The Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Jay Coghlan, concluded, “As nuclear threats increase around the world, the last thing we need is government giveaways of nuclear weapons-grade plutonium to private profit-seeking corporations. We are asking the NNSA nicely for the public review legally required by the National Environmental Policy Act. If it blows us off again like it did with the Pit Production PEIS, we’ll discuss it with NNSA in court.”

Contacts:

Tom Clements, Director, SRS Watch, 803-240-7268, tomclements329[at]srswatch.org;

Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505-989-7342, jay[at]nukewatch.org

Shelby Cohen, Comms Manager, SC Env. Law Project, 864.414.7726, shelby[at]scelp.org 

About the nonprofit organizations: The South Carolina Environmental Law Project has used its legal expertise to protect land, water and communities across South Carolina since 1987. Savannah River Site Watch, based in Columbia, SC, works for the public interest by monitoring activities at the Savannah River Site. Nuclear Watch New Mexico, based in Santa Fe, NM, watchdogs plutonium pit production at both the Los Alamos Lab and SRS. Learn more at scelp.org/, srswatch.org/, and nukewatch.org/.

September 13, 2026 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

UK Nuclear Liabilities Fund selects Brookfield to manage initial $1bn

By IPE Staff10 September 2026

The Nuclear Liabilities Fund (NLF) has selected Brookfield to manage a long-term, multi-asset investment mandate, with an initial commitment of $1bn (€850m).

The mandate will be managed by Brookfield’s Investment Solutions Group (ISG), which will draw on the investment capabilities across the firm to construct a portfolio tailored to NLF’s objectives, risk parameters and investment horizon, it was announced.

The portfolio will invest globally across Brookfield’s infrastructure, energy, private equity, real estate and private credit strategies. Investments are expected to comprise fund commitments, direct investments and co-investments.

The mandate is designed around the multi-decade nature of NLF’s liabilities associated with decommissioning eight of the UK’s nuclear power stations.

Brookfield said the investment horizon will be aligned with NLF’s multi-decade funding requirements, with the aim of supporting long-term capital growth and compounding investment returns to help meet future decommissioning costs.

Investment proceeds are expected to be reinvested into new opportunities rather than routinely distributed, allowing capital to remain invested across market cycles.

For NLF, the mandate is intended to ensure that sufficient assets are available to meet future decommissioning costs “without unnecessary reliance on taxpayers”……………………………………………………………….. https://www.ipe.com/news/uk-nuclear-liabilities-fund-selects-brookfield-to-manage-initial-1bn/10138410.article

September 12, 2026 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Thousands of potential jobs & billions of dollars may tempt Idaho into becoming America’s nuclear waste dump

By Roland Beres, Sep. 1, 2026, https://www.kmvt.com/2026/08/31/thousands-potential-jobs-billions-dollars-may-tempt-idaho-into-becoming-americas-nuclear-waste-dump/

BOISE, Idaho (KIVI) — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is choosing three states to receive all of the country’s high-level nuclear waste by year’s end.

Idaho is among five finalists pursuing what’s known as a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Center.

The center would be located in the eastern Idaho, and could bring thousands of jobs and billions of dollars to the state.

Nuclear energy is often referred to as clean energy, because it doesn’t produce greenhouse gasses, but The World Nuclear Association says used nuclear fuel can remain radioactive and deadly for thousands of years.

“How much we talking about a few hundred pounds?” Idaho 6 senior reporter Roland Beres asked.

“We’re talking about 33 thousand tons,” Leigh Ford, Executive Director of the nuclear watchdog group the Snake River Alliance responded.

“Worst case scenario if it comes in. We have a whole bunch of nuclear waste, forever and our kids are going to have to figure out what to do with it,” Ford added.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987 designated Nevada’s Yucca mountain as the nation’s permanent nuclear waste storage site. However, they fought tooth and nail to stop it and won. As a result, that high-level waste is being stored in temporary pools at nuclear power sites around the country.

Now, to attract state interest the DOE has shifted from mandating a host community to proposing economic incentives like billions in investments and job creation.

Although details are quite limited, that grabbed Idaho Governor Brad Little’s attention.

“We’re going to consume the spent fuel to create electricity,” Little told Idaho 6. ”We are not going to put any spent fuel or whatever it is over the Idaho aquifer. They know that.”

According to the State’s application with DOE, the Snake River aquifer underlies almost 11 thousand square miles.

September 5, 2026 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Shortage of radioactive ‘rare as diamonds’ material (plutonium) frustrates nuclear start-ups

A shortage of plutonium could hold back a new generation of
nuclear projects, with start-ups battling to secure the radioactive
material given the limited supplies available to civilian projects.


Plutonium, which cannot be mined, is a byproduct of spent uranium-based
fuel used in reactors. Its huge explosive capacity makes it ideal for
nuclear warheads, meaning its usage and extraction have been highly
restricted for decades.

Some designs for a new crop of nuclear projects
require the material to help power their systems, with companies trying to
find an adequate supply to carry out testing as well as eventually running
the reactors.

Industry executives and analysts said a shortage of nuclear
fuel recycling facilities around the world would not be easily overcome
given the cost and lengthy development time for new projects.

FT 1st Sept 2026, https://www.ft.com/content/836566de-fd44-43c4-9899-28e05b4fbf33

September 4, 2026 Posted by | - plutonium | Leave a comment

Plutonium—the ‘forever’ radiotoxic weapons-proliferation risk in nuclear reactor spent fuel. How exactly should we manage its containment?

Plutonium—the ‘forever’ radiotoxic weapons-proliferation risk in nuclear reactor spent fuel. How exactly should we manage its containment?

Nick Scarr 55 Pages Posted: 8 Sep 2025 Last revised: 27 Aug 2026,
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5402553

Abstract

The paper is a research dossier and examines the properties of plutonium in terms of its two principal hazards: toxicity and weapons proliferation. It will then address the question of whether there is a sufficient safety-case for the long-term geological storage of plutonium-bearing spent fuel.

Keywords: Plutonium, GDF, Weapons Proliferation, Criticality, MOX, Reprocessing, Keff, 5f, Pu-240, Pu-239, reactor-grade, prompt neutrons, HALEU, high burnup, geological disposal, plutonium residue, plutonium oxide, IAEA, sellafield, cultural exceptionalism, anhydrite, biological half life, committed dose, biological half-life, predictability fallacy, fission-fusion-fission, Barn rating, mox, inert matrix fuel, TRISO, intergenerational ethics

September 4, 2026 Posted by | - plutonium | Leave a comment

Japan Govt Asks Eastern City to Accept N-Waste Site Survey

 Hitachiomiya, Ibaraki Pref., Aug. 31 (Jiji Press), https://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2026083100449

–The industry ministry Monday asked the city of Hitachiomiya in Ibaraki Prefecture, eastern Japan, to accept a literature survey for selecting a final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.
   If realized, Hitachiomiya would become the fifth site in the country to accept a literature survey, after the town of Suttsu and the village of Kamoenai, both in the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido, the town of Genkai in the southwestern prefecture of Saga and Minamitorishima, a remote Tokyo island in the Ogasawara chain in the Pacific.
   This is the second case of the central government seeking approval for the survey without request from local communities.

Senior ministry officials visited Hitachiomiya and handed a written request to Mayor Sadayuki Suzuki.
   “I view the request very positively,” he said, adding that he wants to make a final decision after hearing from the city assembly.

September 3, 2026 Posted by | Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

Drilling Begins For First Final Disposal Hole At Onkalo Repository in Finland

By David Dalton, Nucnet 31st Aug 2026

‘Ambitious’ goal is for operational readiness at Olkiluoto facility by end of 2026

Posiva has begun drilling the first hole for the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel at the Olkiluoto deep geologic repository in southwest Finland.

Posiva, the company responsible for the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel in Finland, said the drilling began on began on 26 August at a depth of 400 metres in the 1.9-billion-year-old bedrock.

The first test disposal holes at the repository, known as Onkalo, were drilled in the autumn of 2022, Posiva said.

The start of drilling for the first actually disposal hole was accelerated followed drilling readiness checks that were carried out before the summer holiday season. In a kick-off meeting on 25 August, safety issues, technical specifications and more detailed plans for the drilling operation were reviewed.

“The final adjustments to the equipment were made in the morning and by early afternoon the drill was already hitting the rock,” said Kimmo Lehtola, construction manager at Posiva Käytö.

The hole, 8.4 metres deep and 1.75 metres in diameter, is where the final disposal canister containing the spent nuclear fuel will eventually be placed. It is being drilled vertically into the floor of a previously excavated final disposal tunnel………………….

Operating Licence Needed

Before final disposal operations can begin, Posiva needs an operating licence from the government. Testing and commissioning activities need to be completed.

“Our ambitious goal is to achieve operational readiness for the start of final disposal by the end of 2026,” said Posiva’s president and chief executive officer Ilkka Poikolainen in August.

At Onkalo, the spent fuel will first be encapsulated before being placed at a depth of approximately 430 metres in the repository, excavated into the bedrock.

Posiva is a private company jointly owned by Finland’s two nuclear power producers: Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO), which owns 60%, and Fortum Power and Heat Oy, which owns 40%. The companies are responsible by law for final disposal.

Onkalo is intended for spent nuclear fuel generated by TVO’s Olkiluoto and Fortum’s Loviisa nuclear power stations, which have five units between them.

Posiva’s final disposal plans use a multi-barrier principle. Spent nuclear fuel that has been cooled for several decades is isolated from the environment deep in the bedrock by means of several complementary engineered and natural barriers. https://www.nucnet.org/news/drilling-begins-for-first-final-disposal-hole-at-onkalo-repository-in-finland-8-1-2026

September 3, 2026 Posted by | Finland, wastes | Leave a comment

The push to clear nuclear power’s waste-disposal hurdle

The technical issues have mostly been solved, but the long-term potential peril of radioactive material has made it difficult to find politically acceptable sites.

Nature, By Brian Owens, 26 August 2026

Inside a nondescript warehouse in an industrial park in Oakville, Canada, sits a squat forklift truck that requires no driver. When activated by its remote operator, the vehicle trundles to a stack of huge clay blocks, each weighing 8,000 kilograms, and carries them into a narrow rock tunnel. Another custom-built machine then fills the spaces around the blocks with crumbled clay.

Each block is made of bentonite clay and encases a copper-coated steel container built to hold spent fuel from a nuclear reactor. The blocks will be sealed behind yet more clay and concrete in tunnels deep underground, and the radioactive material inside will be left to slowly decay over thousands of years.

Or it would be, if there were any nuclear waste stored on-site. The warehouse is a test facility for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), the group in Toronto, Canada, that is responsible for dealing with the long-term storage of the country’s nuclear waste. The life-sized mock-up, complete with simulated rock tiling, enables Peter Keech, manager of engineered barrier science at the NWMO, and his colleagues to test technologies that will be used to store the waste and to demonstrate the storage process to the public.

The metal fuel containers, for example, are designed to withstand the pressure of being buried under a 3-kilometre-thick glacier, should the next ice age arrive before the radiation has decayed fully. But Keech and his team take the testing much further, subjecting several canisters to crushing forces equivalent to being more than 6 km under the ocean. The containers looked like toothpaste tubes that had been squeezed in the middle — but they were still fully sealed.

“These are much higher forces than they will ever see in the repository, but we take it to failure to understand the materials,” says Keech. “And even in failure it still offers containment.”


Canada’s real waste repository will be built roughly 1,600 km to the northwest of the test facility, hosted by the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation and the town of Ignace. It is buried some 750 metres under the hard rock of the Canadian Shield, which was once the base of a vast mountain range. When the facility opens in around 2040, its 80–100 km of tunnels will be capable of storing the nearly 6 million bundles of spent fuel that will be produced by Canada’s four nuclear-power plants over their operational lives, isolating the waste from people and the environment until long after the material’s radiation levels return to that of natural uranium.

World tour

Almost every country with a nuclear-power industry is working on some variation of this plan. Finland’s is the most advanced: its Onkalo repository on the country’s west coast is expected to open later this year.

The storage facility is built 430 metres below ground in a hard crystalline bedrock, and will eventually consist of about 50 km of tunnels that can store around 6,500 tonnes of spent uranium fuel, says Linda Kumpula, a nuclear-safety engineer at Finland’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment in Espoo.

A site in Sweden, also built into hard crystalline rock, is expecting to begin accepting radioactive waste in the 2030s. France and Switzerland have each selected a site in natural clay formations and are in the process of gaining regulatory approval. And in December 2025, China completed the first stage of construction for its underground laboratory in the Gobi Desert, a facility that will test the area’s suitability for long-term waste storage.

In the United States, plans for a spent-fuel repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have been a political hot potato for decades, and the project is currently stalled. But the nation does already have one permanent facility: the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a repository for radioactive waste from the country’s nuclear-weapons programme that is located in salt caverns beneath New Mexico’s desert. That facility has been a major source of learning for other countries, says Keech — particularly how to protect communities when transporting waste to the site and how to minimize the time the material spends on the surface when it arrives.

These issues and other technical ones, such as how best to build a deep geological repository, have now mostly been resolved. “We’ve been working on this for a long time and it is no longer a major technical or scientific challenge,” says Stefan Mayer, team leader of radioactive waste disposal at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

The real challenge is political and social. “You have to find a site that’s technically suitable, but you also need a site that is hosted by a community that is willing,” says Allison Macfarlane, a geologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “It turns out that the latter problem is harder than the former.”

Types of waste

Waste from nuclear plants generally falls into four categories: materials with very low, low, intermediate and high levels of radioactivity.

Very-low-level and low-level waste make up most radioactive waste — about 95%. Very-low-level waste consists of the soil, concrete and rubble generated when a nuclear plant is decommissioned. Low-level waste is made up of used protective equipment and other lightly contaminated materials from the plant. Both types can be disposed of in near-surface secure facilities and need to be isolated for several hundred years.

Intermediate-level waste consists mainly of metal parts of the reactor that are contaminated with radiation. These metallic isotopes are so concentrated and long-lived that the material remains radioactive for thousands of years and cannot be disposed of near the surface — it needs to be isolated underground.

The biggest issue is the high-level waste. This is the spent nuclear fuel and its containers, as well as the waste from the reprocessing of spent fuel that some countries do to extend their fuel supplies. By volume, it represents just 3% of the waste generated by a power plant, but it is responsible for 95% of the radioactivity. And it remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years — longer than any human civilization has yet lasted. Because of the waste’s longevity, it must be safely isolated deep underground where it cannot contaminate the ecosystem or harm future generations………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Another important adjustment for the United States would be to change who is responsible for dealing with the waste. Instead of the Department of Energy, with its revolving door of politically appointed leaders, Macfarlane thinks that it should be an independent organization: either a government agency similar to New York’s port authority or an industry-led group such as Canada’s NWMO.

“You need more of a corporate structure with leadership that’s going to be there a long time, because this is a slow process,” Macfarlane says. “It takes decades to do properly.”

This was one of the main recommendations in 2012 of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, which Macfarlane took part in. But so far there has been no movement on the issue.

The United States, Macfarlane says, should not be afraid to admit defeat on Yucca Mountain and start again with a more consent-based process. “I think the US has failed and they just have to acknowledge that — and decide they’re going to try again,” she says.

The long timelines involved in dealing with nuclear waste make it tempting to continually kick the can down the road and trust that future generations will eventually find a solution. But Macfarlane is adamant that it is the responsibility of people today to at least get the ball rolling.

“It’s imperative that we do something sooner rather than later,” she says. “I can tell you one thing with 100% certainty: if we do nothing, this material will get into the environment and will harm humans in the future.”

September 1, 2026 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Fukushima nuclear wastewater discharge marks three years amid concerns

In a statement issued on Sunday, Masanobu Sakamoto, head of the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations (JF Zengyoren), said the group’s position has not changed, stressing that it remains opposed to discharging wastewater without the understanding of fishermen and the public.

24-Aug-2026, CGTN

It has now been three years since the Japanese government began to discharge contaminated wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station into the Pacific Ocean despite strong opposition and concerns at home and abroad.

Japan unilaterally launched the ocean discharge of nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi plant on August 24, 2023. Since then, Japan has conducted 22 rounds of ocean discharge, releasing around 173,000 tonnes of wastewater containing tritium, a radioactive substance that purification equipment cannot remove, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).

The latest round, held from July 30 to August 17, involved discharging nearly 8,000 tonnes of wastewater.

Over the past three years, TEPCO has paid a total of 96.7 billion yen (roughly $600 million) in compensation for about 1,100 claims as of August 5, including claims related to losses suffered by fishermen and businesses that have had to temporarily suspend or scale back their fishing activities due to the discharge plan.

According to The Japan News by The Yomiuri Shimbun, people in the fishing industry said most of the compensation claims were filed by those outside Fukushima Prefecture, as fishermen in Fukushima receive separate compensation for temporarily suspending their operations.

Despite the compensation, opposition to the controversial operation and worries about local fisheries’ development remain.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Masanobu Sakamoto, head of the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations (JF Zengyoren), said the group’s position has not changed, stressing that it remains opposed to discharging wastewater without the understanding of fishermen and the public.

Sakamoto noted that some countries and regions continue to impose restrictions on imports of Japanese seafood, while products such as sea cucumbers have been affected by falling prices.

“The markets that have been lost have yet to fully recover, and there are concerns over whether they can be recovered at all,” Sakamoto said, underscoring the serious challenges facing the fishing industry.

He also said government support measures were “insufficient for fishermen.”

According to The Japan News by The Yomiuri Shimbun, abalones from Iwate Prefecture had an average wholesale price of about 120,000 to 140,000 yen per 10 kilograms before the treated water discharge began. However, prices have remained low due to the suspension of exports. In 2025, the price fell as low as 60,000 yen per 10 kilograms.

To ensure food safety, fisheries cooperative associations in Fukushima Prefecture have set their own limit of 50 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram for shipping marine products, stricter than the Japanese government’s standard of 100 becquerels per kilogram, according to the report.

Local fishermen remain committed to ensuring the safety of their products based on scientific standards and rebuilding consumer trust, The Japan News by The Yomiuri Shimbun reported, citing the Soma Futaba Fisheries Cooperative Association.

August 29, 2026 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, wastes | Leave a comment

Japan to Reuse Fukushima Soil in Regional Cities

  Tokyo, Aug. 25 (Jiji Press)
https://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2026082500738 —

The Japanese government decided Tuesday to begin the reuse of soil generated from decontamination work following the 2011 accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in regional cities.


   At a meeting at the prime minister’s office in Tokyo, the government decided to begin the soil reuse program at an early date for flowerbeds at buildings in Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, and the city of Saitama, north of Tokyo, where central government branch offices are located.


   It will be the first time for the soil from decontamination work to be used outside Tokyo, except for its use in demonstration projects in Fukushima Prefecture, home to the TEPCO plant, which suffered a triple meltdown following the massive earthquake and tsunami that mainly struck northeastern Japan in March 2011.


   Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said at the meeting that the reuse of soil from decontamination work will be key to achieving the government’s goal of completing the final disposal of the soil outside Fukushima by March 2045.
   Kihara urged attendees to expand the reuse of the soil to regional branch offices in other cities and strengthen public communication about its safety.

August 28, 2026 Posted by | Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

Regulatory approval for expansion of Chernobyl waste facility

Wednesday, 19 August 2026, https://world-nuclear-news.org/articles/regulatory-approval-for-expansion-of-chernobyl-waste-facility?cid=117504&utm_source=omka&utm_medium=WNN_Weekly,_18-24_August_2026&utm_id=897&utm_map=d33d95f2-f072-49bb-b262-e21e25f89aed

The State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine has approved the construction of a new repository at the site of the Buriakivka facility for the disposal of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste resulting from the clean-up of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

The Buriakivka RAW Disposal Facility is one of the key components of the system for managing the large volumes of accident-related radioactive waste generated as a result of the 1986 Chernobyl accident, established as part of the priority emergency response measures and commissioned in 1987 to store low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste originating from Chernobyl.

The facility – located within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – is operated by the SSE Central Enterprise for Radioactive Waste Management (CERWM), Ukraine’s sole operator of ryadioactive waste disposal facilities. During the period of operation of the facility, 31 surface disposal facilities (trench-type) – measuring 150 × 50 metres – for the disposal of radioactive waste have been filled. The main engineered barrier providing the radionuclide containment is a specially constructed 1-metre-thick clay shield. The last repository, No.21A, was commissioned in 2018 and was fully filled by the end of 2023. In total, since the start of operation, about 635,918 cubic metres of Chernobyl-origin radioactive waste has been emplaced in the Buriakivka trenches. Radioactively contaminated vehicles, which were used during mitigation of the Chernobyl disaster, are also stored at Buriakivka. In 2012, CERWM started dismantling and size-reduction of these vehicles.

To expand the capacity of the facility through the construction of a new (trench-type) repository, No.11A, CERWM agreed the working design for the construction of the repository, taking into account the results of the comprehensive state expert review of this project, and earlier this year submitted an application for a licence to carry out activities during the construction phase of the new repository.

The State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU), with the involvement of the State Scientific and Technical Center for Nuclear and Radiation Safety (SSTC NRS), conducted a state review of the nuclear and radiation safety of the Safety Analysis Report for the construction phase of the new repository to assess its compliance with the requirements of legislation, standards and regulations on nuclear and radiation safety.

At its meeting on Tuesday, the Board of SNRIU considered the results of the state expert review and approved its conclusion confirming the reasonableness of the design decisions taken and the safety of the designed repository, as well as the capability of CERWM to carry out activities during the construction phase of the repository in accordance with the established nuclear and radiation safety standards and regulations.

SNRIU recommended that CERWM ensures the updating of safety justifications during the construction phase of the repository, taking into account the actual implementation of design solutions, refined characteristics and radioactive waste streams, and to submit them as part of the Safety Analysis Report for the operational phase of the repository and other operational documentation required to subsequently obtain a licence for the operational phase of the repository.

The construction of the new near-surface repository, and subsequently its commissioning, will enable the continued disposal of low-level radioactive waste generated during the decommissioning of the Chernobyl plant, as well as from other entities operating in the field of nuclear energy, the regulator noted.

August 28, 2026 Posted by | Ukraine, wastes | Leave a comment

Tepco begins removal of radioactive spent fuel from Fukushima No. 2 reactor


Japan Times 18th Aug 2026,
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/08/18/japan/tepco-fuel-removal/


Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said Monday it has started removing spent nuclear fuel emitting high-level radiation from the pool of the No. 2 reactor at its disaster-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

Last month, the company removed 28 unused nuclear fuel assemblies, which have a relatively lower risk, from the same reactor. Tepco hopes to complete the removal of spent fuel by the end of fiscal 2028.

Tepco has already finished removing seven of the 587 spent fuel assemblies from the No. 2 reactor. Removed fuel assemblies are transferred to a safer common storage pool at the nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture.

The fuel removal will be suspended from October due to checks on the facility and to secure space in the common pool.

Work related to the transfer of spent fuel started in June. Spent fuel assemblies are put into a container called a cask inside the reactor pool using a remote-controlled crane. Once a cask is filled, it is lifted up from the pool and then down to a trailer outside the reactor building, and the assemblies are moved to the common pool.

Tepco has completed fuel removal from the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the nuclear power station, which was heavily damaged in the March 2011 powerful earthquake and tsunami.

Fuel removal is slated to start in fiscal 2027 or fiscal 2028 at the No. 1 reactor, where work to remove debris is still being carried out.

August 23, 2026 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, wastes | 1 Comment

A Canadian lab ran real spent nuclear fuel through one chemical process and stripped 89% of its long-lived danger in 24 hours.

COMMENT – by Gordon Edwards

“This pro-plutonium article is misleading. Separating plutonium from spent nuclear fuel is the surest path to proliferation of nuclear weapons, and in no way does it solve the long-term problem of high-level nuclear waste. For further information see ccnr.org/Moltex_Refuted_2021.pdf . By the way, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (although lavishly funded by Canadian taxpayers) is owned and run by a consortium of American multinational corporations.”

By Kevin Montien, August 7, 2026,https://www.vozpopuli.com/indux/en/a-canadian-lab-ran-real-spent-nuclear-fuel-through-one-chemical-process-and-stripped-89-of-its-long-lived-danger-in-24-hours/8154/

A Canadian laboratory has carried out a chemical test with real spent fuel from a commercial CANDU reactor and extracted 89.4% of its plutonium into molten salt in 24 hours. After 60 hours, the figure rose to 94.3%, while almost all the uranium remained outside the salt. That is a serious technical result, not a computer model.

But no electricity has been generated from the recovered material. The test validated the first stage of Moltex Energy’s Waste to Stable Salt process, known as WATSS, while the company’s planned 300-megawatt electric reactor remains in development and must still pass a much deeper regulatory process. The chemistry worked, but the power plant does not yet exist.

How WATSS separates the material

Spent nuclear fuel contains uranium, fission products and transuranic elements such as plutonium and americium. WATSS uses a high-temperature chloride salt and a carefully chosen reducing metal to convert transuranic oxides into forms that dissolve in the salt, while most of the uranium oxide stays solid.

This is a group-separation process, not a method for producing pure plutonium. In the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories tests, niobium was used as the reducing metal, and uranium carry-over into the salt was only 0.05% after 24 hours and 0.02% after 60 hours. The process moved the target material without dragging the bulk uranium along with it.

The location of the work matters too. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories carried out the experiments in shielded hot cells at Chalk River, using irradiated fuel rather than a laboratory substitute. That moves WATSS beyond the familiar stage where a promising idea works only with simulated waste.

Why this matters for nuclear waste

That percentage matters because Transuranic elements are heavier than uranium and include isotopes that remain radioactive for thousands of years, helping drive the need for deep isolation over geological timescales. Removing and later fissioning much of that inventory could reduce the long-lived burden, although it cannot make every waste stream disappear.

Canada has now selected the Revell Batholith in northwestern Ontario for its proposed deep geological repository, after Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation and the Township of Ignace agreed to advance the project. The regulatory process began in January 2026, so the country has a chosen location but not an operating repository.

Meanwhile, the inventory keeps growing. Canada had about 3.4 million used fuel bundles as of 2025 and generates roughly 90,000 more each year, according to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. A new recycling route could change what eventually goes underground, but it would not remove the need for a final disposal system.

A reactor designed to consume the recovered salt

Moltex plans to turn the concentrated transuranic salt into fuel for its Stable Salt Reactor Wasteburner, or SSR-W. The design is a fast-spectrum molten salt reactor rated at about 300 megawatts electric, with molten chloride fuel held inside fuel tubes and grouped into assemblies rather than circulated through a conventional solid-fuel core.

Fast neutrons are central to the idea. They can fission heavy isotopes that today’s thermal reactors use poorly, producing electricity while converting part of the long-lived inventory into fission products that are, for the most part, shorter-lived. Those products still require management, but the most persistent part of the waste can, to a large extent, become fuel instead of remaining untouched in storage.

Moltex estimates that about 260,000 used CANDU bundles expected at Point Lepreau by the end of the plant’s life could fuel one SSR-W for 60 years. The company also says the combined system could cut the repository footprint needed for that material by as much as 80%. Those are engineering projections tied to a facility that has not been built, not operating results.

The waste is already at Point Lepreau

Point Lepreau has operated on the Bay of Fundy since 1983, and its used fuel remains on site. NB Power says each bundle spends seven to ten years under water in a pool about the size of an Olympic swimming pool before moving into above-ground concrete dry-storage containers.

The amount looks surprisingly compact. NB Power says all the fuel used at the station since 1983 could fit within roughly one-third of an NHL hockey rink if stacked like firewood from the ice to the top of the boards. But a small footprint does not mean a small obligation, because the bundles must still be secured, monitored and eventually placed into a long-term management system.

The hardest part comes after the lab

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission completed a Phase 1 vendor design review of the SSR-W in 2021. Regulators found that Moltex generally understood the high-level intent of Canadian requirements, but they also identified additional work, and the review did not approve construction or issue a reactor license.

WATSS entered a separate pre-licensing consultation with the regulator in 2025. In its latest update, Moltex said the hot-cell work had “significantly advanced our understanding of the WATSS process,” while also stating that it intends to continue the remaining development stages and re-engage with regulators, utilities and governments as work resumes.

That leaves major questions around full-scale processing, fuel production, reactor performance, secondary waste, safeguards, cost and financing. The 24-hour extraction is a milestone, but it is not yet a power plant.

The latest statement was published on Moltex Energy.

Kevin Montien

Social communicator and journalist with extensive experience in creating and editing digital content for high-impact media outlets. He stands out for his ability to write news articles, cover international events and his multicultural vision, reinforced by his English language training (B2 level) obtained in Australia.

August 22, 2026 Posted by | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

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