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/
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.
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/
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
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/
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.
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.
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.
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 Gentilly-1 Cemetery: A Radioactive Dump
- David vs. Goliath: A small local Indigenous community’s fight against a federal radioactive dump
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.
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
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/
1000s of nuclear bombs? Russia exits US nuke pact to reclaim 34 tons of plutonium
The pact required both nations to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium.
Kapil Kajal Oct 09, 2025 , https://interestingengineering.com/military/russia-dumps-us-nuclear-deal
ussia has officially pulled out of an important agreement with the United States regarding how to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium.
According to Russia’s state news agency TASS, the lower house of the Parliament passed a legislation on October 8 to officially denounce the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA).
The pact required both nations to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium, enough for thousands of nuclear warheads, by converting it into fuel for civilian power reactors.
Terminating nuclear pact
The deal, signed in 2000 and ratified in 2011, was designed to ensure that plutonium declared surplus for defense needs could never again be used for weapons.
However, Russia is no longer willing to follow its agreements with the United States regarding plutonium.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told lawmakers that the current situation makes it unacceptable to keep these obligations.
Ryabkov pointed out that Russia’s demands for restoring the deal have not been met. These demands include lifting US sanctions, reversing the Magnitsky Act, and reducing NATO’s military presence near Russia’s borders.
The Russian government explained to parliament that it is withdrawing from the deal due to “fundamental changes in circumstances,” including NATO expansion, US sanctions, and military support from Washington for Ukraine.
Although the agreement was technically in place, Russia stopped participating in 2016. It accused the US of not meeting its obligations and using the agreement for political gain.
The Kremlin at the time demanded concessions unrelated to the agreement, such as restrictions on NATO activities in Eastern Europe and the lifting of sanctions imposed after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
34 tons of plutonium
The termination of the PMDA means that the 34 tons of plutonium Russia had pledged to render unusable for weapons could now be reclassified as part of its strategic reserves.
The State Duma’s official statement described further commitments on the material as “inexpedient.”
The decision adds to the growing list of suspended or terminated arms control agreements between Moscow and Washington.
Russia has already withdrawn from the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, suspended its participation in New START, and halted cooperation under the Open Skies treaty.
The plutonium agreement was among the few remaining technical measures of nuclear risk reduction from the early 2000s.
While smaller in scale than New START, the PMDA was seen as a pragmatic step toward reducing stockpiles of weapons-usable material in both nations.
Tomahawk cruise missiles
The move comes as geopolitical tensions between the US and Russia continue to escalate over the war in Ukraine.
On the same day the withdrawal was announced, the Kremlin condemned Washington’s reported deliberations over providing Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kyiv.
“If the U.S. administration ultimately makes that decision, it will not only risk escalating the spiral of confrontation, but also inflict irreparable damage on Russian-US relations,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, according to TASS.
She added that Moscow was “closely monitoring” the situation and urged the US to exercise restraint
The United States has not yet commented on Russia’s decision to terminate the plutonium deal.
However, the move underscores the growing collapse of bilateral nuclear cooperation amid the deepest rift between Washington and Moscow in decades.
The developments also come as Bloomberg reported on September 30 that Russia remained the largest supplier of enriched uranium to the United States in 2024, providing about 20 percent of the fuel used in American nuclear reactors despite formal import restrictions.
US waivers still permit deliveries through 2028 for national energy security reasons.
As both countries move further away from long-standing nuclear agreements, experts warn that ending the PMDA shows a growing risk to global nuclear safety and a widening rift in US-Russia relations.
U.S. Dept. of Energy steps up plutonium pit manufacturing at Savannah River Site
The site is part of the nation’s effort of “re-establishing capabilities retired after the Cold War,” the national nuclear stockpile plan stated. And also, provide a home for another data center.
Jillian Magtoto, Savannah Morning News, 9 Oct 25,
Key Points
ENVIRONMENT
U.S. Dept. of Energy steps up plutonium pit manufacturing at Savannah River Site
The site is part of the nation’s effort of “re-establishing capabilities retired after the Cold War,” the national nuclear stockpile plan stated. And also, provide a home for another data center.
Jillian Magtoto, Savannah Morning News
- The Department of Energy is accelerating construction of the new facility, aiming to produce 50 plutonium pits annually by 2030.
- While production ramps up, concerns remain about existing radioactive waste and the diversion of funds from cleanup efforts.
More than two hours up the river from Savannah is a nuclear Superfund site, about the size of Augusta just across the border. Despite decades of cleanup, radionuclides still trickle from nearby streams to cow udders, and lurk in the tissues and bones of alligators, hogs, and deer, and the flesh of tadpoles and fish. In July, workers discovered a radioactive wasp hive at one of its hazardous waste tank farms. The site spanning three South Carolina counties is still active as the country’s only plant extracting and purifying tritium, a radioactive isotope that boosts the efficiency and explosivity of nuclear weapons.
But the Savannah River Site (SRS) is about to be re-awakened to produce plutonium pits, hollow bowling-ball sized spheres of plutonium at the core of warheads that causes the nuclear blast. Plutonium is a heavier metal that, according the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), can enter the bloodstream upon inhalation, resulting in lung scarring, disease, and cancer. It carries a half-life of about 24,000 years.
Last October, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) assumed primary responsibility of the SRS to produce 50 of the country’s 80 annual plutonium pits by 2030. The remaining 30 will be made in the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where plutonium pits were first created in the 1940s.
Over 80 years later, “NNSA is being asked to do more than at any time since the Manhattan Project,” stated NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby at the 2024 Nuclear Deterrence Summit. For SRS, the goal “is aggressive, complete construction by 2032 so that rate production can support the W93 schedule.” W93 is the newest and 93rd nuclear weapon design the U.S. has considered after a 30-year hiatus, planned for deployment by U.S. Navy submarines…………………………………………………………………………………………………
While plans are accelerating, “most of the public doesn’t even know what’s going on out there,” said Tom Clements, founder of his one-man watchdog website, Savannah River Site Watch, who has monitored the plant since the 1970s. “They don’t know they’re building the pit plant.” And likely, also a data center…………………………………………………………………………………………..
Plutonium’s pitfall
It’s one thing to stop plutonium production, but it’s an entire other affair to dispose it.
Because weapons-grade plutonium cannot be blended with other materials to render it unusable for weapons, Russia and the U.S. agreed it would instead be made into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel and irradiated in civil nuclear power reactors for electricity. For the U.S., that MOX facility would be housed at the SRS, which began construction in 2007.
But the promise was a far cry from what the DOE was able to do.
Technical issues, delays, and mismanagement reported by outlets like the Post & Courier ended its operations in 2018. In 2022, the MOX building contractor paid $10 million to the DOE for fraudulent invoices for nonexistent materials. If completed, SRS’ MOX facility would have been 32 years behind schedule and $13 billion over budget, according to the DOE.
Meanwhile, the state of South Carolina was growing wary of the tanks sitting on its soils. In 2014, the state sued the U.S. government and six years later, won the state’s largest single settlement of $600 million and the DOE’s commitment to remove all 9.5 metric tons of plutonium from the state by 2037. Until then, South Carolina has waived its right to bring any lawsuit against DOE for plutonium disposal.
So the DOE went with a cheaper and quicker alternative: diluting the plutonium with a plutonium powder into a “more secure” and less weapon-usable form—though the potential of reversibility led Russia to back out of the deal. SRS has undergone a flurry of expansion, automation, tank transport, and construction of mega-sized disposal units all to dilute the plutonium into a Superfund smoothie that gets vitrified into obsidian-like glass and shipped to a waste isolation pilot plant 2,000 feet underground in a New Mexico salt mine, according to SRS. It completed the first shipment in December 2023.
Still, radioactive byproduct remains in 35 million gallons of waste stored in roughly 43 of the original 51 underground carbon steel containers according to most recently published updates this January.
“These tanks have outlived their design lives, posing a threat to the environment,” stated a Savannah River National Laboratory webpage. “Some of the tanks have known leaks.”
A new mission swipes cleanup funds
From aging plutonium pits housed at the Pantex facility in Texas, the SRS will generate new plutonium pits at the SRS unit originally intended to retire weapons-grade plutonium…………………………………..
But as the site shoulders the new plan, remediation funds get pulled. When the DOE EM handed over primary responsibility of the site to the NNSA last year, $173 million were reallocated from cleanup to weapons activities and transition costs. And it seems some environmental processes fell though the cracks.
“They basically named SRS as the second [plutonium pit] plant site without doing an environmental analysis,” said Clements. “And that’s we got them for, violating the National Environmental Policy Act.”
In 2021, Clements, the Savannah River Site Watch and a few other plaintiffs sued the DOE and NNSA, resulting in a settlement that will play out over the next couple of years. Until the DOE conducts a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) examining the environmental impact of other approaches to pit production and reach a Record of Decision filed by July 17, 2027, the DOE will not introduce nuclear material into the SRPPF’s main processing building…………………………………. https://www.savannahnow.com/story/news/environment/2025/10/09/savannah-river-site-takes-on-an-enduring-mission-to-make-plutonium-pits-and-also-take-a-data-center/86442685007/
Holtec abandons nuclear waste project in New Mexico
by Energy News updated October 9, 2025, https://energynews.oedigital.com/energy-markets/2025/10/09/holtec-abandons-nuclear-waste-project-in-new-mexico
Holtec, a private nuclear power company, announced this week that it was abandoning a plan to store radioactive waste in New Mexico despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June which gave some hope for projects aiming at storing the material. The Supreme Court threw away a legal challenge in June by Texas, New Mexico, and some oil companies against the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing of nuclear storage projects in the drilling country. Some believed that this opened the door to temporary storage for these states.
New Mexico lawmakers and the Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham are opposed to storing nuclear waste on the site, even temporarily. They fear that without a permanent U.S. facility for nuclear waste, it will become a permanent solution.
Holtec announced in a Wednesday statement that it is leaving the HISTORE project in the Permian basin, near the oil hub Carlsbad. The statement said that the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance and Holtec had mutually agreed to cancel the agreement due to the unsustainable path for used fuel storage. This was reported first by Axios.
It’s been obvious for years that New Mexicans are opposed to spent fuel storage and disposition in the state. “We’re happy that Holtec finally acknowledged that reality,” Don Hancock, director at the Southwest Research and Information Center of Albuquerque for the nuclear waste safety programs.
Holtec’s Pat O’Brien, a spokesperson for the company, said that the company hoped to work with states that were willing to store the waste following outreach efforts by the U.S. Department of Energy which began during former President Joe Biden’s Administration.
O’Brien stated that Holtec believes communities in 15 to 20 different states are interested in hosting a potential storage facility.
The danger to human health makes it necessary to store nuclear waste for a long time. Nuclear power plants, both active and closed, store the waste.
After state legislators raised objections, the former Obama administration halted funding in 2010. (Reporting and editing by Paul Simao; Timothy Gardner)
German Nuclear Operator’s Insolvency Could Shift Dismantling Costs to Taxpayers
October 6, 2025, Full Story: Clean Energy Wire, Author: Benjamin Wehrmann, https://www.theenergymix.com/german-nuclear-operators-insolvency-could-shift-dismantling-costs-to-taxpayers/
The insolvency of an operator of a decommissioned nuclear power plant in Germany raises questions about the financial responsibilities for deconstructing the reactor and disposing of its radioactive materials.
HKG, the owner of the nuclear plant Hamm-Uentrop that was opened in 1983 and taken out of service only six years later, filed for insolvency at a court in western state North Rhine-Westphalia, reports Clean Energy Wire, citing the German business weekly WirtschaftsWoche.
The operating company, owned jointly by major energy company RWE and several local utilities, initially had demanded about 350 million euros from the federal and the state government to cover the costs for deconstruction and disposal, but failed to win a lawsuit it filed in 2024. A court in the city of Düsseldorf rejected HKG’s claim in June this year, which led the company to declare itself insolvent. “HKG faces an unchanged situation with unclear financing of the remaining deconstruction work,” said the company’s CEO, Volker Dannert. According to WirtschaftsWoche, the actual costs for dismantling the plant and storing the nuclear waste initially were gauged at 750 to one billion euros.
Co-owner company RWE said the HKG shareholders bear no legal responsibility to fund deconstruction works beyond payments they made in the past. HKG manager Dannert said that talks with the federal and the state government had remained inconclusive, which meant that “it is now a task for the responsible authorities at the federal level and in North Rhine-Westphalia to organize the further dismantling.”
The prototype Thorium-Cycle-High-Temperature-Reactor (THTR) in Hamm-Uentrop was decommissioned due to technical challenges after serving for about 16,500 hours. It was sealed in 1997 and will remain so until at least 2030 to let radioactive contamination diminish before deconstruction works can begin. The process of dismantling is expected to take about one decade.
Germany is in the process of dismantling its nuclear power plants after shutting down the remaining three reactors in 2023 as part of the country’s nuclear phase-out. Dismantling nuclear power stations and safely storing radioactive waste will cost Germany dozens of billions of euros, and take many decades.
In 2017, Germany’s four major nuclear plant operators—E.ON, EnBW, RWE and Vattenfall—handed money earmarked for nuclear waste disposal over to the country’s fund for nuclear waste management, passing all responsibilities to the state. In 2025, over half of the German environment ministry’s budget is spent on managing the country’s nuclear waste, including finding a location for a final nuclear repository.
This post was originally published by Berlin-based Clean Energy Wire.
1 This Month
23 April – WEBINAR – Why new nuclear reactors are the wrong tools for decarbonization Thursday, April 23 • 1 AM – 2 AM AEST
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
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