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Nuclear waste removal under way at silo.

“Because the removal of the waste had not been planned when the building was opened, engineers had to retrofit an exit route for it.“

COMMENT. Doesn’t that tell you everything about the stupidity of the men who design the nuclear industry?

Jonny Manning, Local Democracy Reporting Service, 1 Nov 25, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgvq930vwpo

Seventy tonnes of radioactive waste have been removed from a nuclear site’s most hazardous building.

Teams at Sellafield in Cumbria have removed the waste from the Magnox Swarf Storage Silos with the company saying it has placed it into safe storage.

The work began in 2022 after two decades of preparation, because when the building was constructed in the 1960s no-one had considered how the waste would be removed.

Sellafield’s head of legacy silos Phil Reeve said so much waste had been removed that a 7m (23ft) crater had been dug in the middle of the pile.

However, the crater presents a risk of the waste around the edges collapsing inwards.

To fix the issue, Sellafield has created its own version of a garden rake – a 1.4 tonne machine which uses its stainless steel arms to pull the nuclear waste into the centre.

“It’s a big moment to see it successfully deployed in an active environment for the first time,” said Mr Reeve.

“It allows us to crack on with confidence.”

Because the removal of the waste had not been planned when the building was opened, engineers had to retrofit an exit route for it.

This involved assembling huge retrieval machines on top of the building’s 22 waste compartments.

One machine is currently up and running with another two set to start soon.

But while work is well under way, the Sellafield team still has about 10,000 tonnes of waste to remove.

November 3, 2025 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Escalating nuclear waste disposal cost leads senior MP to demand ‘coherent’ plan.

The escalating costs of the geological disposal facility (GDF) have led the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chair to demand that the government produce a “coherent plan” to manage the country’s nuclear waste legacy

29 Oct, 2025 By Tom Pashby
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/escalating-nuclear-waste-disposal-cost-leads-senior-mp-to-demand-coherent-plan-29-10-2025/

A GDF represents a monumental undertaking, consisting of an engineered vault placed between 200m and 1km underground, covering an area of approximately 1km2 on the surface. This facility is designed to safely contain nuclear waste while allowing it to decay over thousands of years, thereby reducing its radioactivity and associated hazards.

PAC chair Geoffrey Clifton-Brown’s comments were made in reaction to the revelation that the total life cost of the GDF is up to £15bn more than the sum listed in the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority’s (Nista’s) recent annual report. Nista is a government body and works with the Cabinet Office and Treasury and its August 2025 report published figures from Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), the government body responsible for the GDF, showing the GDF as having a whole life cost of from £20bn to £53.3bn.

However, Nista’s Infrastructure Pipeline dashboard lists the GDF’s CapEx (capital expenditure) range for new infrastructure in 2024/2025 prices as being from £26.2bn to £68.7bn, with the top end being slightly over £15bn higher than the figure published in the annual report.

A government source explained to NCE earlier that the discrepancy is because the figures published in Nista’s annual report was based on 2017/2018 prices, meaning the effects of long-term inflation were not accounted for.

Criticism has previously been levied at High Speed 2 (HS2) because of its use of historic pricing figures to reduce the impact of inflation on budget projects and make the total cost of the project appear to be lower than it would end up being.

Government must have coherent plan to manage nuclear waste – senior MP

The House of Commons PAC is one of the most active and powerful select committees in Parliament, able to formally request that the National Audit Office carry out investigations into government projects.

Nuclear decommissioning is a key area of focus for the Committee because of the high total costs, which will hit the public purse into the far future. Sellafield is seen as the government’s flagship project within the wider nuclear decommissioning programme.

The scale of future nuclear decommissioning is clear in the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority: Annual Report and Accounts 2024 to 2025, which says: “the discounted best estimate of the future costs of the decommissioning mission of £110.1bn”. This is a £5bn increase on the previous year.

October 31, 2025 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Members of Congress object to plutonium giveaway

October 26, 2025, https://beyondnuclear.org/senators-object-to-plutonium-giveaway/

On December 31, the Trump White House will start revealing which lucky startup companies will receive free plutonium needed for their new reactor fuel. Trump will give away between 20-25 tons, according to reports, going against US energy policy that has long avoided the transfer of nuclear weapons-usable materials into the commercial sector. One likely recipient is Oklo, on whose board Trump’s present energy secretary, Chris Wright, once sat, raising serious conflict of interest issues.

Several Members of Congress have already written to Trump expressing their concerns. In the  letter sent by Senator Ed Markey and Reps. Don Beyer and John Garamendi,  all Democrats, they pointed out that dishing out plutonium “to private industry for commercial energy use,”  crossed a line that “goes against long-standing, bipartisan US nuclear security policy. It raises serious weapons proliferation concerns, makes little economic sense, and may adversely affect the nation’s defense posture.”  They also pointed out that the amount of plutonium Trump is preparing to move into the commercial sector “is enough for at least 2,000 nuclear bombs.”

And they also took care to remind Trump that “commercial nuclear energy does not require separated plutonium, and today there is no global demand for plutonium to make civilian nuclear reactor fuel. Nuclear power reactors instead rely on uranium fuel, which is safer and cheaper to process.”

October 31, 2025 Posted by | - plutonium, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Roll up, roll up for your free plutonium.

The 19-25 metric tons of plutonium Trump would be redirecting into the civil nuclear sector had previously been slated for permanent disposal as nuclear waste left over from the Cold War era. Disposing of it is far cheaper than reprocessing it — $20 billion versus $49 billion according to the senators’ letter — and also isolates it from potentially falling into the wrong hands. 

    by beyondnuclearinternational

Trump is preparing a dangerous giveaway to struggling commercial nuclear startups, writes Linda Pentz Gunter

Imagine you are a commercial nuclear reactor startup company but you just can’t quite start up because there’s one little problem. Your “new” reactor design needs a special kind of fuel. And that fuel requires a particular ingredient: plutonium.

Plutonium is the trigger component of a nuclear bomb. The countries that developed nuclear weapons — as well as those that have reprocessed irradiated reactor fuel in order to separate the plutonium from uranium — have massive surplus piles of plutonium left over, an ever-present security threat.

Now imagine that a former board member of one of those struggling startup companies, Oklo, is Chris Wright, the current US Secretary of Energy in the Trump government. Lo and behold, all of a sudden, that same carnival barker who passes for a US president is offering your former company plutonium for free from a stockpile of close to 20 metric tons or more.

The White House has announced that it will begin revealing its lucky free plutonium recipients on December 31 based on applications received by the US Department of Energy by November 21, according to Reuters. The news agency put the plutonium surplus amount at 19.7 metric tons, although the Trump administration has suggested it has 25 tons to spare. 

That amount, according to a letter sent to the Trump administration by one senator — Ed Markey — and two representatives— Don Beyer, John Garamendi — all Democrats — is enough for at least 2,000 nuclear bombs. 

Dishing out plutonium “to private industry for commercial energy use,” the trio wrote in their September 10 letter, “goes against long-standing, bipartisan US nuclear security policy. It raises serious weapons proliferation concerns, makes little economic sense, and may adversely affect the nation’s defense posture.”

Markey wrote to Trump again on September 23, specifically enquiring whether it was more than just a peculiar coincidence that Wright’s former company, Oklo, would be the beneficiary of the plutonium handout.

Earlier, with his colleagues, Markey had expressed concern that “the transfer of weapons-usable plutonium to private industry would increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, including to rogue states or terrorists.” 

Markey now wanted to know whether “a serious conflict of interest may exist within your Administration on this issue because the plutonium transfer will benefit Secretary of Energy Chris Wright’s former company.”

Saying that he had “questions about the propriety of the transaction,” Markey noted that in addition to the free plutonium, Trump’s Department of Energy was also supporting Oklo to build a $1.7 billion reprocessing plant in Tennessee that would enable Oklo to further extract the plutonium needed for its as yet unlicensed micro-reactors. 

Markey went on to question whether the administration even cared whether or not a new Oklo-owned reprocessing plant made any sense but was instead backing the project with taxpayer money “because Oklo stands to benefit financially and Secretary Wright is acting in his former company’s interest.”

Among the eager corporations already lined up for their plutonium handouts are not only Oklo but also a foreign corporation, the now French-based but originally British nuclear company, newcleo, as well as US-based Valar Atomics, which has been criticized for developing a reactor that would not only consume but also produce plutonium. 

Perhaps to celebrate the impending largesse, newcleo announced on October 20 that it has entered into a partnership with Oklo and will invest $2 billion to develop advanced nuclear fuel fabrication and manufacturing facilities.

On the very day — May 23rd —that Trump released his executive orders fast-tracking nuclear power expansion, Valar Atomics put out its own statement celebrating the news. (Do you think they’d seen the EOs in advance, or maybe even written parts of them themselves?)

Echoing the identical language repeatedly used by Trump officials, the Valar Atomics statement said: “There’s a new arm to national nuclear security: Dominance. Dominance in civilian nuclear technology development, dominance in nuclear energy infrastructure deployment, dominance in shaping global development.”  

We should note here that the word “dominance” appears 35 times in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 guide to autocracy, which contains an entire section called American Energy and Science Dominance and another called Restoring American Energy Dominance. 

Accordingly, we now have something called the National Energy Dominance Council, headed by Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. Burgum heralded the newcleo-Oklo deal, saying: “This agreement to implement newcleo’s advanced fuel expertise into Oklo’s powerhouses and invest $2 billion into American infrastructure and advanced fuel solutions is yet another win for President Donald J. Trump’s American Energy Dominance Agenda.” 

Standing in the way of such dominance, according to Valar Atomics and others, remains the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). In April, Valar Atomics had joined the states of Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Florida, and Arizona, as well as fellow reactor companies Last Energy and Deep Fission, to sue the NRC. Their beef is that, going back to the days of NRC predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, there has been an annoying insistence “to require licenses even for reactors that use small amounts of special nuclear material that have no effect on US defense and security or public health and that the NRC itself has stated do not pose public health and safety risks.”

Innovation, complains Valar Atomics, is made “virtually impossible,” by the NRC. “Their rules — created in the overreaction to the Three Mile Island incident — shuttered the nuclear industry. Simply testing a reactor prototype takes five to seven years, at best. This is not the way to foster innovation! To regain our dominance in nuclear energy, the status quo must change, quickly.”

The suit is currently under discussion for a possible resolution, given that the Trump DOE is moving fast to rein in any excessive safety oversight by the newly downsized NRC, where the mission statement now extolls the “benefits” of nuclear energy for the US public.

The 19-25 metric tons of plutonium Trump would be redirecting into the civil nuclear sector had previously been slated for permanent disposal as nuclear waste left over from the Cold War era. Disposing of it is far cheaper than reprocessing it — $20 billion versus $49 billion according to the senators’ letter — and also isolates it from potentially falling into the wrong hands. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Plutonium has no place in the civil nuclear sector. But it should have no place in our lives, period, if we really want to avoid nuclear proliferation or worse.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the founder of Beyond Nuclear and serves as its international specialist. Her book, No To Nuclear. Why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress and Provokes War, can be pre-ordered now from Pluto Press. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/10/26/roll-up-roll-up-for-your-free-plutonium/

October 28, 2025 Posted by | - plutonium | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste plan turns neighbor against neighbor in a struggling Japanese fishing village

A huge underground vault could hold highly radioactive waste for thousands of years — but only if the government can overcome local opposition

Leslie Liang Science Line, • October 25, 2025

Nobuka Miki was flustered by the television reporter’s question. She was happily spending the day with her daughter, enjoying a Buddhist festival on the main street of her village in northern Japan, when the question came.

What did she think about the proposal to build an underground storage site for Japan’s high-level radioactive waste in Suttsu, the struggling fishing town where she lives? “As long as it’s not dangerous, then it should be OK?” Nobuka briefly answered before fleeing the uncomfortable exchange.

Until that 2020 interview, Nobuka, who owns a local beauty salon, had no idea the Japanese government was considering her village as the site for a huge underground vault capable of holding all of Japan’s high-level nuclear waste for thousands of years.

As soon as the television news clip was broadcast and calls from her worried friends started lighting up her phone, Nobuka had second thoughts.

“Everything was lovely and suddenly, I heard ‘nuclear waste’,” remembered Nobuka, who has since changed her mind and is now helping to voice the local opposition against the waste proposal. “I felt surprised.”

The bigger surprise came when Nobuka learned that years earlier, Suttsu’s own leadership had volunteered to be considered for the site, in an attempt to revitalize a community whose primary industry, herring fishing, has been declining for years.


Suttsu’s mayor, Kataoka Haruo, applied for the survey in 2020 to investigate if the village can be a permanent site for Japan’s high-level radioactive nuclear waste after a subsidy incentive was promised. The subsidies for the first stage of the survey were up-to-2 billion yen ($19.4 million), and seven billion yen ($48.6 million) for the second stage.

Five years later, the proposal remains highly divisive in Suttsu, which has a population of less than 3,000. Neighbors who know each other through generations of friendship have stopped talking. Their kids no longer play together……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The situation has gotten slightly less heated recently after a series of community meetings, Nobuka says, but nothing is resolved yet. Suttsu remains one of three candidates for the waste disposal site — the other is another isolated northern town 60 kilometers farther up the coast — despite growing opposition centered on safety concerns, including the possibility of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Japan needs to have a nationwide discussion about the waste issue, which has not attracted much attention beyond the potentially affected communities, said Takumi Saito, a professor who studies nuclear power at the University of Tokyo. He believes that for energy security, a natural resource-deprived country like Japan needs nuclear power.

The conflict in Suttsu is a small manifestation of a worldwide debate over what to do with highly radioactive waste products of nuclear power, especially spent fuel rods. As of 2023, Japan has generated more than 19,000 tons of used rods and other highly radioactive waste since it opened its first commercial nuclear reactor in 1966. Currently that waste is in temporary storage on the grounds of Japan’s 15 nuclear power plants, a situation experts say is risky considering that the waste will remain dangerous for more than 10,000 years.

Many other countries are in the same boat. More than a dozen nations are trying to develop underground storage facilities for high-level nuclear waste, but none are open yet, and many are mired in controversy. In the United States, the federal government has been pushing for the construction of a high-level waste storage facility at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain since 1987, but the proposal is now moribund after intense opposition from lawmakers and the public.

At a time when many countries are talking about building a new generation of nuclear power plants to reduce dependence on fossil fuels that drive global climate change, the lack of approved long-term waste storage facilities has been a critical hurdle — both in countries with long-established nuclear power programs and in many smaller nations that would like to develop their own………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Like many other countries with nuclear power, Japan is also trying to make progress on building a plant to reprocess and ultimately reuse spent nuclear fuel. France and Russia have been operating similar plants for years. In Japan’s case, reprocessing is crucial because the country is determined to reuse as much material as possible before it is shipped to the long-term storage site.

Critics are skeptical. The reprocessing facility in the town of Rokkasho “has been under construction for 30 years. [It was] supposed to be finished by September 2024. But it’s delayed again [until 2027],” said Satoshi Takano, a researcher from Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, an anti-nuclear group in Japan. “The policy is not working. We need to reconsider it.”

Plans to build the long-term storage site have been under consideration for almost as long. Suttsu’s leaders had volunteered their town for consideration more than 20 years ago, in response to a nationwide call from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan. The government promised billions in financial subsidies to the chosen community, but ultimately only three put themselves forward, including Suttsu.

In 2020, the government disclosed the names of the three communities. That was news to many local Suttsu residents, including Nobuka.

At the time, she didn’t even know what nuclear waste was. Even the devastating 2011 accident at Fukushima felt like a distant issue, 800 kilometers to the south. She and others quickly learned otherwise, not only because of the waste site proposal but also because of a plan to reopen the nuclear plant at Tomari, just 50 kilometers up the coast.

Their anxiety grew last November, when the government announced that a long-awaited review of the scientific literature on local geology showed that Suttsu and another northern coastal town, Kamoenai, were potentially suitable sites.

There are still numerous other steps, however, including drilling surveys and test tunnels — work that could take another 18 years, the government estimates.

The government’s plan is to build an underground storage site 1 to 2 kilometers wide and a depth of 300 to 500 meters, according to Satoshi. “If the site were to be built, it would be enough for the current waste in Japan,” he said

Nobuka, though, is one of many locals who say they are determined to stop it. She has made nuclear waste her second career, joining the Town Residents’ Association to speak out in opposition.

“People who are interested in this issue are quite doubtful about the decision” to name Suttsu as one of the finalists, Satoshi said. “The safety is not clear.”

Nobuka’s biggest concern is that nuclear accidents caused either by a natural disaster or man made malfunction will destroy Suttsu. But she worries that the project may already have too much momentum to stop, especially with the government’s drive to expand nuclear power.

She feels excluded from the government’s decision-making process. “Nobody showed up and asked about our concerns,” Nobuka said. “We’re not getting enough attention and I feel less and less hopeful.”…………………………………………..https://scienceline.org/2025/10/nuclear-waste-plan-turns-neighbor-against-neighbor/

October 27, 2025 Posted by | wastes | Leave a comment

Germany destroys two nuclear plant cooling towers as part of nuclear phaseout plan.

Euronews,  25/10/2025,https://www.euronews.com/2025/10/25/germany-destroys-two-nuclear-plant-cooling-towers-as-part-of-nuclear-phaseout-plan

The two towers, equivalent to roughly 56,000 tonnes of concrete, collapsed in a controlled demolition on Saturday. It comes as part of Germany’s nuclear phaseout.

Two cooling towers of the former nuclear power plant in Germay’s Bavarian town of Gundremmingen were brought down in a controlled demolition at noon on Saturday.

The plant had served as an important landmark in the town for nearly six decades, bringing numerous new jobs and boosting the local economy.

As part of the country’s nuclear phaseout and under Germany’s energy transition policy, the Gundremmingen, as well as the Brokdorf, and Grohnde nuclear power plants, had already been decommissioned in December 2021.

The municipality, who had prepared for a large crowd of onlookers, set up a restricted zone around the power plant.

According to energy company RWE, the demolition could be observed from various watch points in the region. Some pubs also offered public “demolition viewing parties”

How the towers will be blown up

There were three explosions in total. The first was carried out to chase away nearby animals and wildlife. The second brought down the first tower, and the third caused the second tower to collapse.

Roughly 56,000 tonnes of concrete collapsed in a matter of seconds. Following Saturday’s demolition, the dismantling of the plant will further continue, local media report, with completion expected by 2040.

October 27, 2025 Posted by | decommission reactor, Germany | Leave a comment

Early engagement launched on £360m nuclear waste capping scheme

 By Harmsworth

 Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), the state-owned body responsible for
managing the UK’s radioactive waste, has launched early market engagement on a £360m programme to cap and extend the Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR) in Cumbria.

NWS operates the repository on behalf of the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

The scheme will involve installing a permanent engineered cap over disused trenches and Vault 8 at the LLWR site near Drigg. Capping is a method used to isolate radioactive waste from the environment. It involves layering materials such as clay, concrete and geomembranes to prevent water from reaching the waste and to contain any gas emissions.

 Construction News 24th Oct 2025,
https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/civils/early-engagement-launched-on-360m-nuclear-waste-capping-scheme-24-10-2025/

October 26, 2025 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

US offers nuclear energy companies access to weapons-grade plutonium

US offers nuclear energy companies access to weapons-grade plutonium.
Expert warns commercial use of the radioactive material from cold war-era
warheads carries safety risks.

The US has offered energy companies access
to nuclear waste that they can convert into fuel for advanced reactors in
an attempt to break Russia’s stranglehold over uranium supply chains. The
Department of Energy on Tuesday published an application that nuclear
energy groups can use to seek up to 19 metric tonnes of the government’s
weapons-grade plutonium from cold war-era warheads.

In the document seen by
the Financial Times, the energy department said being selected to receive
the plutonium could help companies secure faster approval for a Nuclear
Regulatory Commission license, which is required to operate a nuclear
facility. At least two companies, Oklo, which is backed by OpenAI’s Sam
Altman, and France’s Newcleo, are expected to apply to access the
government’s plutonium stockpile.

FT 21st Oct 2025, https://www.ft.com/content/2fbbc621-405e-4a29-850c-f0079b116216

October 25, 2025 Posted by | - plutonium, safety, USA | Leave a comment

True cost of nuclear waste disposal facility £15bn higher than recent Treasury figures

MP says ministers ignore long-term waste costs of nuclear power

“Government ministers are very happy to talk about the so-called benefits of nuclear power without reference to its long-term impacts and the eye-wateringly large amounts of money associated with storage and security of nuclear waste, which is in the tens of billions of pounds just to create the GDF,” he said.

23 Oct, 2025 New Civil Engineer, By Tom Pashby

The true cost of an underground facility for long-term storage of nuclear waste has been revealed to be up to £68.7bn – £15bn more than the sum listed in the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority’s (Nista’s) recent annual report.

A Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) represents a monumental undertaking, consisting of an engineered vault placed between 200m and 1km underground, covering an area of approximately 1km2 on the surface. This facility is designed to safely contain nuclear waste while allowing it to decay over thousands of years, thereby reducing its radioactivity and associated hazards.

Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) is responsible for the GDF project and declares that this method offers the most secure solution for managing the UK’s nuclear waste, aimed at relieving future generations of the burden of storage. NWS is part of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which is itself an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).

Nista is a unit of HM Treasury and published its NISTA Annual Report 2024 to 2025 in August 2025, where it described the GDF project as ‘Red’, meaning the projects appears to be “unachievable”, and as having a whole life cost of from £20bn to £53.3bn.

However, Nista’s Infrastructure Pipeline lists the GDF’s CapEx (capital expenditure) range for new infrastructure in 2024/2025 prices as being from £26.2bn to £68.7bn, with the top end being slightly over £15bn higher than the figure published in the annual report.

A government source explained to NCE that the discrepancy is because the figures published in Nista’s annual report are based on 2017/2018 prices, meaning the effects of long-term inflation were not accounted for.

Criticism was previously levied at High Speed 2 (HS2) because of its use of historic pricing figures to reduce the impact of inflation on budget projects and make the total cost of the project appear to be lower than it would end up being.

Parliamentarians told NCE that ministers should face up to the long-term legacy costs associated with the nuclear industry.

Current GDF pricing only provided by Nista to ensure consistency with pipeline

A government source told NCE that the difference in the two ranges for whole-life costs for the GDF  is a factor of the price basis for each quoted figure.

They said that the NDA provided Nista with data in 2017/18 prices with the total range of £20bn-53.3bn, which was reflected in the Nista annual report.

The same data for this project was converted to 2024/25 prices for the Nista Infrastructure Pipeline, to ensure consistency with the rest of the data in the set, the source said. This is reflected in the higher figure of £26.1bn-£68.7bn.

NWS did not provide any comment.

MP says ministers ignore long-term waste costs of nuclear power

SNP spokesperson for energy security and net zero, transport, and science, innovation and technology, Graham Leadbitter MP, told NCE that ministers ignore the long term legacy of nuclear power when promoting projects.

“Government ministers are very happy to talk about the so-called benefits of nuclear power without reference to its long-term impacts and the eye-wateringly large amounts of money associated with storage and security of nuclear waste, which is in the tens of billions of pounds just to create the GDF,” he said.

He added that the waste would have to be managed for 1,000’s of years, and the money budgeted for nuclear waste management would be better spent on “more valuable infrastructure projects … that would support high-quality employment, investment in skills and vastly improved public services.”

Government must ‘face up to the legacy’ of nuclear – peer

Liberal Democrat Lords spokesperson for energy and climate change Earl Russell told NCE: “If this Government truly want to see a renaissance in nuclear power, it must finally face up to the legacy it leaves behind.”

Russell reiterated the fact that Nista described the GDF as “unachievable” and added: “The government must have a credible, long-term strategy for managing the waste new nuclear projects will produce.”……………………………………………………………………… https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/true-cost-of-nuclear-waste-disposal-facility-15bn-higher-than-recent-treasury-figures-23-10-2025/

October 25, 2025 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Radioactivity and nuclear waste under scrutiny in Peskotomuhkati homeland [video]

by NB Media Co-op,  October 20, 2025, https://nbmediacoop.org/2025/10/20/radioactivity-and-nuclear-waste-under-scrutiny-in-peskotomuhkati-homeland-video/

Nuclear energy in New Brunswick was the focus of a recent public meeting in Fredericton, hosted by the NB Media Co-op. It took place at the Social Forum in Wolastokuk, a two-day event that brought together activists from across the province and beyond.

Nuclear energy is a live issue right now in New Brunswick, as NB Power goes forward with its controversial plans to build a Small Modular Nuclear Reactor at Point Lepreau. New Brunswick is the only province outside of Ontario that operates a nuclear power reactor, the aging Point Lepreau station.

At the social forum, Gordon Edwards, president and co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsiblity, outlined the history of nuclear energy and spoke about its risks.

Hugh Akagi, chief of the Peskotomuhkati Nation at Skutik, also led a discussion as part of the session. The community has members in New Brunswick and in Maine, and for decades, has pushed for official recognition from the Government of Canada.

The First Nation never consented to the existing reactor at Point Lepreau, opposes more nuclear reactors on their territory, and has expressed grave concerns about radioactive waste.

The full presentation is brought to you by the NB Media Co-op in partnership with the CEDAR Project. This reporting has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada via the Local Journalism Initiative.

October 22, 2025 Posted by | wastes | Leave a comment

Russia to Raise Cold War Nuclear Submarines From Arctic—What’s Hiding on the Seabed?

Ivan Khomenko, Oct 20, 2025 , https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-to-raise-cold-war-nuclear-submarines-from-arctic-whats-hiding-on-the-seabed-12644

Russia plans to begin preparations in 2026 for raising two Soviet-era nuclear submarines that sank in Arctic waters, according to RBC on October 18. The recovery work itself is scheduled to start in 2027.

As RBC reported, the draft federal budget for 2026 and the planned period of 2027–2028 includes allocations for rehabilitating Arctic sea areas contaminated by sunken or submerged radiation-hazardous objects.

These activities are part of Russia’s state program Development of the Atomic Energy and Industrial Complex.

According to the explanatory note cited by RBC, the section titled “Safe Handling of Federal Radioactive Waste and Decommissioning of Nuclear and Radiation-Hazardous Legacy Facilities” earmarks 10.5 billion rubles for 2026, 10.7 billion for 2027, and 10.6 billion for 2028.

The project reportedly focuses on two of the seven sunken Soviet nuclear submarines—K-27 and K-159.

K-27, introduced in 1963, was an experimental submarine equipped with liquid-metal cooled reactors using a lead-bismuth alloy. In 1968, during its third voyage, a reactor accident exposed more than 140 crew members to radiation, killing nine.

The vessel was scuttled in the Kara Sea in 1981 and now lies at a depth of about 75 meters.

K-159 entered service the same year as K-27 and remained operational until 1989. It sank in 2003 in the Barents Sea while being towed for dismantling near Kildin Island, resulting in the deaths of nine crew members. The wreck rests at approximately 250 meters.

Plans to lift these submarines have been discussed for more than a decade but were repeatedly postponed due to the lack of specialized equipment, qualified personnel, and safety concerns. In 2021, Rosatom estimated that raising the vessels would cost around 24.4 billion rubles.

The renewed inclusion of the project in Russia’s 2026 budget marks the first concrete step since 2012 toward removing the radioactive wrecks from the Arctic seabed, though the exact reasons for the timing remain unclear, RBC noted.

Earlier in October, Russia’s Novorossiysk submarine—armed with Kalibr cruise missiles—was forced to abandon its Mediterranean mission and return to Saint Petersburg after a fuel leak disabled its underwater capability.

The incident highlighted Russia’s growing naval limitations following the loss of its Syrian logistics hub in Tartus and Turkey’s blockade of the Bosphorus Strait.

October 22, 2025 Posted by | oceans, Russia, wastes | Leave a comment

Moscow puts money on the table to raise nuclear subs from Arctic seabed

Both the K-27 and the K-159 represent ticking radioactive time-bombs for the Arctic marine environment.

The Government’s draft budget for 2026, and the planned budget for 2027-2028, include funding to lift the K-27 and K-159, two wrecked submarines that are resting on the seabed in the Barents Sea and Kara Sea.

Thomas Nilsen, 20 October 2025 –https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/news/moscow-puts-money-on-the-table-to-raise-nuclear-subs-from-arctic-seabed/439056

It is the state nuclear corporation Rosatom that told news outlet RBK about the plans to finally do something about the ticking radioactive time-bombs.

“The draft federal budget for 2026 and the 2027-2028 planning period includes funding for the rehabilitation of Arctic seas from sunken and dumped radiation-hazardous objects, beginning in 2027. Preparations for the planned work will begin in 2026,” the press service of Rosatom said. 

An explanatory note to Rosatom’s budget post for disposal of nuclear and radiation-hazardous nuclear legacy sites details how 30 billion rubles for the three-year period are earmarked for planning and lifting of the Cold War era submarines left on the Arctic seabed.

The K-27 and the K-159 are the most urgent to raise and bring to shore for safe scrapping.

While the K-27 was dumped on purpose in 1982 in the Stepovoy Bay on the Kara Sea side of Novaya Zemlya, the sinking of the K-159 in the Barents Sea was an accident. 

Lifting a nuclear submarine from the seabed is nothing new. It is difficult, but doable.

In 2002, the Dutch salvage company Mammoet managed to raise the ill-fated Kursk submarine from the Barents Sea. A special barge was built with wires attached underneath. The wreck of the Kursk was safely brought in and placed in a floating dock where the decommissioning took place.

Aleksandr Nikitin, a nuclear safety expert with the Bellona Foundation in Oslo, said to the Barents Observer that it is too early to conclude that the lifting actually will happen, or whether this is a preliminary plan that needs to be developed before concluding.

“As far as I understand, there’s no concrete plan,” Nikitin said. 

Before Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, Aleksandr Nikitin was member of Rosatom’s Public Chamber, a body that worked with non-governmental organisations to foster transparency and civic engagement on nuclear safety related issues in Russia. 

Nikitin believes there still is infrastructure on the Kola Peninsula to deal with the two submarines if they are lifted from the seabed.

“Rosatom is currently trying not to destroy what the French built in Gremikha, hoping to dismantle the K-27 there if it’s raised. This is a special facility where this nuclear submarine with a liquid metal coolant reactor can be dismantled,” he explained. 

“As for the K-159, it could be dismantled, for example, at Nerpa.”

Nerpa is a shipyard north of Murmansk that decommissioned several Cold War submarines at the time when Russia maintained cooperation with European partners, including Norway. 

Ticking radioactive time-bombs

Both the K-27 and the K-159 represent ticking radioactive time-bombs for the Arctic marine environment.

The K-159 is a November-class submarine that sank in late August 2003 while being towed in bad weather from the closed naval base of Gremikha on the eastern shores of the Kola Peninsula towards the Nerpa shipyard north of Murmansk.

Researchers have since then monitored the wreck, fearing leakages of radioactivity from the two old nuclear reactors onboard could contaminate the important fishing grounds in the Barents Sea. A joint Norwegian-Russian expedition examined the site in 2014 and concluded that no leakage has so far occurred from the reactors to the surrounding marine environment.

However, the bad shape of the hull could eventually lead to radionuclides leaking out.

The two onboard reactors contain about 800 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel, with an estimated 5,3 GBq of radionuclides.

A modelling study by the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research said that a pulse discharge of the entire Cesium-137 inventory from the two reactors could increase concentrations in cod in the eastern part of the Barents Sea up to 100 times current levels for a two-year period after the discharge. While a Cs-137 increase of 100 times in cod sounds dramatic, the levels would still be below international guidelines. But that increase could still make it difficult to market the affected fish.

The K-27, the other submarine that it is urgent to lift, was on purpose dumped in the Kara Sea in 1982. In September 2021, divers from the Centre for Underwater Research of the Russian Geographical Society conducted a survey of the submarine’s hull. Metal pieces were cut free, the thickness of the hull was measured, along with other inspections of the submarine that has been corroding on the seabed for more than 40 years.

In aditionl to the K-27 and K-159, there are also the other dumped reactors in the Kara Sea, including from the K-11, K-19 and K-140, as well as spent nuclear fuel from an older reactor serving the icebreaker Lenin.

In Soviet times, thousands of containers with solid radioactive waste from both the civilian icebreaker fleet and the military Navy were dumped at different locations in the Kara Sea. 

October 21, 2025 Posted by | Russia, wastes | Leave a comment

The Bloc Québécois is calling for an immediate halt to the transfer of radioactive waste to Chalk River, on the shores of the drinking water source for millions of Quebecers

Anne Caroline Desplanques, Journal de Montréal, October 20, 2025, https://www.journaldemontreal.com/auteur/anne-caroline-desplanques

The request sent to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Tim Hodgson, follows a series of reports by our Investigative Bureau, which had rare access to the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) site where the waste is stored.

In the past year, the laboratories received 62.8 tonnes of irradiated uranium fuel from the Gentilly-1 nuclear generating station in Bécancour. This high-risk material is stored in a dozen gigantic reinforced concrete silos in the middle of the forest, along the Ottawa River.

The least contaminated materials are stored nearby, in containers stacked on top of each other.

More silos and containers need to be added as CNL also wants to dismantle two other federal nuclear power plants, in Ontario and Manitoba, and bring the waste back to Chalk River, they told us.

Risk of environmental disaster

“This is probably one of the worst possible and worst imaginable places to decide to store nuclear waste,” says the Bloc Québécois, which fears “an ecological and environmental disaster.”

CNL says the storage is only temporary: the high-level radioactive waste is ultimately to be placed in a geological repository more than 650 metres deep, supposed to open by 2050 in northwestern Ontario.

But for Lance Haymond, chief of the Kebaowek First Nation, whose traditional territory includes CNL, the opening of the geological repository remains hypothetical, as construction has not even begun yet.

The repository project is expected to cost $26 billion. Chief Haymond is concerned that the federal government will not be able to afford such a bill in these times of budget restraint and therefore may abandon the silos in Chalk River.

Long legal battle ahead

As for less contaminated waste accumulated in other containers, CNL wants to bury it directly on site one kilometre from the river. But the Kebaoweks has blocked the project in court.

They won the battle in the first instance, but the war continues since Ottawa has taken the case to the Court of Appeal. The hearings began in early October. Lance Haymond, supported by the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador and the Assembly of First Nations of Canada, promises to go all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

The conflict is therefore likely to drag on for years. In the meantime, and whatever the courts ultimately decide, the accumulation of garbage in Chalk River must stop, argues the Bloc Québécois.

October 21, 2025 Posted by | Canada, wastes | 1 Comment

The astronomic costs of decommissioning Sellafield

 First Annual Report of the Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts.
(Paras 55&56) We were informed that the estimated cost of decommissioning the site was £136 billion, an increase of 18.8% since March 2019.

When the previous Committee last took evidence on Sellafield in 2018, the nine major projects that were underway then were between them delayed by 165 months and expected to cost £913 million more than originally budgeted.

However, the Committee heard that the combined costs of four of these projects are now expected to cost £1.15 billion more than when the previous Committee reported. Each of these four projects will also be delayed further by between 58 and 129 months each.

Sellafield Ltd has begun retrieving
hazardous waste from the site, and in the longer term, this waste will be
stored in an underground offsite Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) capable
of storing the waste for thousands of years. However, the Committee found
that the opening date of the GDF has slipped from 2040 to the late 2050s.
For every decade of delay, additional buildings could need to be
constructed to accommodate short-term storage of the waste at a cost of
£500–760 million.

As well as the serious implications for the value for
money of the project, this delay makes the ambition to completely
decommission the Sellafield site in the next hundred years even more
challenging.

In addition to this, in August the GDF project was rated red
in its Delivery Confidence Assessment by NISTA, meaning “successful
delivery of the project appears to be unachievable.” DESNZ has since
acknowledged that the NDA is “undertaking some replanning to mitigate
risks and support ongoing progress” across all of its programmes,
including the GDF. We will be following any further developments closely
over the coming months.

 House of Commons 15th Oct 2025,
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5901/cmselect/cmpubacc/1300/report.html#heading-5

October 18, 2025 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Holtec Backs Down, Reveals Achilles’ Heel For U.S. Nuclear Resurgence

Forbes, ByIan Dexter Palmer, Ph.D, 14 Oct, 2025

Highlights.

  • Holtec International has shuttered their plans to store nuclear waste in the Permian basin of south-east New Mexico.
  • President Trump, by executive order, has decided nuclear energy will be a big part of the U.S. energy future.
  • Next-gen nuclear reactors, SMRs, have been spotlighted by the Secretary of Energy to help solve the electrical power surge needed for data centers and AI.
  • But research has shown that SMRs create 2 to 30 times greater volumes of nuclear waste.
  • The cost of new nuclear reactors, whether traditional reactors or SMRs, is substantially higher than renewable energies.
  • Oklo is a front-runner in the SMR race, and its stock has skyrocketed. In August, it was selected for three projects under DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program.

Holtec International has shuttered their plans to store nuclear waste in the Permian basin of south-east New Mexico. The planned site would have contained 50 canisters of spent nuclear fuel for 40 years, as a temporary storage site, which is laughable as Holtec planned to scale up to 10,000 canisters eventually.

President Trump, by executive order, has decided nuclear energy will be a big part of the U.S. energy future. After languishing for decades, President Biden assigned substantial funds to nuclear, as part of his push toward carbon-free sources. But there is an Achilles’ heel to nuclear—the waste is radioactive, and has to be disposed of very carefully. This is not just waste from traditional nuclear reactors, like Three-Mile Island, but also from small nuclear reactors (SMRs), that can be as small as a three-story building, and which can be made in a factory, and stacked to scale up energy supply. There is an ubiquitous threat in the U.S., real or perceived, of being exposed to nuclear radiation, either from nuclear accidents or from storage of nuclear waste.

Holtec Project Canceled.

In 2023, the governor of NM, Michelle Lujan Grisham, signed a state bill into law that banned state agencies from signing nuclear storage permits. There are reasons for this. NM has a history of debilitating health effects from nuclear radiation, from the first atom bomb explosion south of Albuquerque, to workers who mined uranium in western parts of the state.

But there are other liabilities. A second is earthquakes in the Permian basin induced by injection of waste water from oil well operations. These are increasing in numbers and there have been several magnitude 5 quakes. Planning to build a storage facility for nuclear waster in the middle of hundreds of oil wells and their earthquakes should be a no-brainer.

A third liability is the promise the Holtec facility would be temporary, until the U.S. finds a permanent site. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianpalmer/2025/10/14/holtec-backs-down-reveals-achilles-heel-for-us-nuclear-resurgence/

October 17, 2025 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

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