The 2025 nuclear year in review: Back to the Future Atomic Age

Bulletin, By François Diaz-Maurin | December 25, 2025

“……………………………………………………………… In many ways, 2025 resembled Back to the Future, and not only because Donald Trump—whom the trilogy’s villain Biff is admittedly based on—returned to the White House in January. Less than one year into his second term, President Trump has exhibited Cold War-era thinking several times already.

One week after entering the presidency, Trump announced his plan for a new, comprehensive missile-defense system that his administration later called Golden Dome and claimed would be built in three years at a cost of no more than $175 billion. Many missile defense experts have pointed to the project’s technical and policy flaws and called it a fantasy that will add to a long-running US missile defense debacle. The fantasy started with President Ronald Reagan’s dream of building a missile shield—which he called the Strategic Defense Initiative and that detractors called “Star Wars”—after record Soviet nuclear deployments in—wait for it—1985. Experts warned that the Golden Dome proposal is self-defeating, as it will prompt US adversaries to build more maneuverable missiles and use more decoys, rendering any national defense ineffective.

A few days after announcing his missile defense effort, President Trump told reporters about his desire to engage with Russia and China on denuclearization efforts. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many,” he said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons, and China’s building nuclear weapons.” But New START, the only agreement constraining the number of strategic offensive weapons that the United States and Russia can deploy, is set to expire in less than two months. And as of writing, Moscow maintains that it hasn’t received any formal response.

Around the time of Trump’s denuclearization comments, his administration’s Department of Government Efficiency started firing new federal hires, including hundreds at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Energy Department agency responsible for the safety and security of the US nuclear arsenal. (Most of the NNSA employees fired were eventually rehired after a bipartisan uproar in Congress.) The NNSA and its network of national laboratories provide essential technical support to the State Department for nuclear arms control verification. In July, the Trump administration dissolved the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, which was responsible for policy, negotiation, and overall compliance reporting of arms control treaties.

In May, President Trump signed four executive orders on nuclear power to accelerate nuclear power plant construction in the United States and support new, smaller, and less-regulated reactor designs. One of the orders plans a “substantial reorganization” of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a plan three former chairs of the NRC say would threaten the independence of the agency, possibly undermining the safety requirements for nuclear regulation.

The same month, a brief skirmish started at the border between India and Pakistan, which seemed to quickly escalate, prompting President Trump to call for restraint from both sides. As a ceasefire agreement that Trump said he helped broker was being announced, reports suggested that, during the conflict, Pakistan’s Prime Minister had convened the National Command Authority, apparently in response to India’s targeting of Pakistani military bases. The National Command Authority is responsible for Pakistan’s nuclear policy and operational decision-making. (Pakistan’s defense minister later denied that the meeting ever happened.)

Then came the worst international security crisis of the year.

In June, two days after Trump said Iran rejected the US proposal for a nuclear deal that included a demand that it stop enriching uranium on Iranian soil, Israel attacked Iran, targeting military leaders, nuclear facilities, and nuclear scientists. About a week later, the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. While Trump touted the attack as “very successful,” the status of Iran’s nuclear program remained unclear after the attack, and later reports suggested that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium may not have been destroyed. Some experts warned before the attack that destroying Iran’s enrichment plants would not eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat and that a US action might spur Iran to covertly sprint toward a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible.

In July, in a surprising congressional twist, the House passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) reauthorization and expansion bill. As a result, communities affected by the 1945 Trinity nuclear test and uranium mining in areas of Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Colorado, the Navajo Nation and all of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, as well as downwinders in Guam exposed to fallout from the Pacific nuclear tests during the Cold War started receiving compensation for their radiation exposure this year. (These groups were not initially covered by RECA.)

As if the legacy of US nuclear testing wasn’t painful enough, President Trump suggested in October that the United States should return to nuclear testing, confusing experts who could not tell whether the president was referring to testing a nuclear delivery system (such as a missile) or testing an actual nuclear explosive device. Many experts had already explained how resuming nuclear explosive testing would be impractical and against US security interests.

There have been many other nuclear developments in 2025 that also pointed in the direction of more risk and more instability. But one stood out: In a shocking sign that shows how much the nuclear security landscape has been turned on its head, this past week, a member of Japan’s prime minister’s office who advises Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on national security told reporters that Japan “should possess nuclear weapons.” These remarks came just months after Japan commemorated the 80th anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Whether the world has already entered a new nuclear age marked by renewed arms racing is up for debate. But nuclear affairs have made a strong and undeniable comeback on the front pages of many newspapers this year—something unseen since the end of the Cold War. Even in Hollywood, film directors are daring to talk about nuclear risk once again with a plethora of new and upcoming releases, including this year’s much-remarked A House of Dynamite.

When it reconvenes in January, let’s hope the US administration comes back to the present and sets about a new start in nuclear arms control and diplomacy.

Of course, I couldn’t close this year-end review without mentioning the passing of way too many important figures from the nuclear nonproliferation and arms control community, including Bob Alvarez, Dick Garwin, Dan Hirsch, R. Rajaraman, and (late last year) Evgeny Velikhov. Each stood in their own way for the reduction of the risk from nuclear weapons and pushed for the diplomatic and science-based disarmament or arms control solutions that have been at the core of the Bulletin’s mission since 1945.

Here are five Bulletin nuclear stories that stood out in 2025—and that you should read…………………………………………………. https://thebulletin.org/2025/12/the-2025-nuclear-year-in-review-back-to-the-future-atomic-age/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=2025%20nuclear%20year%20in%20review&utm_campaign=20251225%20Thursday%20Newsletter%20%28Copy%29

December 29, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s Nuclear Obsession

Karl Grossman – Harvey Wasserman, December 24, 2025 , https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/24/trumps-nuclear-obsession/

The Trump family is now directly investing in atomic energy.  Its money-losing Truth Social company has become a part owner of a major fusion nuclear power project.

Among much more, the investments mean the Trump family stands to profit directly from White House attacks on wind, solar and other cheap, clean renewable energies which for decades have been driving fusion, fission and fossil fuels toward economic oblivion.

“A Trump-sponsored business is once again betting on an industry that the president has championed, further entwining his personal fortunes in sectors that his administration is both supporting and overseeing,” reported an article on the front page of the business section of the New York Times last week. “This one is in the nuclear power sector. TAE Technologies, which is developing fusion energy, said on Thursday that it planned to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group. President Trump is the largest shareholder of the money-losing social media and crypto investment firm that bears his name, and he will remain a major investor in the combined company.”

The headline of the piece: “Trump’s Push Into Nuclear Is Raising Questions.”

The primary asks have to do with economic conflicts of interest, and public safety.

“The deal, should it be completed,” the article continued, “would put Mr. Trump in competition with other energy companies over which his administration holds financial and regulatory sway. Already, the president has sought to gut safety oversight of nuclear power plants and lower thresholds for human radiation exposure.”

CNN reported: “Nuclear fusion companies are regulated by the federal government and will likely need Uncle Sam’s deep research and even deeper pockets to become commercially viable. The merger needs to be approved by federal regulators—some of whom were nominated by Trump.”

CNN quoted Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, as saying: “There is a clear conflict of interest here. Every other president since the Civil War has divested from business interests that would conflict with official duties. President Trump has done the opposite.” Painter is now a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School.

“Having the president and his family have a large stake in a particular energy source is very problematic,” said Peter A. Bradford, who previously served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency meant to oversee the nuclear industry in the United States, in the Times article.

“The Trump administration has sought to accelerate nuclear power technology—including fusion, which remains unproven,” Bradford said. “That support has come in the form of federal loans and grants, as well as executive orders directing the NRC to review and approve applications more quickly.”

Still, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement that “neither the president nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest.” And the Times piece continued, “a spokeswoman for Trump Media” said the company was “scrupulously following all applicable rules and regulations, and any hypothetical speculation about ethics violations is wholly unsupported by the facts.”

It went on that “Trump’s stake in Trump Media, recently valued at $1.6 billion, is held in a trust managed by Donald Trump Jr., his eldest son. Trump Media is the parent company of Truth Social, the struggling social-media platform. The merger would set Trump Media in a new strategic direction, while giving TAE a stock market listing as it continues to develop its nuclear fusion technology.”

The Guardian quoted the CEO of Trump Media, Devin Nunes, the arch-conservative former member of the House of Representatives from California and close to Trump, who is currently chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, saying Trump Media has “built un-cancellable infrastructure to secure free expression online for Americans. And now we’re taking a big step forward toward a revolutionary technology that will cement America’s global energy dominance for generations.” Nunes is the would be co-CEO of the merged company.

A current member of the US House, Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, said in a statement quoted in Politico that the deal raises “significant concerns” about conflicts of interest and avenues for potential corruption. “The President has consistently used both government powers and taxpayer money to benefit his own financial interests and those of his family and political allies. This merger will necessitate congressional oversight to ensure that the U.S. government and public funds are properly directed towards fusion research and development in ways that benefit the American people, as opposed to the Trump family and their corporate holdings.”

By federal law (the Price-Anderson Act of 1957) the US commercial atomic power industry has been shielded from liability in major accidents it might cause. The “Nuclear Clause” in every US homeowner’s insurance policy explicitly denies coverage for losses or damages caused, directly or indirectly, caused by a nuclear reactor accident.

As his company fuses with the atomic industry, Trump acquires a direct financial interest in gutting atomic oversight—which he has already been busy doing. In June Trump fired NRC Chairman Christopher T. Hanson. No other president has ever fired an NRC Commissioner.

. Earlier, more than 100 NRC staff were purged by Elon Musk’s DOGE operation. There has been a stream of Trump executive orders calling for a sharp reduction in radiation standards, expedited approval by the NRC of nuclear plant license applications, and a demand to quadruple nuke power in the United States—from the current 100 gigawatts to 400 gigawatts in 2050. Such a move would require huge federal subsidies and the virtual obliteration of safety regulations. Trump has essentially ordered the NRC to “rubber stamp” all requests from a nuclear industry in which he is now directly invested.

Trump’s Truth Social’s fusion ownership stake removes all doubt about any regulatory neutrality. No presently operating or proposed US atomic reactor can be considered certifiably safe.

Trump’s fusion investments are also bound to escalate Trump’s war against renewable energy and battery storage, the primary competitors facing the billionaire fossil/nuke army in which the Trump family is now formally enlisting. That membership blows to zero the credibility of any claim nuclear reactor backers might make that atomic energy can officially be considered safe.

December 28, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment