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Europe could source half its critical materials from waste by 2050, study finds

Europe could source half its critical materials from waste by 2050, study
finds. Recovery systems could help the region reclaim up to 5.7 million
tonnes of critical raw materials (CRMs) that are currently thrown away,
reducing European reliance on imported materials and strengthen supply
chain resilience.

The findings were published as part of the Future
Availability of Secondary Raw Materials (FutuRaM) project, which seeks to
map Europe’s ‘urban mine’ of unused or wasted metals and minerals lost in
discarded products, industrial residues and demolished infrastructure
across the EU27+4 (EU, UK, Switzerland, Iceland and Norway).

CRMs –
including rare earth metals, lithium and cobalt – underpin a host of modern
technologies, from smartphones and electric vehicles (EVs) to solar panels
and wind turbines. But currently, when these technologies reach the end of
their usable lives, many of these important materials are discarded, too.

Edie 27th May 2026,
https://www.edie.net/europe-could-source-half-its-critical-materials-from-waste-by-2050-study-finds/

June 1, 2026 Posted by | EUROPE, wastes | Leave a comment

U.S. Turns Cold War Plutonium Into Nuclear Fuel

Oil Price, By Charles Kennedy – May 28, 2026, 

  • The U.S. is exploring the use of Cold War-era plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads as alternative fuel for advanced nuclear reactors due to uranium supply shortages and reliance on foreign enriched uranium.
  • The Department of Energy has shortlisted five nuclear companies, including SMR developers.
  • Critics warn the plan raises nuclear proliferation risks and could prove technically and economically difficult, as converting weapons-grade plutonium into reactor fuel remains highly expensive.

……………………………………………………………. The plutonium considered for distribution to nuclear companies is from dismantled warheads from the Cold War. The radioactive material—50 tons of surplus supply, according to the New York Times—was originally to be diluted and buried, but President Trump last year suspended that plan, per Reuters, which also recalled reports about Washington planning to make 20 tons of plutonium available to private companies.

……………………………There are, of course, opponents to the idea of using weapons-grade nuclear material for nuclear power generation by private companies. Indeed, some Democratic members of Congress have publicly protested the plan.

“The transfer of weapons-usable plutonium to private industry would increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, including to rogue states or terrorists,” Massachusetts senator Ed Markey and representatives Don Beyer and John Garamendi said in a letter from last September. “The United States cannot effectively discourage other countries from using plutonium for civil purposes if we use it ourselves.”

The idea behind the move is to encourage the development of small modular nuclear reactors that could be built much more quickly than conventional ones—at least theoretically. The practical application of SMR technology, however, has stumbled after pioneer NuScale had to scrap its plans to build the first small modular reactor in the U.S. amid much higher than hoped-for costs, leading to insufficient numbers of future buyers willing to sign up for the facility’s output.

Despite these challenges in the MR segment, nuclear is back in a big way, not least thanks to Big Tech’s AI rush, which requires these companies to secure massive amounts of electricity for their facilities—and make it reliable. This is boosting the popularity of nuclear electricity outside the Big Tech community as well—higher electricity bills are making the construction costs of new nuclear power plants more palatable than they would have been a couple of years ago.

Whether plutonium would make an equivalent substitute for uranium in this nuclear renaissance remains questionable, it seems. The fact that the element could be used for the production of nuclear weapons is one problem with the idea. Another problem appears to be of a more technical nature, per the New York Times, which also cited critics as saying the cost of turning plutonium into nuclear fuel was prohibitively high. https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/US-Turns-Cold-War-Plutonium-Into-Nuclear-Fuel.html

May 31, 2026 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

Trump plan to give start-ups plutonium harvested from Cold War–era nuclear weapons is risky, experts say

Weapons-grade plutonium can fuel nuclear reactors known as mixed oxide reactors, but none of these exist in the U.S.

By Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron, May 28, 2026 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-warn-against-trump-plan-to-give-cold-war-plutonium-to-nuclear-power-companies/

The Trump administration’s plan to offer plutonium from dismantled Cold War–era nuclear weapons to private energy companies is drawing criticism from experts who say it makes little economic sense and presents a national security threat.

There are currently no operational nuclear reactors in the country that are built to use plutonium-derived fuel. Instead nuclear power plants in the U.S. are powered by a mixture of two uranium isotopes. A small portion, usually around 5 percent, of that fuel is uranium 235, which can also be used to make nuclear weapons. The majority is uranium 238, which cannot sustain a nuclear fission reaction on its own. Because of that balance, if some of this fuel were to fall into the wrong hands, it would be enormously difficult to weaponize, says Scott Roecker, vice president of nuclear materials security at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing nuclear catastrophe.

“The most difficult step in getting a nuclear weapon is having enough of that material,” he explains. “The U.S. government has spent probably billions of dollars over the last several decades to remove highly-enriched uranium and separated plutonium from countries that don’t need it.”

Plutonium, meanwhile, is considered a human-made element and is a by-product of the reactions that take place inside nuclear reactors. As uranium 238 is bombarded with neutrons inside the reactor, the molecules absorb some of these particles and become the heavier uranium 239, which rapidly decays and eventually becomes extremely radioactive plutonium.

That plutonium can be mixed back with uranium to be used as fuel in specific nuclear reactors called mixed oxide reactors. The U.S. abandoned mixed oxide reactors in the 1970s because they were both difficult and expensive to run. These kinds of reactors do exist elsewhere, though—in Japan, Russia and France—but those countries have encountered their own problems with the reactors, Roecker says.

“In France, the government’s subsidizing that process,” he says. “Only I think 1 percent of the uranium that’s actually reprocessed is being reused. And in Japan, it’s cost the country billions of dollars and has still not started operation, and who knows if it actually ever will.”

The U.S. Department of Energy has defended the plan, saying the private sector could play a vital role in advancing U.S. nuclear power infrastructure. Ted Garrish, assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy, said in April that decommissioned nuclear fuel “represents an immense, untapped energy resource for the United States.”

“The Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program is anticipated to help companies unlock the next level of private funding to broaden domestic nuclear fuel supplies, spur innovation on American recycling technologies, and unlock private sector funding to fuel the nation’s nuclear renaissance,” said a DOE spokesperson in a statement, adding that five companies have been selected to take part in the program.

Aside from the concern over cost and feasibility, other experts point out that keeping plutonium secure is much more difficult than doing so with typical uranium-based nuclear fuel. Daniel Speyer, a professor of nuclear power plant systems at New York University, says he isn’t convinced that energy start-ups could properly store plutonium. Even if the material is mixed back with uranium, separating the two to isolate the highly fissile material isn’t so difficult as to be impossible—which introduces a clear security threat, he says.

“It’s not something that a small organization really probably could do, but if you give them plutonium in purer form, I think it’s almost a trivial act to make a bomb,” he says. “A simple atomic bomb is not difficult to make.”

The DOE says that any company selected to receive the Cold War–era plutonium will have to show a deep understanding of the technology involved, as well as robust security plans and regulatory compliance. The plan has also met some pushback on Capitol Hill, however. Last September Democratic senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts and two Democratic congressional representatives sent a letter to President Donald Trump raising concerns over the risk to national security.

“The transfer of weapons-usable plutonium to private industry would increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, including to rogue states or terrorists,” they wrote.

May 30, 2026 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

Survey begins to determine remote island’s suitability for nuclear disposal site

But while the local leaders of the municipalities in Hokkaido and Genkai approved the literature reviews, the Hokkaido and Saga governors, whose permission NUMO will seek to go on to the next stage — a preliminary on-site survey — are opposed

By Eric Johnston, STAFF WRITER, May 21, 2026, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/tag/nuclear-energy/

A survey to determine the suitability of a remote island in the Ogasawara Islands chain as a final disposal site for radioactive nuclear waste began Wednesday.

The National Waste Management Organization of Japan (NUMO) will carry out a review of the scientific literature on the geology of Minamitorishima, Japan’s easternmost island, located nearly 2,000 kilometers from Tokyo.

The literature review is the first stage of an investigation into whether the site would be suitable for constructing an underground nuclear storage facility. The radioactive waste would need to be buried at least 300 meters underground for up to 100,000 years.

Minamitorishima has no civilian residents and is part of Ogasawara Village. The mayor, Masaki Shibuya, gave his approval for the survey last month.

Over the next two years or so, experts will scrutinize geological maps and academic papers regarding earthquake fault lines and volcanic activity on and around the island.

Local governments that agree to participate in the literature review can receive up to ￥2 billion in grants, and the central government has been encouraging as many of them as possible to raise their hands.

“The final disposal of radioactive waste is a critical issue that Japan as a whole must resolve, and we intend to conduct literature surveys in as many parts of the country as possible,” NUMO President Akira Yamaguchi said in a statement Wednesday.

Minamitorishima is only the fourth site to agree to the survey. Suttsu town and Kamoenai village in Hokkaido Prefecture have been surveyed, and NUMO is compiling feedback on the report. Genkai, in Saga Prefecture, is currently undergoing a survey as well.

But while the local leaders of the municipalities in Hokkaido and Genkai approved the literature reviews, the Hokkaido and Saga governors, whose permission NUMO will seek to go on to the next stage — a preliminary on-site survey — are opposed.

“If Suttsu and Kamenaichi intend to proceed with a preliminary survey, I’ll express opposition at this time,” Hokkaido Gov. Naomichi Suzuki said in March, citing an October 2000 prefectural assembly ordinance opposing the introduction of nuclear waste into the prefecture.

Saga Prefecture Gov. Yoshinori Yamaguchi has also indicated his opposition to his prefecture hosting a final disposal facility.

“I have no intention of accepting any new burdens,” Yamaguchi said in April when asked about his position on whether he’d provide consent for Genkai to conduct a preliminary on-site survey after the literature survey.

Unlike the other three candidate sites, Minamitorishima has no permanent residents and is off-limits to the public. It houses facilities operated by the Maritime Self-Defense Force, the Japan Meteorological Agency, and the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry.

The Japanese government is moving to restart as many nuclear power plants as possible. But on-site storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel at many power plants are approaching full capacity, while plans to have the spent fuel recycled at the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant in Aomori Prefecture remain stalled.

In February, the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan released figures showing that storage pools at 17 nuclear plants where spent fuel is cooled were 78% full as of the end of last year.

May 25, 2026 Posted by | Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

Death will kill with its poisonous wings.

“This place is not a place of honor … no highly esteemed dead is commemorated here … nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger

by Martin McKenzie-Murray, https://www.themonthly.com.au/martin-mckenzie-murray/2026-05-08/death-will-kill-its-poisonous-wings

Very soon, likely within a few weeks, one of the world’s most interesting pieces of infrastructure will open after 22 years of construction and almost half a century of contemplation. Called Onkalo – Finnish for “cavity” – the site will be the world’s first permanent repository for nuclear waste.

By law, Finland obliges that nuclear waste produced domestically must be stored domestically. That will now occur on the island of Olkiluoto at a depth of more than 400 metres within bedrock that’s almost two billion years old. Currently, the repository area is about two square kilometres and comprised of 10 kilometres of tunnels – this number will likely quadruple before the site’s decommissioning in around 2100, when this cavern will be backfilled and sealed, creating a self-maintained nuclear sarcophagus for the approximately 100,000 years it will take for the waste’s radioactivity to have decayed to safe levels. 

Perhaps by now you’re beginning to intuit a little about a) the complexity of its design, b) the richness of its semiotic implications, and c) the sobering absence of anything approaching a precedent for this. Consider: after its decommissioning, Onkalo must remain perfectly passive, requiring no active management or monitoring for 100,000 years. Second, its profound danger must be communicated so far into the future that current languages, customs – even genetic dispositions – can no longer be assumed to exist. It’s a strange and disquieting fact that the radioactivity of our nuclear waste might outlive our languages for communicating its danger. Third, no man-made structure has ever lasted anything close to the length of time that Onkalo is hoped to be preserved for.

Let’s start with the simpler facts of the site. Olkiluoto Island was chosen for its geological stability – the low-permeability of its bedrock and its low-risk of seismic tremors. In Michael Madsen’s fascinating 2010 documentary about the site’s design, Into Eternity, one project adviser explains how time down there goes slowly, while up here, on the surface, it passes very, very quickly. 

In other words, the crystalline rock 450 metres below ground here looks much the same as it did 500,000 years ago. The surface of our planet, however, would look unrecognisable if we travelled back just 200 years. Our natural, political and material world changes often and quickly – the latter to the whims and passions of its human inhabitants, our creative and destructive ingenuities, and the gravity of civilisational entropy. The natural world, meanwhile, forever remains subject to the whims and passions of storms and droughts and a climate that’s being altered by us.

Currently, the world’s approximately half-a-million tonnes of nuclear waste is kept in temporary storage on the surface of our planet, and is thus subject to war, sabotage or natural calamity. Much safer to secure it deep down where time moves slowly. 

There is something lusciously strange and dreamlike about the projections and assumptions Onkalo’s designers were asked to make. They did nothing less than imaginatively commune with a form of humanity far into the future. 

The weirdness of this can be emphasised by offering some modest timescale. The birth of Jesus Christ was 2000 years ago. The pyramids of Giza were completed about 4500 years ago. The previous Ice Age ended almost 12,000 years ago and found the peak of its severity about 10,000 years before that. That is still nowhere near 100,000 years, the length of time into the future for which Onkalo must remain independently stable and for which the warnings we write today must travel and remain intelligible.

And so, the niche field of nuclear semiotics: how do we communicate today’s intentions to a civilisation so distant that we presume it to be almost alien and to not share our language? Preceding this question though, is another: should we even try? Can we assume that humanity will, in 80,000 years, say, possess the same curiosity we do today? That is, will they perform the same enthusiastic archaeological excavations as we do now? And, if so, will they treat the nuclear tomb as we might an Incan crypt? 

Might it be that by signposting the danger, we simply encourage their curiosity? Would warnings, even if we could guarantee their future intelligibility, serve to appropriately quell curiosity or dangerously arouse it? 

The questions only birth more questions. Given that Onkalo is so deeply buried, and its decommissioning would involve erasing all surface infrastructure, can it not be assumed that it would never be accidentally found? Or might some evidence of its existence survive? Physical evidence, or digital? Is it preposterous to think that any digital evidence of our civilisation today could survive so far into the future – when, between now and the safe decay of the waste, there is assumed to fall several new ice ages?

The designers answered at least one big question: they would, via ceramic tablets, leave warnings to our future selves about the site. Detailed warnings, in several languages unlikely to survive several epochs, have been suggested: “This place is not a place of honor … no highly esteemed dead is commemorated here … nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.”

Also proposed are simple pictographs that are assumed to have a universally intelligible quality: a triangle that includes the radioactive symbol, a skull and crossbones, an arrow pointing away from the danger, and a human stick-figure running in the direction it suggests. 

Given the spookiness of radioactivity – and the oddity of communicating its dangers across a chasm of time to unknowable descendants – the project invited some strange proposals. One was rendering the surface above the tomb conspicuously forbidding: lightning bolt sculptures amongst forests of barbed wire. (But optimistically assuming their material survival, how can we assume that their symbolic charge would survive, and not simply invite curiosity as cryptic anachronisms?) Another proposal was made for genetically engineering cats who change colour in the proximity of radiation – a kind of bizarre Geiger counter. 

In 2020, the American electronic music producer (and roboticist) Skytree, aka Evan Snyder, released a track called “Atomic Priest” written with rapper Jackson Whalan. Its lyrics were about precisely the problem of communicating danger forward through “deep time”:

This is for the humans living ten thousand years from now
With radioactive capsules, thousands of feet underground
Grabbin’ the mic to warn you of these hazardous sites
For those who lack in the sight in the black of the night
The least good that we could do is form an Atomic Priesthood
To keep the future species from going where no one should
We’ve buried the mistakes of past nuclear waste
Hidden underground for future races to face
It’s our task to leave signs for civilization to trace
But who’s to say what language these generations will embrace? 

The American-Hungarian linguist Thomas Sebeok minted the term “atomic priesthood” in the early 1980s. Sebeok thought that, given that radioactivity of our waste would outlive current languages (and God knows what else), the trick to communicating our warnings about it lay in folklore. Sebeok had been commissioned by the US Department of Energy to this end. In 1980, the department had established the “Human Interference Task Force”, which was asked to “investigate the problems connected with the post-closure, final marking of a filled nuclear waste repository. The task of the HITF is to devise a method of warning future generations not to mine or drill at that site unless they are aware of the consequences of their actions.”

In 1984, Sebeok submitted his report. It was called “Communication Measures to Bridge Ten Millenia”. Semiotics were everything here, Sebeok wrote, given its relevance to “the problems of human interference and message exchanges involving long periods of time, over which spoken and written languages are sure to decay to the point of incomprehensibility, making it necessary to utilize a perspective that goes well beyond linguistics”.

Here, then, is the luscious strangeness of nuclear semiotics – a field that overlaps with our formal considerations of communicating with extraterrestrial intelligence, but which seems even stranger to me given that the aliens in this case are our future selves. 

Sebeok suggested that the best way to ensure the survival of our warnings deep into the future was through mythology – the enactment of annual rituals and the ratification of legends that were upheld by an “atomic priesthood”. The stories would alter over time, but perhaps the core desire of the transmission – to effectively warn off future excavators – would survive. It wouldn’t matter if the sense of hazard had degraded into superstition, long untethered to science or the danger at hand. Only that a sense of fear and repulsion was maintained.

“A ritual annually renewed can be foreseen, with the legend retold year-by-year (with, presumably, slight variations),” Sebeok wrote in his government report. “The actual ‘truth’ would be entrusted exclusively to what we might call for dramatic emphasis an ‘atomic priesthood’, that is, a commission of knowledgeable physicists, experts in radiation sickness, anthropologists, linguists, psychologists, semioticians, and whatever additional expertise may be called for now and in the future. Membership in this ‘priesthood’ would be self-selective over time.

“The best mechanism for embarking upon a novel tradition … is at present unclear. Folklore specialists consulted have advised that they know of no precedent, nor could they think of a parallel situation, except the well-known, but ineffectual, curses associated with the burial sites (viz., pyramids) of some Egyptian Pharaohs … which did not deter greedy grave-robbers from digging for ‘hidden treasure’.”

Here, then, is the weird world of considering future ones. In a few weeks, Onkalo will become operational, accepting the copper-encased tubes of nuclear waste into its deep tombs of crystalline rock, where things remain more stable than the conditions half a kilometre above.

May 21, 2026 Posted by | Finland, Reference, wastes | Leave a comment

  Scotland the Dump

A long-term project we have had here at Bella, that is charting the toxic
legacy of the British State. Our map, Scotland the Dump, produced by the
wonderful Magnificent Octopus Illustration is being prepared for shipping
right now. The map details the weapons ranges, munitions dumps, biological
and chemical weapons dumps and nuclear waste scattered around Scotland.

Bella Caledonia 18th May 2026 https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2026/05/18/scotland-the-dump-4/

May 21, 2026 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Ed Milliband urged to give certainty on nuclear waste plan

by Gareth Cavanagh, Data Reporter, 13 May 26

WHITEHALL ministers have been urged not to ‘kick the can down the road’ and give Cumbria clarity on its future regarding the storage of the UK’s radioactive waste, as the nuclear sector awaits a Government decision on how to move forward with the plans.
https://www.whitehavennews.co.uk/news/26097757.ed-milliband-urged-give-certainty-nuclear-waste-plan/

May 17, 2026 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR)Re: Comments on the Integrated Tailored Impact StatementGuidelines for the Deep Geological Repository (DGR)For Canada’s Used Nuclear Fuel Project

There is going to be a public impact assessment process. Now is the time to debate the alternatives for the first time in public.

TO – Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC), May 10 2026, https://www.ccnr.org/IAAC_NWMO_Guidelines_CCNR_2026.pdf

The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) has reviewed the Draft
Integrated Tailored Impact Statement Guidelines for the Deep Geological Repository
(DGR) For Canada’s Used Nuclear Fuel, a Project of the Nuclear Waste Management
Organization (NWMO), and offers the following comments on those Draft Guidelines.


Stated Purpose of the Project
The stated purpose of the project is highly suspect because it is couched in selfcontradictory language. In its Initial Description of the project (p.v) the proponent states:

“Canada’s nuclear power plants have provided, and are expected to continue
providing, clean, reliable, and low-carbon energy for decades. However,
used nuclear fuel remains radioactive for a very long time and therefore
requires careful, permanent management to avoid placing a burden on future
generations.” Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO)
Initial Project Description
Deep Geological Repository (DGR) for Canada’s Used Nuclear Fuel Project
December 2025

It is ironic that nuclear power is described, in two consecutive sentences, as a “clean”
energy source, but one whose waste byproducts nevertheless remain dangerously
radioactive for such “a very long time”, that extraordinary measures are required to
“avoid placing a burden on future generations.”


It is a stunning example of cognitive dissonance; that is, “the mental discomfort or
psychological stress experienced when a person holds two or more contradictory
beliefs, values, or attitudes, or acts in a way that goes against them.” On the one hand, the proponent asserts that nuclear power is essentially a problem-free technology, and
on the other hand is ready to expend upwards of $26 billion dollars and 160 years of
effort to “solve” what is a glaringly obvious problem – long-lived highly toxic garbage.

The contradiction in terminology is not just psychologically uncomfortable, but also selfdefeating – for NWMO goes on to enunciate (p.v-vi) its goal, accompanied by a
declaration of the industry’s intentions that belie that goal altogether.

“If implemented, the project would:

  • provide a permanent and safe disposal solution for used nuclear fuel;
  • support Canada’s commitments to climate action and achieving net-zero by
    2050 by ensuring nuclear energy remains a sustainable and socially
    responsible energy source;
  • eliminate the need for future generations to actively manage used nuclear
    fuel, thereby reducing long-term environmental risks and advancing
    equity in managing Canada’s nuclear legacy.”

A careful reading shows that the “safe disposal solution” for used nuclear fuel is not
really intended to unburden future generations altogether by “eliminating the need to
actively manage used nuclear fuel”, but rather to perpetuate the hazards of keeping
used nuclear fuel at the surface by “ensuring nuclear energy remains … sustainable” as
an energy source. Thus the DGR is not designed to “get rid” of used fuel once and for
all, but rather to clear the decks of older waste and make room for newer waste. The
industry has no intentions of ever stopping the production of that toxic waste material.

This is no small matter. Already the Agency is dealing with three major proposals for
new nuclear plants: the 4800 megawatt Peace River Nuclear Project, the 4800
megawatt Bruce C project, and the 10,000 megawatt Wesleyville project, with more
projects to come…. Already there are over 20,000 megawatts of new nuclear electricity
production planned (including the Darlington New Build). If these new plants are all built,
the annual production of used nuclear fuel in Canada will triple. And that is not the end
of the story. Further nuclear expansion in other provinces and territories is also planned.
To maintain credibility, the Agency cannot turn a blind eye to these contradictions. The
NWMO project currently under review by the Agency is only designated to deal with the waste produced by Canada’s existing operational fleet of 17 CANDU reactors (plus the
waste produced by seven shut-down power reactors and a handful of research reactors
owned by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited). That is less than one-third of the volume
of high-level radioactive waste now foreseen. It is patently false that the currently
proposed DGR project will “eliminate the need for future generations to actively manage
used nuclear fuel.” The stated goal of the project is, in that sense, fraudulent

In fact, no one intends to move used nuclear fuel into a DGR until it has been out of the
reactor for at least 30 years. Consequently, there will always be thirty years worth of
unburied waste at the surface (either in wet storage or dry storage) for each and every
operating nuclear reactor, no matter how fast the older used fuel may be buried. Based
on existing plans in Canada, the quantity of unburied used nuclear fuel under thirty
years of age will be tripled – or more than tripled – and will keep growing thereafter.
This is hardly “eliminating” the need for future generations to manage used nuclear fuel.


As long as new nuclear reactors are being built and old ones are continuing to operate,
there is no possibility of achieving the visionary dream of all used fuel safely locked
away in underground chambers. Such a dream is a complete fantasy. It would only be
possible if nuclear power were phased out completely.

Instead, a picture emerges of an increasing number of reactors in operation, each with
its core full of intensely radioactive used fuel, and each surrounded by at least thirty
years worth of additional unburied used fuel in wet and dry storage. Even if all the older
fuel (more than 30 years old) were instantly transported over thousands of kilometres to
the site of the DGR, the remaining catastrophe potential at each reactor site would be
only marginally diminished.


Meanwhile additional risks of fuel damage and radioactive releases would arise in
countless locations across the country due to the vicissitudes of travel along some of
the most hazardous routes in Canada. Thousands of citizens – perhaps millions –would
encounter truckloads of high-level radioactive waste passing through their communities, along their highways, over their bridges, for many decades to come. Severe transport
accidents, even if very infrequent, could result in radioactive contamination of people
and the environment in locations far removed from the generating stations. The
combined efforts of moving spent fuel to a repository location while expanding the
production of nuclear electricity at many new sites may very well make the country less
safe than it would have been if traffic of spent fuel were precluded.

In its report on nuclear energy in Ontario entitled “A Race Against Time”, the Ontario
Royal Commission on Electric Power Panning concluded as follows:


“The hazards associated with transportation, in particular the possibility of
accidents and the threat of hijacking, are real possibilities. Hence, the
minimization of handling and transporting spent fuel is a desirable
objective. (p. 91)
We prefer on-site (i.e. generating station site) spent fuel storage to a
centralized facility. We believe that a central facility would presuppose
the reprocessing of spent fuel; it would also involve more transportation
and social and environmental problems. (p. 95)
Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning
A Race Against Time, 1978

CCNR believes that the Guidelines should include an entire section on transportation –
including (a) routine gamma and neutron exposures (i.e. to those in vehicles following a
transport, to those passing the transport in the opposite direction, to those being
repeatedly exposed along the route, to those irradiated during stops), (b) container
designs and testing of same, (c) severe accident scenarios (fires of greater intensity and
duration than those tested for, drops of greater distances and impacts, sidewise
collisions that might bypass impact limiters, et cetera), and (d) emergency measures
planning and the role of first responders.


Alternatives to the Project

The Impact Assessment Act clearly states that the Agency “must” consider “alternatives to the project,” as well as alternative means of carrying out the project. However on page 9 of the Draft Guidelines, we read

“In the Initial Project Description, the proponent described the ‘alternatives to’
the project that are technically and economically feasible to meet the need for
the project and achieve its purpose. This analysis was carried out through
their Choosing a Way Forward study process pursuant to the Nuclear Fuel
Waste Act. IAAC and the CNSC determined that this information is sufficient
and no additional information is required in the Impact Statement related to
‘alternatives to’.”

CCNR strongly disagrees with this determination. A great many Canadians are unaware
of the fact that there is an alternative to the proposed DGR project that is economically
and technically feasible, and that does not involve moving used nuclear fuel off-site. It is
simply called: continued storage at reactor sites. The nuclear industry agrees that this
method is safe and can be continued for centuries without undue difficulty, provided that
the wastes are repackaged when necessary.

Read more: Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR)Re: Comments on the Integrated Tailored Impact StatementGuidelines for the Deep Geological Repository (DGR)For Canada’s Used Nuclear Fuel Project

When NWMO published “Choosing A Way Forward”, four options were laid out. The
Government of Canada decided to choose the fourth option – the DGR option,
rebranded as “Adaptive Phased Management”. But there was no public process by
which the pros and cons of the “reactor-site storage” alternative could be discussed.
The Government of Canada did not take the opportunity to solicit other perspectives. At
that time CCNR published a critical commentary on “Choosing a Way Forward”, entitled
“Following the Path Backward” ( http://www.ccnr.org/follow_path_back.pdf ). However there
was no public forum or avenue by which any non-industry point of view could be heard.
There was simply no mechanism for dissenting voices to be weighed in the balance.

There is going to be a public impact assessment process. Now is the time to debate the
alternatives for the first time in public. CCNR believes that the Agency has a duty not to
simply accept the proponent’s point of view on the alternatives, even though the
Government has indicated its preference for the DGR approach. According to the IAA
law, any alternative to the project that is technically and economically feasible “must” be
properly addressed during the Impact Assessment process. Politics does not enter into
it. Accordingly, CCNR believes there must be a section in the Guidelines specifically
addressing the “reactor-site storage” alternative to the proposed DGR,

Some may argue that reactor-site storage is not an acceptable practice for a century or
more, because of the possibility of violent external events (airplane crashes, military
attacks), extreme weather events (tsunamis, earthquakes), or societal disintegration
(anarchy, revolution). But if those are legitimate concerns, why are we planning to build
more nuclear reactors? With new reactors operating, there is bound to be on-site
storage of at least thirty years worth of used nuclear fuel, none of which can be put
underground quickly. Continued onsite storage is definitely an alternative.

Some may argue – and indeed NWMO does argue – that we have to think of future
generations, not just for a few centuries, but for many thousands of years into the future.
But in that case there is no urgent need for the DGR right now. As long as we are intent
on expanding the production of nuclear waste, would it not make more sense to wait
until we decide to wind down the nuclear enterprise altogether at some future date?
That way we can deal with all the waste at once instead of maintaining regiments of
high-level waste here, there, and everywhere, with more on the highways every day.

At any rate, if concern for far-future civilizations is NWMO’s concern, why is there no
discussion of far-future civilizations in NWMO’s Project Description? Indeed, how are
we to communicate with far-future civilizations, when we don’t even know what
languages they will be speaking? If we choose to tell them nothing, what will prevent
them from digging up the buried waste, perhaps without them realizing what it is? Will
they imagine it is buried treasure? It will surely be clear that somebody did a gigantic
excavation in the remote past. What could it be? On the other hand, if we leave a
marker saying “Danger, Do Not Dig Here”, I can imagine some future archaeologist
rubbing his hands with glee and saying, “Folks, this looks interesting; let’s dig here!”.

CCNR recommends that there should be a section in the Guidelines dealing with the
question of communicating with future generations, along with what information we
should be communicating. Do we not have an obligation to impart to future generations
the important facts about the radioactive legacy we are leaving them?


“…The Radioactive Waste Management Committee (RWMC) of the OECD
NEA (Nuclear Energy Agency) launched an initiative ion the “Preservation of
Records, Knowledge and Memory”, hereafter “RK&M Initiative” that ran from
March 2011 to April 2018. Twenty-one organisations from 14 countries,
representing implementing agencies, regulators, policy makers, R&D
institutions, and international ad archiving agencies, plus the IAEA
(International Atomic Energy Agency), contributed to the work.”
Stephan Hotzel, GRS and Chair of the RK&M Initiative
Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD)

Of course this is assuming that the DGR does not turn out to be a colossal mistake, like
the Asse-2 salt mine in Germany. It was used as a deep underground nuclear waste
repository for low and intermediate-level waste for decades until persistent leakage of
radioactive poisons into groundwater led the German government to order the spending
of over $5 billion (equivalent) to remove the radioactive waste from the repository – a
task that will take at least 30 years, a task that is ongoing today.

Alternative Means


The Impact Assessment Act requires the Agency to consider alternative means of
carrying out a proposed project. It seems clear that the greatest danger of experiencing
radioactive releases from used nuclear fuel comes about through the handling or
manipulation of individual fuel bundles that are damaged in some way – small cracks or
pin holes, for example. In general, the less handling of the fuel, the better.


According to NWMO’s current plans for the DGR, spent fuel will be transported to the
site of the DGR where they will then be repackaged prior to emplacement in the
repository. Repackaging entails removing the fuel bundles from the transport containers
and repackaging them in a copper-coated steel burial container.

CCNR recommends that if the DGR Project is given the go-ahead, this final
repackaging step be eliminated, thereby putting less strain on the host community. This
can be accomplished by repackaging the used fuel into burial containers before
shipping them to the DGR site. In this way the “willing host community” and the
neighbouring environment will be better protected from inadvertent radioactive releases
caused by handling damaged fuel bundles. The pre-packaged burial containers can be
lowered into the DGR without ever having to open them up, greatly reducing the
chances of fugitive emissions.

May 16, 2026 Posted by | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

Plutonium Pit Bomb Production:  the Beginning of the End

The abandoned MOX plant at Savannah River 32 years behind schedule and $10 billion over budget, is 70% complete. Its conversion to the Savannah River Plutonium Pit Facility is already years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Scheduled to open this year, it now is slated to make its first pit in 2035. Savannah River Site remains one of the most polluted places in the U.S. and is near the top of the EPA’s hazardous sites.

Whether the plutonium pit production, costing tens of billions of dollars, is even necessary, though required by Congressional statute, is contentious. NNSA’s own studies indicate that the thousands of pits stored at Pantex are viable for at least another 100 years. One study by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory found the pits in the strategic security stockpile would be reliable for 150 years. Other classified studies about the dependability of existing plutonium pits could demonstrate the same result, and should be released.

Mark Muhich, May 8, 2026, https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/05/08/plutonium-pit-bomb-production-the-beginning-of-the-end/

One portion of a gargantuan plan to modernize the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal, costing $1.5 trillion over the next twenty years, has been opened for public scrutiny and comment beginning this week.

Thanks to years-long legal challenges by environmental and community groups in California, New Mexico and South Carolina, the National Nuclear Security Administration, NNSA, was ordered by a federal district court to reveal plans for the manufacture of plutonium “pits” at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Citing the National Environmental Protection Act,1969, U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis, South Carolina, found that NNSA had ignored NEPA statutes, and required the Department of Energy, and its semi-autonomous nuclear weapons bureau, National Nuclear Security Administration, NNSA, to produce a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, PEIS, that details the manufacture, transport and waste deposition associated with plutonium pit production in Aiken, S.C. and Los Alamos, N.M.

Plutonium pits are the core of a thermonuclear weapon (hydrogen bomb). Tens of thousands of pits were manufactured during the Cold War. Pit production was concentrated almost entirely at Rocky Flats, Colorado, near Denver. The FBI raided Rocky Flats in 1989, after numerous fires, accidental plutonium releases, and whistleblower reports of dangerous working conditions at the plant. Rockwell International, the general Contractor at Rocky Flats, settled criminal charges of environmental violations for $18. 5 million (less than the bonuses it received from the government) and closed the plant in 1991. Rocky Flats was declared a Superfund site, and after costly remediation was converted into a national wildlife sanctuary. Some of the most polluted sections of Rocky Flats remain radioactive and will be sequestered forever. Communities near Rocky Flats received $375 million in compensation for increased incidents of cancer. The U.S. has manufactured very few plutonium pits since Rocky Flats closed.

Congress mandated renewed production of plutonium pits in 2015 with funding from the Defense Authorization Act. Lawmakers required the manufacture of 30 pits by this year (2026) and 80 pits per year by 2030, an entirely fanciful schedule. During the Cold War, Savannah River Site had produced plutonium but never pits, and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), produces up to ten pits per year for research purposes, but has never produced pits approaching the Congressionally mandated 30 pits per year. Due to frequent accidents and safety violations, LANL has in some years produced zero pits.

NNSA’s Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement describes the intricate sequence for producing new pits for new nuclear weapons. Existing plutonium pits, around 12,000 plutonium pits, are stored at the Pantex facility in Amarillo, TX, and will be driven in specialized semi-trucks across the country on public highways to LANL and SRS. Once secured at these facilities, any oxidized impurities from aging will be removed using hot sulfuric acid and other agents. The pits are then melted, molded into spheres and machined to extremely precise dimensions. Large volumes of transuranic wastes are produced in the pit production process. Tons of transuranic wastes will be transported over public highways to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, N.M. Radioactive waste from SRS will pass through Atlanta and follow I-20 and I-10 to the WIPP facility.

WIPP is the only facility designed to accept and store transuranic waste from nuclear weapons production. However, the New Mexico Environment Department only permitted WIPP to accept “legacy” transuranic waste from LANL, originating from the first Manhattan Project, 1942-45. NMED has not yet agreed to permit increased volumes of waste at WIPP. Plutonium waste could be stored on site at Los Alamos and Savannah River, though this would generate an entirely new set of environmental problems.

Mandated by the Defense Authorization Act of 2015, NNSA is required to produce 30 plutonium pits by this year, and 80 pits per year by 2030. SRS, slated to fabricate 50 pits per year, has never made a plutonium pit. New buildings to house the pit production in South Carolina “repurposed” a defunct mixed oxide plant. The MOX plant was designed to downblend plutonium pits from nuclear weapons decommissioned per the agreement between the U.S. and Russia to reduce their nearly 100 tons of surplus weapons-grade plutonium. While the Russians constructed and operated their MOX plant, the MOX plant at Savannah River experienced massive cost overruns and decades of delays. Putin suspended the agreement in 2016, blaming non-compliance on the part of the U.S.

The abandoned MOX plant at Savannah River 32 years behind schedule and $10 billion over budget, is 70% complete. Its conversion to the Savannah River Plutonium Pit Facility is already years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Scheduled to open this year, it now is slated to make its first pit in 2035. Savannah River Site remains one of the most polluted places in the U.S. and is near the top of the EPA’s hazardous sites.

Robert Oppenheimer selected Los Alamos for the design and construction of the first fission atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the decade since, LANL’s research and development of plutonium pits has created thousands of massive transuranic waste dumps on site. Plutonium has leaked into groundwater and has crossed canyons, contaminating native communities like the adjacent San Ildefonso and more distant pueblos. Plutonium is one of the most carcinogenic materials on Earth and has a half-life of 27,000 years.

LANL has never produced 30 pits per year, as mandated by Congress. Between 2007 and 2011, LANL produced 31 pits in total. Selected for its isolation and inaccessibility, LANL has chronic difficulties recruiting and retaining workers. LANL has experienced serious fires and accidents, and has been fined $16 million by the New Mexico Environment Department for neglecting the “legacy” wastes stored on site.

Whether the plutonium pit production, costing tens of billions of dollars, is even necessary, though required by Congressional statute, is contentious. NNSA’s own studies indicate that the thousands of pits stored at Pantex are viable for at least another 100 years. One study by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory found the pits in the strategic security stockpile would be reliable for 150 years. Other classified studies about the dependability of existing plutonium pits could demonstrate the same result, and should be released.

The new plutonium pits proposed in NNSA’s Environmental Impact Statement are designed for entirely new thermonuclear weapons. The W87-1 warhead will arm the new Sentinel missile system, replacing the aging fleet of Minuteman III intercontinental missiles. The Sentinel program is years behind schedule and hundreds of billions of dollars over budget. Cost estimates for the 50 years of Sentinel deployment are over $300 billion.

Ironically, while the NEPA plutonium pit program is being presented to the public this week, the Eleventh Review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is ongoing at the United Nations in New York. The NPT was first ratified by 192 countries in 1970, including the U.S. The NPT is the only remaining international nuclear treaty. It calls for the right for countries to peacefully develop nuclear power reactors, and stipulates that nuclear-armed states are obligated to reduce and eventually eliminate their nuclear weapons arsenals.

NNSA’s Draft PEIS describes new plutonium pit production to be “consistent with the NPT while maintaining nuclear weapons competencies and capabilities at the weapons laboratories.”(p.1-6). The glaring dichotomy if this determination is refuted by the International Court of Justice, finding in 1996 that signatories to the NPT must adhere to

The legal import of [the NPT Article VI] obligation… goes beyond that of a mere obligation of conduct; the obligation involved here is an obligation to achieve a precise result – nuclear disarmament in all its aspects – by adopting a particular course of conduct, namely, the pursuit of negotiations on the matter in good faith.” [Para. 99]

NNSA violated the NEPA requirements to address the environmental damage of federally funded projects. The public now has an opportunity to submit comments to the NNSA until July. In particular, the plutonium pit fabrication for new nuclear weapons contravenes the Non-Proliferation Treaty despite what the draft PEIS asserts, per the decision by the ICJ.

Submit comment by email to  NEPA-SRS@srs.gov

May 14, 2026 Posted by | - plutonium, weapons and war | Leave a comment

A small northern Ontario town refused radioactive waste. It’s gone to Sarnia instead

Decades-old mine tailings in Nipissing First Nation sparked outrage after the province tried to move the material to another community without consultation, but it has quietly moved them again

the Narwhal By Leah Borts-Kuperman (Local Journalism Initiative Reporter), May 6, 2026

Summary

  • The Ontario government intended to move radioactive waste from the shore of Lake Nipissing to a former mine site outside Sudbury, Ont.
  • A lack of consultation around the new location led to strong local opposition, and delayed the remediation project conducted by Nipissing First Nation.
  • The waste has now been moved to a disposal site outside Sarnia, Ont., and Aamjiwnaang First Nation, where emissions from the industrial area known as Chemical Valley have affected local air quality.

For decades, radioactive waste sat near the shore of Lake Nipissing. It looked like an innocuous pile of gravel in what was otherwise a stretch of forest. People began using it to backfill lots, fill spaces under decks and build fire pits. In the 1970s and ’80s, Nipissing First Nation began using it to build roads. 

It wasn’t normal gravel, though. It was mine tailings, containing the metal niobium, left there when the Nova Beaucage mine shuttered in 1956 after just seven months of operation. 

“The company just walked away and left it with no remediation at all,” Geneviève Couchie, business operations manager at Nipissing First Nation, said. Couchie led a project to clean up the tailings, which first started in 2019. After being interrupted by COVID-19 shutdowns, the remediation resumed in spring 2024 and lasted almost two years.

In the meantime, Couchie told The Narwhal, she fielded concerns about groundwater and lake contamination from residents living close to the site or to a nearby property owned by Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation that also stored the low-level radioactive tailings. Couchie said she struggled to get satisfactory answers from government agencies.

“The workers wore hazmat suits, and I remember saying from the beginning, ‘How can I tell people they have nothing to worry about when these guys are in full on suits?’ They’re literally 20 feet from someone’s window,” Couchie said. The majority of the workers remediating the site were from the nation, and dressed in protective gear so as not to carry radioactive dust home on their clothes. 

The plan was to load the waste into trucks to be transported to a tailings management area at Agnew Lake, in Sudbury District. It is the decommissioned site of a former mine, near the Township of Nairn and Hyman, and about 150 kilometres from Nipissing First Nation. The nation first had to excavate nearly 50,000 metric tonnes of the radioactive material — enough to build the Statue of Liberty, twice.

But the project faced another unexpected delay. The province had attempted to relocate the waste without consulting the Nairn community, sparking public outcry. Locals organized public meetings to raise awareness and ultimately stop the transfer. 

Eventually, in July 2025 — after nearly a year of advocacy in Nairn, and delay for Nipissing First Nation — the province capitulated, finding another place for the waste to go. This was welcome news for Nipissing First Nation, which is now hoping to transform the scarred land into a lakeside green space for the community to enjoy after years of worry.

“We just wanted to see this material moved off [Nipissing First Nation] lands, and so it was an unexpected disappointment that things were delayed like they were,” Couchie said. “We were pleased that they did end up finding another disposal site.”

“But,” Couchie said, it was “eye opening as well, that there was only one other facility in Ontario that was prepared to accept this.”

That facility is close to another Indigenous community — Aamjiwnaang First Nation, in the Sarnia region, where emissions from refineries and petrochemical plants have earned the area the moniker “Chemical Valley.” 

Sarnia facility accepting radioactive waste from Nipissing

The new destination for the radioactive tailings is Clean Harbors, a hazardous waste facility in Corunna, Ont. — 645 kilometres from its original dumping ground. It’s close to both Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia, which have experienced persistent air quality issues related to nearby industry.

Clean Harbors is the only government-licensed hazardous waste management complex in Ontario, and is “uniquely positioned,” its website reads, to offer safe disposal of naturally occurring radioactive material like the niobium tailings. 

But the facility’s history is dotted with dust-ups over environmental safety. In 2013, neighbours of the Clean Harbors site won a civil lawsuit over the impact of the waste facility’s emissions on their health and daily lives.

In 2019 the company was fined $100,000 for discharging contaminated smoke after a filter cloth soaked with coolant, oils and metal particles caught fire.

When the province conducted a study on environmental stressors in the Sarnia area in 2023, it found that while the majority of the 870 reports from residents about industrial pollution were related to petrochemical industries and refineries, a significant minority — 219 — were “related to the waste incineration facility in the area (Clean Harbors).”

And in 2025, the Ministry of Environment fined Clean Harbors $100,000 for failing to comply with an equipment requirement for monitoring the excavation of a waste-holding basin. 

Clean Harbors did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions about these claims and findings.

In a section of their 2025 annual report on legal, environmental and regulatory compliance risks, Clean Harbors asserted: “We are now, and may in the future be, a defendant in lawsuits brought by parties alleging environmental damage, personal injury and/or property damage, which may result in our payment of significant amounts.”

Aamjiwnaang First Nation Chief Janelle Nahmabin told The Narwhal she had not received any information about the niobium waste that was trucked to Clean Harbors nearly a year ago. Other environmental groups The Narwhal reached out to, including Climate Action Sarnia-Lambton, had not heard of this waste transfer, either.

“The plan now has been executed in a very different way,” said Brennain Lloyd, project coordinator at Northwatch, a northeastern Ontario environmental advocacy group. “It’s moving the waste into the territory of another First Nation that is already heavily impacted by all of the industrial activities.”

‘Under a real nuclear shadow’: radioactive waste in northern Ontario

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://thenarwhal.ca/northern-ontario-radioactive-waste-sarnia/

May 10, 2026 Posted by | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

When will the new nuclear operators be required to put money aside for decommissioning?

4 May 26
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/ai-search/?q=When%20will%20the%20new%20nuclear%20operato

New nuclear operators are required by law to set aside funds for decommissioning and waste disposal from the very first day of a plant’s operation . Under the legal framework established by the government, energy firms must have a robust, funded decommissioning plan (FDP) in place and approved by the Secretary of State before they are even granted permission to begin construction on a new power station 

Key Funding Requirements

The regulations are designed to ensure that the financial risk of cleaning up nuclear sites remains with the developers rather than the taxpayer. According to the government’s Funded Decommissioning Programme Guidance:

  • Insolvency-Proof Funds: Operators must establish funds for clean-up that are administered independently of both the operator and the government to ensure they remain protected even if the company faces financial difficulties .
  • Full Cost Responsibility: Operators are responsible for the full costs of decommissioning and their share of waste disposal. Energy Secretary Charles Hendry stated that requiring a credible funding plan “is the best way to protect taxpayers from having to pick up the bill” .
  • Waste Transfer Pricing: To provide cost certainty for investors, the government proposed a cap on the waste transfer price for disposing of higher-activity waste in a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF). This cap was suggested to be set at a high level—roughly three times current cost estimates—with an additional risk fee charged to operators to compensate the government for accepting any residual risk .

Evolving Models: The Sizewell C Precedent

While the standard requirement involves operators building up independent funds, the government has introduced a new financial model for the Sizewell C project. As detailed in the written ministerial statement Sizewell C | Public on the hook for decommissioning costs of up to £12bn, this project utilises a Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model:

  • Consumer Funding: Decommissioning for Sizewell C will be funded via the RAB, which can include additional costs on consumer electricity bills .
  • Contingent Liabilities: While the RAB includes protections to minimise public risk, the government has acknowledged a potential exposure of up to £12bn in “remote circumstances” where a fund shortfall materialises .
  • Timeline: For modern plants like Sizewell C, decommissioning is expected to be a long-term process, potentially beginning toward the end of the 21st century and continuing until 2160 

The government continues to update these roadmaps to ensure they remain suitable for new technologies, such as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), while protecting future generations from bearing legacy costs .

You may be interested in learning more about the estimated total cost of the UK’s nuclear cleanup mission, the progress of the Geological Disposal Facility, or how the Regulated Asset Base model impacts consumer energy bills.

May 8, 2026 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Britain is creating a mountain of nuclear waste it doesn’t know what to do with.

The UK is expected to accrue enough waste to fill four Wembley Stadiums

Jonathan Leake, Energy Editor.  03 May 2026

For Ed Miliband, these were the announcements he’d been wanting
to make for years. Britain was entering a new “golden age of nuclear”,
he said earlier this year. The Energy Secretary pledged to strip away
planning delays, committing to building a generation of small modular
reactors (SMRs).

The industry was delighted. Rolls-Royce was signed up by
Miliband to build the first mini nuclear reactor on Anglesey in Wales.
Rivals began planning their own SMRs across Britain.

But amid the “golden
age” branding and political hype, one major issue remains embarrassingly
unresolved. If all the planned new reactors get built, as well as the giant
ones under construction at Hinkley in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk, the
UK will have to work out what to do with a mountain of radioactive waste.


Some 137,000 cubic metres of waste across dozens of UK sites – including at
Sellafield, Britain’s main nuclear waste facility on the Cumbrian coast –
awaits a ministerial decision on how best to dispose of it. A significant
portion of that waste – enough to fill the Royal Albert Hall 1.5 times over
– has been sitting around since the 1960s.In the next few decades, the
level of waste is expected to swell to 4.5 million cubic metres, a 30-fold
increase, as current and past nuclear stations are decommissioned. That’s
enough to fill four Wembley Stadiums.

For the hottest waste – about 750,000
cubic metres worth – the plan is to bury it in a geological repository.
This will probably be tunnelled into the seabed off Cumbria. The Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority admits it is a job that will take until at least
2130 and cost a fortune.

SMRs and the planned advanced modular reactors may
generate more waste for a given power output, experts claim. The physics is
simple. Smaller reactors have a proportionately larger surface area – so
more of the internal radiation escapes. As it strikes surrounding equipment
and buildings, they too will become highly radioactive. A recent research
paper co-authored by Prof Alison Macfarlane, the former chairman of the US
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, included a warning that SMRs “will
increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal by
factors of two to 30”.

Paul Dorfman, a Sussex University radiation expert
who advises the Ministry of Defence on dismantling nuclear submarines, says
this is not happening. He points out that the Department for Energy
Security and Net Zero (DESNZ)’s waste inventory omits waste that will arise
from the new Hinkley and Sizewell nuclear stations and from any SMRs that
are built.

Nuclear Waste Services, the government body charged with
building the repository, expects to start construction of a geological
disposal facility around 2040, beginning operations in the late 2050s and
operating through to 2200. Industry experts are sceptical of that
timetable. Insiders warn that this relies on Treasury approval for the
massive cost – which will always be a struggle. It is a cost that is only
likely to rise. In 2024, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority estimated
Britain’s nuclear waste clean-up operation would cost £199bn. Last year, it
increased that to £216bn. However, the real cost – once a century of
inflation is added, along with waste from a new generation of reactors –
will be far beyond that.

Telegraph 3rd May 2026, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/05/03/britain-creating-mountain-nuclear-waste-doesnt-know/

May 7, 2026 Posted by | wastes | Leave a comment

“We are waiting for Nuclear Waste Services to Come Up with Recommendations on Siting….”

Marianne Birkby, May 02, 2026, https://radiationfreelakeland.substack.com/p/we-are-waiting-for-nuclear-waste

“We are waiting for Nuclear Waste Services to Come Up with Recommendations on Siting….”

But meanwhile ‘we are already building new nuclear reactors which would produce even hotter nuclear wastes. Hot nuclear wastes are in the pipeline for which there is no “away” in blatant disregard of the Flowers Report: “There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exists to ensure the safe containment of long-lived highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future.”

Well it is safe to say that not only is there reasonable doubt that a method exists as no country has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that they can contain high level wastes indefinitely without repackaging – but there is also no where NO WHERE willing to be the ultimate nuclear guinea pig in the UK. Unless that is you count the four members of Copeland now Cumberland Council that said on behalf of the region, ‘hey yes let’s sacrifice the safety of Cumbria and her neighbours for nuclear £bungs’.

Good on Wera Hobhouse LibDem MP for Bath for asking the questions.. Click for video on facebook

May 5, 2026 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Inside the bizarre race to secure Earth’s nuclear tombs

Our generation must find a way to bury the waste very deep to avoid radioactive pollution or exposure to people and animals up to one million years into the future.”

With nuclear energy production increasing globally, the problem of what to do with the waste demands a solution. But where do you store something that stays dangerous for thousands of years?

Jheni Osman, Science Focus, May 1, 2026

Uniformed guards with holstered guns stand at the entrance and watch you lumber past. Ahead lies a wasteland of barren metal gantries, dormant chimney stacks and abandoned equipment.

You trudge towards the ruins of a large, derelict red-brick building. Your white hazmat suit and heavy steel-toe-capped boots make it difficult to walk. Your hands are encased in a double layer of gloves, your face protected by a particulate-filtering breathing mask. Not an inch of flesh is left exposed.

Peering into the building’s gloomy interior, the beam from your head torch picks out machinery and vats turned orange with rust. On a wall nearby, a yellow warning sign featuring a black circle flanked by three black blades reminds you of the danger lurking inside.

Apart from the sound of your own breathing behind your mask, the only thing you can hear is the crackling popcorn of your Geiger counter.

This is what entering the Prydniprovsky Chemical Plant is like for nuclear researchers, including Tom Scott, professor of materials at the University of Bristol and head of the UK Government’s Nuclear Threat Reduction Network.

Prydniprovsky was once a large Soviet materials and chemicals processing site on the outskirts of Kamianske in central Ukraine. Between 1948 and 1991, it processed uranium and thorium ore into concentrate, generating tens of millions of tonnes of low-level radioactive waste.

When the Soviet Union dissolved, Prydniprovsky was abandoned and fell into disrepair.

“The buildings are impressively awful and not for the faint-hearted,” says Scott. “As well as physical hazards, such as gaping holes in the floor, there’s no light or power. And obviously there are radiological hazards. Until very recently, the Ukrainian Government didn’t have a clue what had gone on at the site, so there were concerns about the high radiation levels and ground contamination.”…………………………………”

Scott and his team are known as industrial nuclear archaeologists, and they’re working to find, characterise and quantify the ‘legacy’ radioactive waste at sites around the world.

“High-level radioactive waste gives off a significant amount of radioactivity, sufficient to make humans sick if they get too close,” he says. “Some of this waste will be dangerously radioactive for very long periods of time, meaning that it needs to be physically kept away from people and the environment to ensure that no harm is caused.”

But finding legacy waste like this, which has been amassing since the 1940s, is only part of the challenge. Once it’s been found, it has to be isolated and stored long enough for it to no longer pose a threat. And that’s not easy.

“Currently we’re storing our high-level wastes above ground in secure, shielded facilities,” Scott says. “Such facilities need to be replaced every so often because buildings and concrete structures can’t last indefinitely.”

Safely storing the nuclear waste that already exists is only the start of the problem, however. With the world moving away from fossil fuels towards low-carbon alternatives, nuclear energy production is set to increase, which means more waste is going to be produced – a lot more……………………………………………………

Safe spaces

In the UK, most nuclear waste is currently sent to Sellafield, a sprawling site in Cumbria, in the north-west of England, with about 11,000 employees, its own road and railway network, a special laundry service for contaminated clothes and a dedicated, armed police force (the Civil Nuclear Constabulary).

Sellafield processes and stores more radioactive waste than anywhere in the world.

But more hazardous material is on the way, much of which will come from the new nuclear power station being built at Hinckley Point in Somerset. To keep pace, experts have been hunting for other, much stranger, disposal solutions.

t’s a challenge for nuclear agencies all around the world. All sorts of proposals have been put forward, including some bizarre ideas like firing nuclear waste into space. (The potential risk of a launch failure showering the planet with nuclear debris has silenced that proposal’s supporters.)

So far, the most plausible solution is putting the waste in special containers and storing them 200–1,000m (660–3,280ft) underground in geological disposal facilities (GDFs). Eventually, these GDFs would be closed and sealed shut to avoid any human intrusion.

These ‘nuclear tombs’ are the safest, most secure option for the long-term and minimise the burden on future generations.

“In the UK, around 90 per cent of the volume of our legacy waste can be disposed of at surface facilities, but there’s about 10 per cent that we don’t currently have a disposal facility for. The solution is internationally accepted as being GDFs,” says Dr Robert Winsley, design authority lead at the UK’s Nuclear Waste Services.

“We estimate that about 90 per cent of the radioactive material in our inventory will decay in the first 1,000 years or so. But a portion of that inventory will remain hazardous for much longer – tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years.

“GDFs use engineered barriers to work alongside the natural barrier of stable rock. This multi-barrier approach isolates and contains waste, ensuring no radioactivity ever comes back to the surface in levels that could do harm.”

But how do you keep that radioactivity in the ground? Radioactive waste is typically classified as either low-, intermediate- or high-level waste………………………………………………………………………………..

Rock solid

The hunt is also on to find facilities with bedrock that can withstand events such as wars and natural disasters (‘short-term challenges’, geologically speaking). Sites that won’t change dramatically over the millennia needed for nuclear waste to no longer pose a risk.

“A misconception is that we’re looking for an environment that doesn’t change, but the reality is the planet does change, very slowly,” says Stuart Haszeldine, professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh.

“Our generation must find a way to bury the waste very deep to avoid radioactive pollution or exposure to people and animals up to one million years into the future.”

To achieve this, the site ideally needs to be below sea level. If it’s above sea level, rainwater seeping down through fractures in the rock around the site might become radioactive and eventually find its way to the sea.

When this radioactive freshwater meets the denser saltwater, it’ll float upwards, posing a risk to anything in the water above.

Another challenge is predicting future glaciations, which happen roughly once every 100,000 years. During such a period, the sort of glaciers that cut the valleys in today’s landscape could form again, gouging new troughs in the bedrock that might breach an underground disposal facility.

“Accurate and reliable future predictions depend on how well you understand the past,” says Haszeldine.


“Typically, repository safety assessments cover a one-million-year timeframe, and regulations require a GDF site to cause fewer than one human death in a million for the next million years. Exploration doesn’t search for a single best site to retain radioactive waste, but one that’s good enough to fulfil these regulations.”

Hiding places……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Hide and seek

But even after you’ve found a suitable site and buried the radioactive material safely inside it, you still need to warn future generations about what’s hidden inside.

The trouble is, even if humans are still around in a million years’ time, there’s no guarantee the languages our ancestors speak, or the symbols they use, will be anything like those of today…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/inside-the-bizarre-race-to-secure-earths-nuclear-tombs

May 4, 2026 Posted by | Ukraine, wastes | Leave a comment

Where are the AUKUS nuclear waste costings (let alone the dump sites)?

Australian Submarine Agency ASA is looking after a $368B project. And the Agency is in a mess.

by Rex Patrick | Apr 20, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/where-are-the-aukus-nuclear-waste-costings-let-alone-the-dump-sites/

Defence is supposed to provide ‘cradle to grave’ costings for proposed capability before a procurement is approved. That doesn’t seem to have happened for AUKUS nuclear waste storage and disposal. Transparency Warrior Rex Patrick is pursuing answers.

A simple request

Imagine for a moment that you were the defence minister, and knowing that all defence capabilities must be costed from cradle to grave, you asked the Australian Submarine Agency for the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS.

You’d expect that it might take a day or two to get the message to Defence and to get a response back to the ministerial wing of Parliament House.

In July 2025 MWM requested access under Freedom of Information laws to the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS. The Agency did not answer the FOI request and its lack of response was referred to the Information Commissioner.

The Information Commissioner is trying to encourage the ASA to engage in a little bit of transparency. But … the Agency just can’t find a latest costing.

We’re disorganised

In a response to an engagement with MWM, the Agency has recently advised:

Preliminary searches have been carried out within one branch of one division of the ASA to identify documents falling within the scope of your request. That branch has advised that approximately 3,000 documents are potentially in scope. They would require manual examination to determine whether they contain information relating to the scope of your request. The documents within this set vary significantly in length and format and may comprise multiple pages requiring individual review.

 Further, any cost information in relation to the scope of your request is likely to be dispersed across multiple documents and along timeframes, may appear in differing levels of detail, and may not be directly comparable. As a result, identifying which documents contain relevant cost information would require extensive searching, detailed examination, contextual analysis, and judgment.

Quite unbelievable!

Or is it unbelievable?

ASA is looking after a $368B project. And the Agency is in a mess.

In November 2024 the Government asked Boston Consulting Group to take a look at the organisational structure of the Australian Submarine Agency (ASA). A contract was signed for 2.7. million. In April 2025 it was amended to $7.4 million. Three months later it was amended again to a whopping $12.1 million.

In parallel the defence minister asked former Defence Secretary Dennis Richardson to undertake an urgent top-to-bottom review of the ASA amid serious concerns about how it was managing AUKUS.

None of that seems to have helped.

Budget up just to keep up

The Government’s National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program was released on the same day that ASA advised MWM that it had no idea where to find its AUKUS high level radioactive waste costs.

The Integrated Investment Proposal laid out the Government’s estimates of, amongst other programs, the AUKUS and Collins Class submarine costs for the coming decade.

The 53-to-63 billion dollar AUKUS budget published in 2024 has grown to 71-to-96 billion (a change of 52% for the upper band). The 4-to-5 billion dollar Collins Submarine upgrade costs has grown to 8-to-11 billion dollar (change of 120% for the upper band).

Any thought that the Government is increasing the Defence budget to expand the Defence Force’s capabilities is illusory. The increase will struggle just to deal with cost blow outs.

Or implausible?

The numbers associated with the very long term disposal of AUKUS nuclear waste will be big. If the Minister asked for the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS he’d get it almost instantly.

“The estimate must exist. “

The approach taken by the ASA in responding to MWM’s request reminds me of a teenager trying hid a bad school report from their parents. The kid simply doesn’t realise that mum and dad will find out eventually.

MWM is not about to give up.

Of course, there is a small possibility that we are wrong and there is no estimate. Maybe the Minister has told the ASA he won’t ask for one and they shouldn’t generate one.

I guess we’ll find out.

April 24, 2026 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, wastes | Leave a comment

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