Trump should not threaten sanctions when he talks to Putin
It is clear to me that further US sanctions on Russia would kill stone dead any chance of a ceasefire in Ukraine at a time when Russia still has the upper hand.
Europe has neither the political capital nor the funds to maintain a losing war in Ukraine at enormous expense without massive domestic political blowback in their own countries.
Russia will keep fighting, Ukraine will lose all of the Donbass and Europe will pay the price
Ian Proud, May 18, 2025, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/trump-should-not-threaten-sanctions?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=163841246&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Trump should not threaten Putin with sanctions during their planned phone call on Monday 19 May. This would only lock in the fighting for the rest of the year and leave Europe on the hook for a massive bill and political disruption that it cannot afford.
In the run up to the Russia-Ukraine bilateral peace talks which finally took place in Istanbul last week, both the EU and the UK imposed new sanctions on Russia. On 9 May, as Russian commemorated victory Day, Britain imposed sanctions on Russia’s shadow fleet and the EU followed suit with its 17th package of Russia sanctions on 14 May, the day before the Istanbul talks were due to start. Both the UK and EU have threatened further sanctions should Russia not agree a full and unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine and, with Zelensky, have actively urged the US to follow suit, which it has not done, so far. However, the Americans have spoken increasingly about the possibility of massive new sanctions against Russia: this would be a huge mistake.
Sanctioning a country before peace talks have already started, or while they are still going on, is already a bad look. Very clearly, the Ukrainians, Europeans and British hope that new sanctions will apply such pressure on Russia that it agrees to terms that are more favourable to the Ukrainian side. I.e. that Ukraine does not have to go back to the Istanbul 1 commitment to adopt permanently neutral status. The western mainstream press has been carpet bombing their intellectually degraded readers with the latest press line that Ukraine should not have to go back to the Istanbul 1 text as a starting point for talks. This is unrealistic.
But, in any case, there’s a problem. For this strategy to be effective, the sanctions have to work.
As I’ve pointed out before, sanctions against Russian have had limited impact, not just since 2022, but since 2014. Nothing about the glidepath of sanctions since February 2014 suggests that new sanctions will work now.
This latest round of UK and EU sanctions aimed to apply more pressure on enforcement of the G7 oil price cap of $60 which was first imposed in December 2022. Since the war started, that policy has failed.
Between 2021 and 2024, total volumes of Russian oil exported fell by just 0.2 million barrels per day, or 2.6%. After a bumper year for tax receipts in 2022 caused by Russian tumbling rouble and skyrocketing energy prices, Russia pulled in current account surpluses of $49.4bn and $62.3bn in 2023 and 2024. This was on the back of still strong goods exports of $425bn and $433bn respectively.
There are several reasons why the oil price cap didn’t work, the biggest being that Russia diverted 3 million barrels per day, around 39.5% of total oil exports to India (1.9 mbd), Türkiye (0.6 mbd) and China (0.5 mbd). Türkiye and India boosted exports of refined fuels to Europe providing a backdoor route for Russian oil to Europe. The second reason the oil price cap didn’t work is the near ten month time lag between war starting and the limit being imposed, which gave Russia space to readjust before punitive measure had been imposed. During this period, oil prices also dropped sharply from the high of $120 in the summer of 2022, to around $80 when the measure was imposed: the G7 missed the boat to impose maximum damage; this reinforces the point I make all the time that coalitions cannot act with speed and decisiveness.
Today, the Russian Urals oil price is below the $60 G7 cap meaning that any registered shipping company can transport it without penalty, which renders the British and European sanctions as pointless in any case.
Let’s be clear, western nations imposing sanctions against Russia that don’t work is not a new phenomena. As I have pointed out many times before, the vast majority (92%) of people that the UK has imposed assets freezes and travel bans upon have never held assets in the UK nor travelled here. For companies, the figure is just 23. The same, I am sure, is true of EU and US sanctions, which cover largely the same cast list of characters and companies, as we all share and compare the same lists of possible designations. Financial sector sanctions prompted a massive readjustment of Russia’s financial sector. Energy and dual use sanctions drove self-sufficiency in technology production, through Rosnet, Gazprom and RosTec: i.e. these companies invested more in R&D on component production while sourcing components from alternative markets, in particular China.
At well over 20,000 sanctions imposed so far, Russia’s economy has proved remarkably robust and its key export sectors still find ways to deliver similar volumes across the world. At some point, I hope policy makers in London, Brussels and Washington will start to ask whether this policy is working. We long ago passed the point of diminishing marginal returns. I fear, however, they have their heads in the sand or, possibly another, darker, place.
So, coming back to Trump’s phone call with Putin on Monday 19 May you might ask yourself, ‘so what if he imposes a few more sanctions if they won’t work anyway?’
Putin would see the imposition of new US sanctions as a complete 180, destroying any emerging trust he had in Trump or any belief in America’s stated intentions to end the war in Ukraine.
It is clear to me that further US sanctions on Russia would kill stone dead any chance of a ceasefire in Ukraine at a time when Russia still has the upper hand. Russia has increased the pace of its advance since the Victory Day ceasefire and seems to be adding new blocks of red to the battle map each day. At the current rate of advance, even without a catastrophic Ukrainian collapse, it seems realistic to expect that Russia would paint out the remaining territory in Donetsk and Luhansk during the remainder of this year. In the process they would need to overcome the heavily fortified towns of Pokrovsk, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, in what would likely be brutal and attritional battles killing many thousands more on both sides.
Moreover, dragging out the war for longer would simply add to Europe’s contingent liability to fund Ukraine’s war effort at a time when it is only ever going to lose. Ukraine is spending over 26% of GDP on defence in 2025 and 67.5% of its budget expenditure is on defence and security, leaving a budget black hotel of $42bn that has to be filled. America under Trump isn’t going to fill this hole. And, as Ukraine is cut off from international lending markets, that black hole is being filled by Europe.
There is no money for this.
Europe has neither the political capital nor the funds to maintain a losing war in Ukraine at enormous expense without massive domestic political blowback in their own countries.
Notwithstanding the possibly understandable fear among European leaders of failing and being seen to fail in Ukraine, keeping the war going is at best, a gesture in cynical self-preservation, pushing their eventual political demise further down the track.
Unfortunately, we have been here so many times before. Right back to the Minsk II agreement, Ukraine has been pushing for ever more sanctions against Russia that only ever served to ramp up resentment and exacerbate the conflict. European leaders have invested too much in Zelensky and his self-serving demands aimed primarily at staying in power. He is quickly becoming the gun that shoots European elites in the head.
If Trump really wants to be seen as a peacemaker, he should avoid doing what every other western leader before him including Sleepy Joe did and resist the temptation to impose more sanctions. Instead, he should continue to press the President Putin to continue to engage with bilateral peace talks that finally recommences in Istanbul last week. He must also tell the Eurocrats and Zelensky that they must make compromises rather than plugging the same old failed prescriptions.
Don’t vent tritium gas
Lab should explore credible alternatives say Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Tewa Women United
The Los Alamos National Laboratory plans to begin large releases of radioactive tritium gas any time after June 2, 2025. The only roadblock to the Lab’s plans is that it needs a “Temporary Authorization” from the New Mexico Environment Department to do so.
Reasons why the New Mexico Environment Department should deny LANL’s request are:
1. The state Environment Department has a duty to protect the New Mexican public. As it states, “Our mission is to protect and restore the environment and to foster a healthy and prosperous New Mexico for present and future generations.”
2. Why the rush? LANL explicitly admits there is no urgency. According to the Lab’s publicly-released “Questions and Answers” in response to “What is the urgency for this project?” “There is no urgency for this project beyond the broader mission goals to reduce onsite waste liabilities.”
3. In addition, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) admits that the end time frame for action is 2028, not 2025. Therefore, there is time for deliberate consideration.
4. Contrary to NMED’s Resource Conservation and Recovery Act permit for LANL, the Lab has not fulfilled its duty to inform the public via NMED of possible alternatives to its planned tritium releases. According to Tewa Women United, “LANL has told EPA there are 53 alternatives; that list of alternatives, initially requested in 2022, has not yet been disclosed. Tewa Women United has repeatedly asked LANL to provide the public with that list.”
5. Despite extensive prompting by the Environmental Protection Agency on possible better alternatives, the NNSA categorically rejected any modifications.
6. NNSA’s January 2025 draft LANL Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement had no substantive discussion of the planned tritium releases, much less the required “hard look” at credible alternatives. Further, LANL and NNSA included these planned releases in the “No Action Alternative,” with the specious justification that “The Laboratory and NNSA have been integrating with the EPA and NMED to obtain approval to move forward with the plan to vent the Flanged Tritium Waste Containers currently located in TA-54.” Seeking approval makes them No Action? NNSA and LANL are legally required to consider public comments submitted for the LANL SWEIS. These planned tritium releases should not proceed until NNSA issues a Record of Decision on the final LANL Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement.
7. NNSA’s publicized maximum release of 30,000 curies is merely an administrative decision point at which LANL will stop the venting process to avoid exceeding the Clean Air Act’s 10 millirem public exposure limit for radioactive air emissions. It is not the potential total quantity of tritium that will have been released. LANL’s radioactive air emissions management plan sets an annual administrative limit of 8 millirem for the tritium releases, meaning venting will cease once this limit is reached but may resume in subsequent periods.
8. In addition, these planned releases are not necessarily a one-time event, as indicated above, contrary to what the LANL Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement falsely states.
9. Nor are these planned releases strictly confined to just Area G, as claimed.
10. LANL declares “There are no cumulative impacts from this operation. All limits are conservative, and well within regulatory limits that are protective of the public.” However, one independent report calculates that the effective dose to infants could be three times higher than to adults (therefore likely violating the 10 millirem Clean Air Act standard for “any member of the public”) and all of LANL’s calculated doses would be higher in the event of low wind speeds and low humidity.” Another independent report noted how tritiated water can pervade every cell in the body while the planned LANL tritium releases are three times the amount of tritium that the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant would release to the ocean over 30 years.
11. LANL claims “This critical milestone [the planned tritium releases] furthers \ the cleanup of Area G.” But what so-called cleanup means to LANL is “cap and cover” of ~200,000 cubic yards of existing toxic and radioactive wastes at Area G, leaving them permanently buried in unlined pits and shafts as a permanent threat to groundwater. NMED knows this all too well given the draft order it issued to the Lab to excavate and treat all wastes at the smaller Area C waste dump, which LANL categorically opposes. NMED should carefully consider the extent to which approving these planned tritium releases is consistent with its desire for full comprehensive cleanup at the Lab, including Area G.
Recommendation: Given the self-admitted lack of urgency and remaining uncertainties in potential doses, times, locations and ultimate purpose of these planned tritium releases,NMED should deny LANL’s request for a “Temporary Authorization” to proceed until there has been an open and transparent analysis of alternatives and all possible public health impacts.
This fact sheet is available here. For more contact Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Tewa Women United.
And please sign the petition — Petition to Deny LANL’s Request to Release Radioactive Tritium into the Air.
US mainstream media still censoring US enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza
May 18, 2025 AIMN Editorial, By Walt Zlotow, https://theaimn.net/us-mainstream-media-still-censoring-us-enabled-israeli-genocide-in-gaza/
For the past 586 days US mainstream media refuses to condemn US enabling Israeli genocide of 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
The word genocide never appears in their print or pixels. They barely cover the genocide. But when they do make oblique references to it, simply calling it ‘Israel’s war on Hamas.’
US enabling of Israel’s genocide is bipartisan, with not a single pushback from the 535 congresspersons who, like the genocide enabling Biden and Trump administrations, betray their oath to protect life by promoting peace.
Special Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff brushed off inquiries when the US will stop supporting Israeli genocide saying:
“We’re not the Israeli government. We don’t disagree. The Israeli government is a sovereign government. They can’t tell us what to do, and we can’t tell them what to do.”
Witkoff conveniently omitted that without America’s $20 billion providing over 50,000 tons of genocide weapons, Israel would be powerless to carry out 586 days of genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza with no end in sight.
Trump is even more ghoulish in promoting Israel’s genocide. On his Middle East trip Trump said.
“I’d be proud to have the United States have it (Gaza), take it, make it a freedom zone, let see good things happen. Put people in homes where they can be safe.”
Those people in safe homes won’t be Palestinians whom Trump has been lobbying African countries to take in so they don’t have to all be killed off.
With their bombs, planes and drones, Biden and Trump have made the Israeli genocide possible. It is no different than if FDR was supplying the Nazis with Zyklon B gas to complete their genocide 80 years ago.
With mainstream media compliance, the US enabled genocide will continue to its completion so Trump can build his ultimate real estate development on the bodies and destroyed homes of 2,300,000 Palestinians.
But if mainstream media began the first story of every day condemning America and Israel’s genocide body count from bombs and forced starvation, it might just galvanize the 535 congresspersons to acknowledge and resist the genocide they’re ignoring. It might even force the grotesque Trump administration to turn back from inflicting the worst horror on helpless people ever inflicted by the self-proclaimed greatest nation on earth.
Tomorrow is Day 587 of mainstream media genocide denial. Unless they pivot to peace in Gaza, mainstream media moguls will follow the Biden Trump administrations and Congress down the rabbit hole of genocide infamy.
President Trump to unleash atomic power
May 15, 2025, https://beyondnuclear.org/president-trump-unleashes-atomic-power/
On May 14, 2025, E&ENews updated reports on President Donald Trump’s four “pre-decisional” White House Executive Orders to radically alter the historic role of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) to oversee the performance of reactor design safety reviews and the regulatory approval of reactor siting, construction and operation of commercial atomic power plants.
In President Trump’s view, the NRC’s overly burdensome regulations are the primary obstacle to guaranteeing the development and deployment of a national “nuclear renaissance.” As a result, The White House is eyeing a “wholesale regulatory revision” of the federal agency that includes mandatory “reductions in force.” Simultaneously, the White House envisages authorizing the US Department of Energy and Department of Defense to instead take charge of quadrupling the current domestic nuclear energy capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050. In order to achieve this goal, the draft Executive Orders outline 1) “overhauling NRC”; 2) significantly accelerating “nuclear R&D”; 3) redefining commercial nuclear power development as critical infrastructure for the “national security,” and 4) dramatically building out the domestic “nuclear supply chain” to include significantly ramping up domestic uranium mining, milling, enrichment and fabrication of US nuclear fuel.
While no energy generation system is entirely domestically sourced, the US nuclear fuel supply is predominantly sourced through foreign imports. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency reporting in 2025, US domestic uranium mines produce roughly 1% of the uranium concentrate (U3O8) needed to fuel the current US nuclear fleet in 2023. Foreign imports accounted for 99% of our nation’s U3O8 with 48% coming from Russia and Russia-influenced Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Presently, Russia is the only commercially viable global supplier of high-assay low enriched uranium (HALEU fuel is less than 20% enriched uranium-235) as is rated for advanced Small Modular Reactor designs, including Bill Gate’s TerraPower Natrium reactor liquid sodium-cooled fast reactor and X-Energy’s Xe-100 high-temperature gas-cooled pebble-bed reactor.
The Trump Administration has declared by a Executive Order in February 2024 that it will no longer recognize any federal agencies as “independent” but rather all federal agencies are now in the President’s wheelhouse and subject to his supervision and control. All “significant regulatory actions” of the NRC would be reviewed by the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA, opening the process to the White House review for comments, edits and influence. E&E news observed the new process “obscures the public record of internal commission deliberations” and is an apparent violation of the Atomic Energy Act which clearly states that it is expressly for the NRC to decide.
The draft order to overhaul the NRC would also require the agency to reconsider its standard for radiation exposure where it now understands that there is no safe dose of radiation. Dr. Edwin Lyman, a physicist and Director of the Nuclear Power Safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists is quoted in the E&E article to say, “Documented scientific evidence has only indicated that [low-level radiation exposure] is more dangerous than was known decades ago, when these standards were set.” Furthermore, Dr. Lyman adds, “Evidence has emerged about the impact of the level of radiation exposure on cardiovascular disease.”
The White House draft order to reframe nuclear power deployment for “national security” sets up the US Department of Energy and Department of Defense to “work around the NRC-led licensing and safety review processes” by providing the Secretaries of Defense and Energy accelerated schedules to “identify 9 military facilities at which advanced nuclear technologies can be immediately installed and deployed.” Those military base sited nuclear power plants can then provide transmission to the electric grid for commercial power.
It should be alarming that the Trump Executive Orders to fast track the still elusive and unpredictably costly construction of unproven Generation IV reactors by decommissioning the NRC comes at precisely the wrong time.
This is the still the 50th Anniversary Year of the creation of the NRC following the abolition of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission by Congress for its blatant fast track promotion of atomic power plant licensing and a dangerous disregard of public health and safety. Least we forget, too many of those aging and now deteriorating nuclear power stations that are approaching and have exceeded 50 years of very harsh operating experience of radioactive neutron bombardment, embrittlement and cracking in base metal and dissimilar weld materials, fatigue, corrosion and a combination of extreme heat, pressure and vibration. Nobody knows better the growing level uncertainty, the multitude of technical knowledge gaps and innumerable shrinking reactor safety margins than those NRC nuclear engineers. Certainly, not Trump.
How Donald Trump’s Crypto Dealings Push the Bounds of Corruption.
With the meme coin $TRUMP and the company World Liberty Financial, the President is using an underregulated industry to enrich himself and court foreign influence.
By Kyle Chayka, May 14, 2025, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/how-donald-trumps-crypto-dealings-push-the-bounds-of-corruption?cndid=30183386&bxid=5be9d23d24c17c6adf3bf435&esrc=subscribe-page&hashc=ac5a1f5526e7292c73f49dfa8fb6d5d0cb87d8773cec3b9b03d38a4ce482d7c8&hashb=e1c24f6a6459c7d1d625eb2ea55d9dfbbb4633bf&hasha=432fc0d0ad6543e820e2dfcd39f76c35&mbid=CRMNYR012019&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_term=TNY_Science_Tech&utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Science_051725
Imagine that someone in a position of great political power created a hundred billion raffle tickets and made them available for public purchase. If you buy the tickets, eventually you will receive a reward: a proportional quantity of magic beans—and eventually each magic bean will be exchangeable for one United States dollar. What’s more, if you buy the raffle tickets early, you can get them for less than a dollar, perhaps for as little as five cents apiece. Not only will the raffle tickets eventually gain you more traditional currency; you can also vote on company matters with your raffle tickets and help manage the magic-bean supply, and the more tickets you purchase, the more say you have. Oh, and the creator of the raffle will keep a bunch of the tickets for himself, and much of the revenue generated by the magic-bean economy will also go back to him.
This effectively describes the workings of a new cryptocurrency created by World Liberty Financial, a company affiliated with the Trump family, with President Donald Trump serving as its “Chief Crypto Advocate.” The cryptocurrency, a so-called governance token called WLFI, is the raffle ticket, and another cryptocurrency, a “stablecoin” called USD1, is the magic bean. World Liberty deals in the nascent industry of “decentralized finance,” in which cryptocurrency instruments allow users to circumvent the traditional, regulated banking ecosystem for moving, storing, and lending money. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are pegged to a single currency value, such as one U.S. dollar, though they are not always so stable: Terra, a once successful stablecoin, lost its peg and suffered a collapse in 2022. Stablecoins fall nebulously within the bounds of the law, so long as they don’t appear to function as securities (as, for instance, stock in a publicly traded company does). A banner on the World Liberty website serves as a legal disclaimer: “World Liberty Financial does not consider the tokens to be securities.” Donald Trump et fils quietly assumed a controlling stake of World Liberty, in January, through a company called DT Marks Defi. Though fine print specifies that no member of the Trump family is an “officer, director or employee” of World Liberty, DT Marks Defi receives seventy-five per cent of its subsidiary company’s net revenue. (The remaining twenty-five per cent goes to Axiom Management Group, which is connected with two of World Liberty’s official leaders, Chase Herro and Zachary Folkman, a pair of self-described “crypto-punks,” whose other ventures include, in Folkman’s case, a company called Date Hotter Girls.)
Trump is a onetime crypto skeptic who announced, in a tweet in 2019, “I am not a fan of Bitcoin.” Yet in recent years, he has touted several varieties of magic beans, bringing a P.R. boost to an industry in which new ventures are often dead on arrival. In 2022, he released Trump Digital Trading Cards, a series of non-fungible tokens that has continued to produce new batches, including a January, 2024, “Mugshot” edition, featuring his glaring police photo. (Bulk buyers of the mug-shot N.F.T. received invitations to Mar-a-Lago.) Three days before his Inauguration, he launched a so-called meme coin, cryptocurrencies based on online notoriety that become de-facto pyramid schemes as early buyers sell off to later ones at higher prices. $TRUMP consists of a billion coins, eighty per cent of which were kept by Trump-related companies, and the remainder sold to the public. It reportedly made around three hundred and fifty million dollars in revenue in its sale and has a market capitalization of nearly three billion dollars; Trump’s business earns a fee for every $TRUMP transaction.
The price of the meme coin is now down to less than a fifth of its all-time high, and the majority of its buyers have seen their purchases lose value. An official Melania Trump meme coin released soon after Trump’s has fared even worse. But $TRUMP was given a recent bump when Fight Fight Fight, a business associated with the Trump Organization and its crypto projects, ran a contest in which the two hundred and twenty largest holders of the meme coin won invitations to a gala dinner with Donald Trump, to be hosted at the Trump National Golf Club near Washington, D.C. (Black tie is optional.) The top twenty-five will get access to a more private reception with the President. The contest offers an explicit way to buy Trump’s attention, lending magic beans a new appeal as a lobbying tool. Many of the meme-coin investors are based abroad, and some have been unequivocal about their goal of influencing Trump’s agenda. (One Australian entrepreneur told the Times that he hopes to talk to the President about crypto policy; a Mexican buyer said that he would like Trump’s ear on tariffs.) On Tuesday, a small Chinese company that operates an e-commerce business on TikTok announced plans for a three-hundred-million-dollar purchase of $TRUMP and Bitcoin—at a time when the Trump Administration is considering whether to follow through on a TikTok ban.
The World Liberty operation has far vaster implications than the meme coin, however, because its stablecoin, which can be easily and reliably exchanged for U.S. dollars, creates something like an entire Trump-sponsored underground economy. It’s as if a new bank had opened under the sitting President’s name, and it was being sent large quantities of funds by various foreign businesses and political élites. Major buyers of WLFI have included Justin Sun, a Chinese crypto entrepreneur, who bought seventy-five million dollars’ worth, and DWF Labs, an Abu Dhabi-based cryptocurrency trading firm, which bought twenty-five million dollars’ worth. In March, World Liberty announced that it had sold more than half a billion dollars’ worth of its token. Earlier this month, another Abu Dhabi-based investment firm announced that it would use USD1, the stablecoin controlled by World Liberty, for a two-billion-dollar investment in Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.
Buying the Trumpian magic beans provides a way of purchasing influence, not unlike how foreign dignitaries could rent rooms at the Trump International Hotel in D.C. during Trump’s first Administration. But World Liberty makes renting hotel rooms look quaint by comparison. The more money that flows into WLFI and USD1, the more legitimate and valuable these currencies appear, and the higher their market capitalizations creep. Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin, has a market capitalization nearing a hundred and fifty billion dollars, with more than thirty billion dollars in daily trading volume. World Liberty aspires to create something similar.
The American public has been inundated with news of the Trump family’s self-enrichment for so long that many of their dealings now barely create a stir. Just this week, it was revealed that the Administration is preparing to accept the gift of a luxury Boeing 747-8 jet offered by the royal family of Qatar, to be used as a new Air Force One, at least until a new Air Force One is completed by Boeing. The Department of Defense will receive the jet, but when Trump leaves office it will reportedly be donated to his Presidential library, effectively turning the plane, worth four hundred million dollars, into a private possession—never mind that this arrangement would seem to blatantly contradict the foreign-emoluments clause, which prevents U.S. officials from accepting gifts from foreign leaders and governments. (Trump has dismissed ethical concerns by saying that declining a gift would be “stupid.”) In the realm of crypto, though, a backlash against Trump’s ventures may be mounting in Congress. Last week, some Senate Democrats balked at passing a popular crypto-friendly bill in light of the President’s naked profiteering. In a bit of almost farcical understatement, Senator Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming, recently told the Times, “The optics are challenging.” But the Trump family has so far wagered correctly that no one will stop them. ♦
Kyle Chayka is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His column, Infinite Scroll, examines the people and platforms shaping the Internet. His books include “Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture.
80% of Ontarians want the province to cancel its contract for GE-Hitachi nuclear reactors.
Ontario Clean Air Alliance, https://www.cleanairalliance.org/poll-report/
Polling conducted in May 2025 by Oraclepoll Research shows that 80% of Ontarians want the province to cancel its contract for GE-Hitachi nuclear reactors, while 70% prefer lower cost solar and wind power.
The poll also finds majority support for Great Lakes offshore wind power; expansion of Canada’s east-west electricity grid to increase Ontario’s ability to import water, wind and solar power from Manitoba, Quebec and the Maritimes; and no-money-down, zero-interest financing for electric heat pumps to reduce our dependency on American gas for home heating.
The US buried millions of gallons of wartime nuclear waste – Doge cuts could wreck the cleanup
Guardian, Andrew Buncombe in Richland, Washington. 16 May 25
Hanford made the plutonium for US atomic bombs, and its radioactive waste must be dealt with. Enter Elon Musk
Andrew Buncombe in Richland, WashingtonThu 15 May 2025 23.00 AESTShare
In the bustling rural city of Richland, in south-eastern Washington, the signs of a nuclear past are all around.
A small museum explains its role in the Manhattan Project and its “singular mission – [to] develop the world’s first atomic bomb before the enemy might do the same”. The city’s high school sports team is still known as the Bombers, with a logo that consists of the letter R set with a mushroom cloud.
Richland lies just 30 miles from the Hanford nuclear site, a sprawling plant that produced the plutonium for America’s atomic weapons during the second world war – and later the bomb dropped over Nagasaki. Over the decades, thousands of people in the Tri-Cities area of southern Washington worked at the plant, which shuttered in 1989.
Residents have long spearheaded an operation to deal with 56m gallons of nuclear waste left behind in dozens of underground tanks – a cleanup that is expected to cost half a trillion dollars and may not be completed until 2100. The government has called it “one of the largest and most expensive environmental cleanup projects worldwide”.
In recent weeks, what has already been a costly and painstakingly slow process has come under renewed scrutiny, following an exodus of experts from the Department of Energy (DoE) that is overseeing the cleanup being executed by thousands of contract workers.
According to local media, several dozen staff, who reportedly include managers, scientists and safety experts, have taken early retirement or been fired as part of a broader government reduction overseen by Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency”. The government has refused to provide a specific figure for how many people involved with cleanup efforts have left. The top DoE manager at the Hanford site, Brian Vance, who had many years of experience, resigned at the end of March without giving a reason.
The changes have thrown the communities around the Hanford plant into limbo. And while the Department of Energy has said that only six staff have been fired, and reiterated its commitment to the cleanup, that hasn’t managed to assuage locals’ concerns.
Those raising the alarm include politicians from both parties, environmental activists, and Indigenous communities who have historically owned the land on which the 560 sq mile (1,450 sq km) site sits.
The US senator for Washington Patty Murray said workers were already understaffed, and that cutting further positions was “reckless”.
“There is nothing ‘efficient’ about indiscriminately firing thousands upon thousands of workers in red and blue states whose work is badly needed,” the Democrat said.
Dan Newhouse, the local Republican congressman is similarly concerned. “A strong, well trained federal workforce is essential,” he wrote in a weekly newsletter to constituents.
Concerns have also been raised by some over the difficulty former workers face in making medical compensation claims to the government for everything from cancer to acute pulmonary disease linked to their time at the plant.
Taken together, there is fresh anxiety in a community, where many are still living with the health and environmental effects of Hanford.
Richland, part of the Tri-Cities, was obtained by the army in 1943 to house workers engaged in top-secret efforts to produce plutonium used in the world’s first nuclear explosion – the-so-called “Trinity” device tested near Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1945. Though the city was returned to the public a decade later, it can still feel like a company town.
To get anywhere near what is known as Hanford’s B-reactor, the world’s first full-scale plutonium production reactor, you need to sign up for an official tour. Yet a view of its grey, single tower, looming from the hillside, can be seen from state route 24, close to the Columbia River.
Those expressing concern about the federal government downsizing include local Indigenous groups who historically owned the land where the site is located and were pushed off it by the government. The Hanford plant area contains the location of several sacred sites, among them Gable Mountain, which were used for ceremonies, and the area of Rattlesnake Mountain, or Lalíik, which has for centuries been used to hunt elk.
The site is also located close to the Yakama Indian Reservation, home to 11,000 people, and the tribe has long pushed to be central to decisions about the cleanup and what it is eventually used for. The tribe recently signed a deal to carry out their first elk hunt in the area for seven decades.
“One of the biggest fears is that without proper manpower, there might not be a very good crew for the cleanup of the property,” says Gerald Lewis, chairman of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. “Without this cleanup, that’s been happening for a number of years, we’re afraid of a nuclear mishap.”
Dr Elizabeth McClure, a health data specialist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, is currently conducting research in the communities around Hanford. She says there is a history of government-led cover-ups over the years at the site, including what is known as “the Green Run”, the intentional release of 8,000 so-called curies of iodine-1 into the atmosphere in 1949……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/15/us-government-nuclear-waste-doge
New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s Major Nuclear Power Push
What the nuclear industry and nuclear believers in government are calling “advanced” nuclear power plants are, as the Union of Concerned Scientists has found in an extensive report, not improved and no better—”and in some respects significantly worse”—than current nuclear plants.
the nuclear industry now is seeking large amounts of government financial support including in the forms of tax credits and loan guarantees to cover cost overruns.
Karl Grossman, May 14, 2025, https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/14/new-york-governor-kathy-hochuls-major-nuclear-power-push/
“Governor [Kathy] Hochul is making a major push to not only build new nuclear plants in New York State but to make N.Y. the center of a nuclear revival in the U.S.,” declared Mark Dunlea, chair of the Green Education and Legal Fund, and long a leader on environmental issues in the state and nationally, in a recent email calling on support to “stop Hochul’s nuclear push.”
Dunlea is author of the book “Putting Out the Planetary Fire: An Introduction to Climate Change and Advocacy.” An Albany Law School graduate, he co-founded both the New York Public Interest Research Group and national PIRG. In an interview last week from his home in Poestenkill in upstate New York, Dunlea charged that Governor Hochul has “bought into nuclear power.”
He said, “She buys the argument that nuclear is carbon-free, avoiding looking at the life cycle of nuclear and its carbon footprint,” which includes, he noted, significant emissions of carbon in uranium mining, milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication and at other points. “The nuclear industry has been lobbying her to go along with it, and she has,” he said.
Hochul has also become involved in promoting nuclear power nationally.
The Clean Air Task Force, based in Sunnyside in Queens, New York, which advocates nuclear power, issued a press release in February stating: “The National Association of State Energy officials announced a multi-state initiative to accelerate advanced nuclear energy projects. The initiative was first previewed by Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York last month and will be co-chaired by New York.”
The heading of the release: “New York leads multi-state consortium to drive nuclear energy deployment …”
Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), based in Mount Rainier, Maryland, and formerly of Syracuse, New York, pointed out in an interview that Hochul made nuclear power “a specific priority in her State of the State speech” in January.
Hochul in the speech declared: “The economy of the future: microchips fabs [fabrication plants], data centers and the supercomputers that power AI need tremendous amounts of energy. To support these industries, we’ve already started developing an advanced nuclear strategy. This is a good investment. Artificial Intelligence alone is projected to drive $320 billion of economic growth in our state by 2038.”
What the nuclear industry and nuclear believers in government are calling “advanced” nuclear power plants are, as the Union of Concerned Scientists has found in an extensive report, not improved and no better—”and in some respects significantly worse”—than current nuclear plants. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based organization has detailed this in an article headlined: “Report Finds That ‘Advanced’ Nuclear Reactor Designs Are No Better Than Current Reactors—and Some Are Worse.”
Hochul is a Democrat. But also, said Judson, the “New York Republican Party has been rabidly pro-nuclear.” In a time of extreme partisan polarity, there is a “bipartisan consensus among the political elite in favor of nuclear power,” and thus is one thing in government for which “there are bipartisan votes.”
As the Syracuse.com website has reported: “Fort Drum, the U.S. Army base outside Watertown, could become the first New York site to try advanced nuclear power technology if the Army goes along with pleas from congressional representatives. U.S. Reps. Elise Stefanik and Claudia Tenney, both upstate Republicans, issued a joint letter October 25 urging the Army to put Fort Drum first in line for one of the small modular nuclear reactors that President Joe Biden and Department of Defense officials are promoting as a clean source of resilient energy.”
Stefanik is a Republican front-runner to challenge Hochul in election for governor in 2026. Democrat Biden has supported nuclear power.
Hochul’s predecessor as New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, also a Democrat, now seeking to be the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor in the 2025 election, has a mixed record on nuclear power.
As governor Cuomo was instrumental in closing down in 2021 the two Indian Point nuclear power plants 26 miles north of New York City, but in 2016 he engineered a $7.6 billion bail-out to allow four aged nuclear plants in upstate New York to continue to operate. Their owners then deemed them uneconomical to continue to operate.
The plants—Fitzpatrick, Nine Mile Point 1 and 2, and Ginna—are now owned by Constellation Energy, the largest nuclear power plant operator in the United States.
The $7.6 billion bail-out is being paid for over a 12-year period as a surcharge on electric bills of all residential and industrial customers in New York State.
So far, Dunlea said, Hochul has been focusing on upstate New York for new nuclear development, particularly targeting areas where nuclear plants are now located, rather than, “at the moment,” downstate.
For decades, a battle raged that stopped the plan of the Long Island Lighting Company to build a large collection of nuclear power plants—seven to 11 nuclear plants—downstate, on Long Island, the 120-mile island east of Manhattan.
If there is again a plan for placement of nuclear power plants on Long Island, said Dunlea, “hopefully, Long Islanders would stand up and beat it back.”
Grassroots citizen action was a key in the decades long fight to block to the scheme to, in the parlance of promoters of it at the time, turn Long Island into a “nuclear park.” The only plant built was Shoreham 1 which was stopped from going into commercial operation.
The October Syracuse.com piece said: “Gov. Kathy Hochul has expressed an interest in exploring the potential for new nuclear power in New York” highlighted by her having “hosted an energy summit last month [September 2024] in Syracuse that focused heavily on nuclear power.”
Judson, of NIRS, said the nuclear industry now is seeking large amounts of government financial support including in the forms of tax credits and loan guarantees to cover cost overruns.
Laura Shindell, New York State director of the Washington-headquartered organization Food & Water Watch, has scored in a piece in the Times Union newspaper of Albany what she terms “Governor Hochul’s nuclear embrace” and said Hochul should commit to “real climate and affordable energy solutions.” Shindell’s piece was headlined, “Commentary: No place for nuclear in New York’s energy plants.” Its subhead: “Nuclear power is a dirty, dangerous, expensive distraction to the essential work of transitioning to clean energy.”
New York State’s emphasis on nuclear power under Hochul has been recognized by World Nuclear News, a publication of the World Nuclear Association, a London-based group that describes itself as an “international organization that promotes nuclear power.”
A January article was headlined “New York State looks to advanced nuclear.”
It began: “As New York Governor Kathy Hochul announces a master plan for advanced nuclear development,” the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, NYSERDA “has joined Constellation [Energy] on a grant proposal to help it pursue an early site permit for advanced nuclear reactors at its Nine Mile Point Clean Energy Center.” That’s the site of the Nine Mile Point 1 and 2 nuclear power plants.
Anne Rabe, volunteer coordinator of the group Don’t Waste New York, charged in an interview that Hochul “is recklessly and deliberately telling NYSERDA to pursue advanced reactors.” A resident of Castleton-on-Hudson in upstate New York, she said “the nuclear industry for years has worked to lay the groundwork for this.”
Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, and is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, and the Beyond Nuclear handbook, The U.S. Space Force and the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war in space. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.
Ontario’s Costly Nuclear Folly
May 12, 2025 • David Robertson, https://socialistproject.ca/2025/05/ontarios-costly-nuclear-folly/#more
The last time the nuclear industry got its way in the province, Ontario Hydro spent over two decades building 20 nuclear reactors. It was a mash-up of missed deadlines, cost overruns, and a troubling pattern of declining nuclear performance.
Even more troubling, the last generation of nuclear reactors forced Ontario Hydro to the edge of bankruptcy. And it saddled us with a mountain of nuclear debt that we are still paying off.
The Conservative government of Doug Ford is now repeating those costly mistakes in the largest expansion of the nuclear industry in Canada’s history. A nuclear blunder on steroids.
Part 1: Past Debt Due
In 1999, Ontario Hydro collapsed under the staggering weight of its nuclear debt. When the account books were opened, the reality hit home. At the time, Hydro’s assets were valued at $17.2-billion but its debt amounted to $38.1-billion. The government was faced with a stranded debt of $20.9-billion.
In response, the government of the day split Ontario Hydro into five separate organizations. Ontario Power Generation took over the generating facilities (hydro, coal, gas, nuclear) and Hydro One, later privatized, inherited the transmission grid. Neither of these organizations would survive if they had to carry the debt. The government was aware that any future hopes of privatizing the successors of Ontario Hydro would be scuttled if investors had to absorb the debt. The debt was transferred to Ontario families through special charges on electricity bills (until 2018), regular electricity bills, and the tax system. It was the world’s largest nuclear bailout, one we are still paying.
The Ontario Electrical Financial Corporation is one of the five Ontario Hydro successor entities. It was set up to manage and service the long-term debt of the former Ontario Hydro. According to its 2024 Annual Report, the total debt, twenty-five years later, is still $12.1-billion. In 2024, OEFC paid $626-million in interest charges alone, an amount that is recouped from taxpayers and ratepayers. In its financial statements the organization notes that its longest-term debt issue matures on December 2, 2050. In 2050, Ontario will still be paying the debt of the failed nuclear program of the 1970s and 80s.
Part 2: Repeating Past Mistakes
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is owned by the government of Ontario. OPG is leading Ontario’s nuclear resurrection. It is aided and abetted by the IESO (Independent Electricity System Operator) another surviving offshoot of the collapse of Ontario Hydro. And it is directed by a series of government policy announcements and legislative initiatives. These directives put nuclear on the fast track while shouldering aside clean, cost-effective, and safe renewables.
It is an astonishing nuclear industry coup. Without putting up their own money, without bearing the financial risks, the nuclear industry has captured Ontario’s energy policy and turned crown agencies into nuclear cheerleaders.
Even a few years ago this would have seemed impossible. The nuclear industry was on the ropes. Catastrophic nuclear accidents at Three Mile Isle in the US, Chernobyl in Ukraine, and Fukushima in Japan had severely tarnished the nuclear safety image. All around the world, the cost overruns and lengthy build times of nuclear plants had chilled utility and government interest in more nuclear plants. In Europe, only one nuclear plant has been built and come on line since 2000.
In Ontario, the last nuclear reactor went into operation in 1993. Nuclear plants that had been forecast to operate for 40 years showed major signs of early ageing after about ten years. Most of the existing nuclear fleet was rapidly reaching its best before dates. Safety and operational issues plagued the industry. The four units at Pickering had been shutdown because of safety reasons. And shut down again. By 1993, Bruce A’s performance, as a result of ‘fretting’ pressure tubes, had drastically declined. In 1997, Ontario Hydro announced that it would temporarily shut down its oldest seven reactors. By that time, the escalating costs of the newest reactors at the Darlington site were already a cautionary tale. Originally billed in 1978 at $3.9-billion, the final cost in 1993 had more than tripled to $14.4-billion (1993 dollars).
The first generation of nuclear plants had clearly demonstrated the failure of the nuclear industry to deliver electricity on time and on budget. It also demonstrated that nuclear reactors couldn’t provide affordable electricity. In fact, Ontario Hydro’s last public cost comparison (1999) revealed the cost of nuclear energy to be more than six times the cost of hydro electricity. (7.72 c/kWh vs $1.09)
Part 3: The Nuclear Resurrection
It seems that all those ‘hard lessons’ learned have been willfully forgotten. The Ford government has now launched a multipoint nuclear power offensive. It has passed legislation to ensure that nuclear is Ontario’s energy priority. It has made commitments to build untested and costly small modular reactors (SMRs). It has decided to refurbish antiquated nuclear plants (Pickering) when there is no business case to do so. It has announced as the centrepiece of its energy policy the irrational goal of becoming a nuclear energy superpower. And it has opened the public purse to the appetite of the nuclear industry.
It is a power play with some revealing features.
3a. A Propaganda Push
In 2023, OPG launched a series of propaganda ads. The ads, in bus shelters and transit, print, and television, were designed to overcome public skepticism and convince us that a new generation of nuclear was safe, reliable, and clean. The company behind the pubic relations campaign made the following claim: “For years, popular culture has distorted perceptions about nuclear power with false narratives that served to stoke fear.” They go on: “The campaign is intended to recast nuclear power as a “true hero” of the province’s clean energy mix.”
Some of the ads focused on Gen Z and Tik Tok with the cartoon character “Pelly the uranium pellet.” Others were tailored to older generations who were well aware of the problems with the nuclear industry and there were ads which simply made outrageous claims. For example, the ad for Small Modular Reactors declared that “SMRs are clean and reliable.” Quite the claim since none have been built.
The ad campaign effectively echoed the industry’s talking points, talking points that have become the mantra of the Ford government. Nuclear energy is now described by Ontario’s energy minister as “clean,” “non-emitting,” “reliable,” and “fundamental to our future.”
3b. A revolving door between the government and the industry
Back in June 2024, former Energy Minister Todd Smith left the government, after spending billions on the nuclear industry and promising billions more. Upon his departure, Todd Smith landed a job as a VP of CANDU Energy Inc. CANDU Energy Inc was created when SNC-Lavalin purchased the commercial reactor division of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited from the federal government in 2011. In an effort to distance itself from its scandal ridden past, SNC-Lavalin has since changed its name to AtkinsRealis. The company is heavily involved in the refurbishment of Ontario nuclear plants and the plans for new builds.
3c. The technological hype of SMRs
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are not small and they are not that modular. And they are not that new. The designs, of which there are about 54, have been kicking around for a long time. It’s just that no one wanted to build them, and investors were loathe to put up their own money. The fate of SMRs changed when the nuclear industry convinced governments in Canada to develop what it called the “SMR Roadmap.” The “Roadmap,” largely produced by the industry, was all hype and little substance, but it was enough to convince the Ford government to join the parade.
The World Nuclear Industry Status Review is an annual independent assessment of the global nuclear industry. In its 2022 review, it concluded:
“Small modular (nuclear) reactors or SMRs continue to hog the headlines in many countries, even though all the evidence so far shows that they will likely face major economic challenges and not be competitive on the electricity market. Despite this evidence, nuclear advocates argue that these untested reactor designs are the solution to the nuclear industry’s woes.”
In the 2024 edition of the review, the analysts note: “The gap between hype about Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and reality continues to grow. The nuclear industry and multiple governments are doubling down on their investments into SMRs, both in monetary and political terms.”
3d. Over-the-top visioning and ideological straw men
Stephen Lecce became the Minister of Energy in June 2024. Shortly afterwards, he travelled to the US where he made a pitch to western leaders and industry movers and shakers. He told them that Ontario is building a blueprint for a nuclear energy future.
A CP wire story put it this way: “Ontario is selling itself as the nuclear North Star to guide the direction of American power.”
Speaking to a largely American audience, he said it’s time to “rid our economies of any dependence on these foreign states that … do not share our democratic embrace,” (Oops).
The minister’s early charm offensive turned more aggressive back home when he criticized those who support renewable energy as” ideologues” who want to “romanticize certain resources.” As he told the National Post, “We are seeing forces on the left, the illiberal left, who cannot come to terms with the fact that in order to decarbonize we’re going to need nuclear.”
The commitment to nuclear was further baked into Ontario’s future when the Ford government released its energy vision in October 2024. The document ironically entitled “Ontario’s Affordable Energy Future” sets the stage for a massive build out of nuclear power.
It also makes it clear that Ontario has set its sights on becoming a nuclear energy superpower in the hopes of selling expensive nuclear electricity to the US and costly nuclear technology to the world.
Reflecting the grandiose aspirations of a would-be energy superpower the Minister declared that “this was Ontario’s moment.”
3e. The legislative lock-in
In December 2024, the government passed the misnamed “Affordable Energy Act” (Bill 214) The legislation has many troubling aspects. Various sections of the act restrict public consultation, further erode the independence of regulatory tribunals, and shifts more decision making to the government. But most alarming is how the government has used the Act to give preference and priority to nuclear power. Section 25.29 (2) of the Act refers to, “the prioritization of nuclear power generation to meet future increases in the demand for electricity …”
3f. The commitment to underwrite the costs of nuclear
The government is bankrolling the nuclear expansion with public money because investors don’t want their own money at risk. The costs of nuclear power have driven private investors away. Even with massive subsidies from governments, investors are reluctant to ante up.
A spokesperson for the government-owned Ontario Power Generation made the point very clear when commenting on small modular reactors.
Kim Lauritsen is a senior OPG vice-president. She told a Global Business conference audience that the crown corporation was willing to take the “first-mover risk.”
As she put it: “Because they (small modular reactors) take too long and the industry needs to see that these things can be built successfully, to give investors the confidence and really get the ball rolling for other jurisdictions.”
Because investors are nervous and because Ontario wants to show the way for other jurisdictions, the Ford government is prepared to saddle Ontario families and future generations with the exorbitant costs of nuclear power.
Part 4: The nuclear three-prong plug: Refurbishments, SMRs and New Large Scale Reactors
Refurbishments
The Ontario government is spending billions to refurbish old nuclear plants. Fourteen reactors are scheduled to be rejuvenated – 6 at Bruce, 4 at Darlington, and 4 at Pickering. The repair schedule for existing nuclear plants stretches out for decades. While these reactors are off line, the government plans to make up the electricity shortfall with more climate wrecking, fossil-gas generating plants.
The cost of the refurbishments will be in excess of $40-billion. That forty billion and the millions more in interest charges will find its way onto our electricity bills.
As our electricity bills go up, so does political pressure and when that pressure reaches a tipping point, the government steps in with subsidies to help reduce electricity bills. It is a repeated pattern in Ontario.
A recent report from the Government’s Financial Accountability Office (FAO) projected the cost of current electricity subsidies to be $118-billion over the next 20 years. These are not all nuclear electricity subsidies. But as we spend more on nuclear and nuclear increases the cost of electricity and governments are pressured to reduce the cost of electricity, there will be even more subsidies to shift the costs from our electricity bills to our taxes.
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)
In addition to the massive refurbishment program the Ford government has announced a series of nuclear new builds.
There will be four new small modular reactors (SMRs) built at the Darlington nuclear location. Site preparation work is already underway on the first one. OPG has convinced the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to forego an environmental impact assessment, relying instead on an assessment that had been done years ago on the site for a different project.
The government has selected the GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 design. This is based on a design that has been kicking around for about 20 years and has had to be redesigned about ten times. It still has never been built. The engineering designs for Darlington have again been changed, making the small modular reactor less small and even less modular.
OPG has not released a cost estimate for the reactors. But there are some indications of the probable magnitude. In the US, the only SMR project that had been approved by the US federal government was NuScale in the mid-west. The project was cancelled because of escalating costs. Originally estimated at $3-billion (US), it was terminated in 2024 when the projected costs reached $9.3-billion (US).
The Tennessee Valley Authority, a large power utility in the US, has partnered with the OPG to promote the GE-Hitachi SMR. The TVA recently provided some estimates of the costs of building the SMR in the US. It indicated that the cost of the first reactor could be about $5.4-billion (US). It hoped the costs could be reduced to about $3.7-billion (US) if more were built. These costs do not include any interest charges, cost overruns, or missed deadlines.
If we assume the lower cost and convert to Canadian dollars, the price tag for the four SMRs at Darlington would be about $20-billion before things go wrong. In 2019, the company’s indicated the costs would have to be below $1-billion (US).
New Large Scale Nuclear Reactors
In July 2023, the Ontario government announced its support to expand the capacity of the Bruce nuclear power plant near Kincardine. The Bruce nuclear generating station is owned by OPG but operated by Bruce Power, a private consortium. Bruce Power is planning a major expansion of the site’s generating capacity. At present, six of the eight reactors are being refurbished. This new development, if it goes ahead, will add an additional 4800 MW, which would require building four or five new reactors. Admittedly, it is early days, and no costs have been provided.
Port Hope
In January 2025, the Ontario government announced that it was in the preliminary stages of a massive new nuclear plant that could be built at the OPG site in Wesleyville, near Port Hope. Officials have suggested the plant could have a capacity of 8,000 to 10,000 megawatts and be in operation by the 2040s. Achieving that generating capacity would require building eight or more nuclear reactors.
Part 5: Calculating the Costs
Continue readingCritics Slam Cost of Ontario SMR Plan, Question Dependence on U.S. Uranium
May 12, 2025, Mitchell Beer, https://www.theenergymix.com/critics-slam-cost-of-ontario-smr-plan-question-dependence-on-u-s-uranium/
Critics are taking a hard line on Ontario’s announcement that it will build four 300-megawatt small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) at the existing Darlington nuclear plant near Bowmanville, with most concerns focused on the cost of the project and the geopolitical risk in sourcing enriched uranium from a U.S. supplier.
Ontario Power Generation announced provincial approval for the first of the four units May 8, describing it as “the first new nuclear build in Ontario in more than three decades.”
“This is truly a historic moment,” said OPG President and CEO Nicolle Butcher. “This made-in-Ontario project will support provincial companies, create jobs for Ontarians, and spur growth for our economy.”
Energy and Mines Minister Stephen Lecce declared the 1,200-megawatt installation, the first of its kind in the G7, a “nation-building project being built right here in Ontario.” Durham MPP Todd McCarthy called it “the next step to strengthening Ontario and Canada’s energy security.”
The published cost of the project is $7.7 billion for the first reactor, including $1.6 billion for infrastructure and administrative buildings, and $20.9 billion to complete the series of four. Citing Conference Board of Canada figures, OPG said the four SMRs will contribute $38.5 billion to Canada’s GDP over 65 years and sustain an average of about 3,700 jobs per year, including 18,000 per year during construction.
First Mover Advantage or Boutique Pricing?
In the OPG announcement, Butcher suggested an advantage in being the first G7 jurisdiction to bring an SMR to market. “As a first mover on SMRs, Ontario will also be able to market our capabilities and nuclear expertise to the world to further grow our domestic industry,” she said.
The Globe and Mail says the Darlington New Nuclear Project “is being watched closely by utilities around the world,,”, and OPG’s BWRX-300 design “is a candidate for construction in the United States, Britain, Poland, Estonia, and elsewhere.” But “the costs published Thursday are higher than what independent observers argue are necessary to attract many more orders. For comparison, a recently completed 377-megawatt natural gas-fired power station in Saskatchewan cost $825-million.”
Ed Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Cambridge, MA-based Union of Concerned Scientists, called the Ontario estimate “an eye-popping figure, but not unexpected given what we know about the poor economics of small nuclear reactors.” That would make the Darlington SMR facility “a boutique unit that’s going to produce electricity for a very expensive price.”
An independent study released last week by the Ontario Clean Air Alliance found that the Darlington SMRs will cost up to eight times as much as onshore wind, almost six times as much as utility-scale solar, and 2.7 times as much offshore wind in the Great Lakes after factoring in the federal tax credit. The analysis by Hinesburg, Vermont-based Energy Futures Group “used data from Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) but used realistic real-world capital costs and performance measures to develop a more accurate comparison of the cost of nuclear and renewable power options,” OCAA writes.
The report calculates the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from different sources in 2030 and 2040, with and without the federal government’s 30% clean energy investment tax credit (ITC). It places the unsubsidized costs per megawatt-hour in 2030 at:
• $33 to $51 for onshore wind;
• $54 for utility-scale solar;
• $105 to $113 for offshore wind;
• $214 to $319 for different SMR designs;
• $279 to $307 for conventional nuclear plants.
By 2040, the prices range from $30 for onshore wind and $41 for utility-scale solar to up to $269 for SMRs and $307 for conventional nuclear. SMR pricing falls as low as $137 per MWh with a 30% ITC.
“It remains unclear how this, and the province’s larger nuclear expansion program, will actually be paid for,” Mark Winfield, co-chair of York University’s Sustainable Energy Initiative, told The Energy Mix in an email. “Putting this on the rate base means higher rates for Ontario electricity consumers, even if the costs are as claimed.”
He added that “the potential role of the federal ITC and [Canada] Infrastructure Bank Investment raises serious questions about what should be defined as ‘clean’ energy given the risks involved in this case, in terms of economic and technological viability, safety risks, and unanswered questions regarding waste streams.”
Critics were already questioning whether field experience with four individual SMRs will be enough to drive down production costs from $6.1 billion plus surrounding infrastructure for the first unit to a range of $4.1 to $4.9 billion for the next three, after the estimated price of the project has already ballooned. Now, with New Brunswick scaling back its SMR development plans, “Ontario is taking something of a technological and economic flyer on this, on behalf of everyone else, underwritten by the electricity ratepayers and, ultimately, taxpayers of Ontario,” Winfield wrote. “This is a project that demands serious economic, technological, and environmental scrutiny, and has been subject to virtually none.”
Uranium Sourced from the United States
OPG is also running into concerns with its plan to power the BWRX-300 with enriched uranium supplied by a firm in the U.S. state of New Mexico. When Donald Trump launched his tariff war earlier this year and began muttering about making Canada a 51st state, Premier Doug Ford applied a short-lived tariff to Ontario power sales and referred publicly to cutting exports as a retaliatory measure. Now, the province is proposing to make 1,200 MW of electricity supply dependent on a vendor that could see its price driven up by tariffs, or be compelled to cut off the supply entirely.
“Developing a dependence on another country for our nuclear fuel has always been a concern, and recent events have proven those concerns are justified,” Bob Walker, national director of the Canadian Nuclear Workers’ Council, told the Globe and Mail in February. “The arrangements are probably as robust as they could be under normal circumstances, but the circumstances are no longer normal.”
In an email to the Globe at the time, OPG spokesperson Neal Kelly described the situation as “very fluid”, adding that “we are proactively evaluating potential impacts and will act as the situation arises.”
Kelly did not respond to an email Monday morning asking whether OPG has any concerns about sourcing enriched uranium from the U.S., and whether it has or needs a Plan B.
US loosens some rules for offensive counterspace ops, wargaming
Some decision-making authorities, previously closely held by the president or secretary of defense, have been delegated to US SPACECOM, according to sources, but military space leaders want more freedom to act.
Breaking DEfense, By Theresa Hitchens, on May 12, 2025
WASHINGTON — When the Space Force recently put out a forward-leaning “warfighting” framework, it included an unusually blunt warning for military commanders: ensure the rules of engagement for space operations aren’t too restrictive, or the US will be at a severe disadvantage in the heavens.
That warning was public, but Breaking Defense has learned it comes amid a parallel push by the Space Force and US Space Command (SPACECOM) over the last several years to gain more military decision-making control over the use of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons — decision-making authority that has historically been closely held by the president and/or the secretary of defense.
While delegation of presidential authority with regard to space weapons is obscured by deep secrecy and classification, discussions by Breaking Defense with more than a dozen sources — including former Pentagon and US government civilian officials, retired and current military officials and outside space experts — have revealed that gradual but ground-breaking shifts in military freedom to prosecute war in the heavens have begun to take place in response to growing threats from Russia and, in particular China.
“We have made some changes that delegated some authorities down to Space Command commander under certain circumstances,” a former senior Space Force official said. “But in my view, not enough.”
For example, over the last decade there has been a gradual loosening of the reins on case-by-case determinations about the use of some types of temporary or reversible counterspace actions, such as jamming or lazing, according to a handful of sources. However, these sources did not indicate that there has been any relaxation of the requirement for approval by the president and/or the secretary of defense for a kinetic attack to destroy an enemy satellite……………………….
Changes in delegation of authority sped up following the standup of SPACECOM in 2019, the former senior Space Force official said. And according to three sources close to the debate, there were intense discussions as late as last summer within the Biden administration about delegating authority for the use of offensive satellite attack weapons to SPACECOM.
“OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] Space Policy was engaged in the strongest push I’m aware of to get authorization to use offensive counterspace capabilities delegated down from the [White House] to the [Secretary of Defense] and eventually to” the head of SPACECOM, said another former Pentagon official.
John Plumb, the head of OSD Space Policy under President Joe Biden, did reveal to Breaking Defense one significant move by that administration: allowing joint force planners to include space warfighting in their routine contingency plans and wargames for future conflict. (He would not, however, address the key question of whether destructive, kinetic strikes can be included in those plans.)………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://breakingdefense.com/2025/05/exclusive-us-loosens-some-rules-for-offensive-counterspace-ops-wargaming/
Donald Trump Decouples the United States from Israel
Voltairenet.org , by Thierry Meyssan, 14 May 25
After patiently proposing to Benjamin Netanyahu that he negotiate with the Palestinian resistance and meeting only a stubborn determination to massacre the Palestinians, annex Gaza, southern Lebanon and Syria, and launch a war against Iran, the Trump administration has changed gears. It is now clear to them, as it has been to everyone who has been interested in this region for 80 years, that revisionist Zionists are the enemies of peace and therefore also of Israel.
The main obstacle Donald Trump faces in his peace negotiations, both with Iran and Ukraine, is the role of the “revisionist Zionists” now in power in Israel. [1] Two weeks ago, I presented in detail and with supporting evidence the pressure they are exerting on Washington to derail the talks with Tehran [2].
I did not address in my column on Voltairenet.org their pressure on behalf of the Ukrainian “integral nationalists” [3], which only became public on May 3, with Natan Sharansky’s emphatic statements in support of Volodymyr Zelensky [4]. I have already explained why and how these two groups formed an alliance in 1921 against the Bolsheviks and many Ukrainian Jews, which led to an investigation by the World Zionist Organization and the resignation of Vladimir Jabotinsky from its board of directors.
This affair is today underestimated by Jewish historians who are reluctant to study the massacre of Jews by other Jews. There are, however, exceptions such as the work of Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe [5]. Sharansky himself prevents historians from studying the subject by presiding over the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (the shooting of 33,771 Jews on September 29 and 30, 1941) by the Einsatzgruppen and the “integral nationalists” two weeks after Stepan Bandera’s transfer from Kyiv to Berlin.
And let’s not forget the contacts of the “revisionist Zionists” with Adolf Eichmann until the fall of Berlin by the Red Army on May 2, 1945 [6].
While the then Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, had, at the beginning of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, called on Volodymyr Zelensky to recognize Moscow’s just demands to “denazify Ukraine,” and Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz had declared that, while he was alive, Israel would never give weapons to the “massacres of Ukrainian Jews,” the current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, authorized the Israeli arms industry to export its production to Ukraine.
In 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared: “What if Zelensky was Jewish? This fact does not negate the Nazi elements in Ukraine. I believe Hitler also had Jewish blood. That means absolutely nothing.” The Jewish people, in their wisdom, have said that the most ardent anti-Semites are generally Jews. Every family has its black sheep, as they say.” Yair Lapid then replied: “These remarks are both unforgivable and scandalous, but also a terrible historical error. Jews did not kill each other during the Holocaust. The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of anti-Semitism.” Let’s make no mistake: History is not made up of good or evil communities, but of individuals who, each of them, can behave in different ways. Let’s open our eyes!
Let’s get back to our topic. Donald Trump is president of the United States; a country whose founding myth claims that it was founded by the “Pilgrim Fathers,” who fled the “pharaoh” of England, crossed the Atlantic as the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea, and established a colony in Plymouth, just as the Hebrews founded the “Promised Land.” All Americans celebrate this myth on Thanksgiving Day. Every president of the United States, without exception, from George Washington to Donald Trump himself, has referred to it in their official speeches. The alliance between Washington and Tel Aviv is therefore not debatable. It turns out that the United States, this country where sects proliferate, which celebrates freedom of religion but not freedom of conscience and denounces, without understanding it, French secularism, has a “Christian Zionist” movement. These are Christians who equate biblical Israel with the modern State of Israel. However, this movement voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, and he feels the debt owes him. Once he became president, he appointed Pastor Paula Blanche (also linked to the “Japanese imperialists”) as director of the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative.
Slowly, President Donald Trump is disassociating Israel from Benjamin Netanyahu. Receiving him at the White House while he was the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, he had his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, proclaim that his administration was the most pro-Israeli in history. In doing so, he firmly opposed Netanyahu’s plan to disrupt the peace agreement signed with Hamas and, instead, to military occupation of the Gaza Strip. He went so far as to claim that the US (not Israeli) armies would take “control” of this territory. Noting that his provocations are having no effect on Tel Aviv, President Donald Trump has just taken a decisive step: without warning his Israeli ally, he negotiated a separate peace with Ansar Allah at the very moment that Yemeni movement was bombing Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport………………………………………………………………………………
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote the following day, on May 9: “I have no doubt that, generally speaking, the Israeli people continue to regard themselves as an unwavering ally of the American people—and vice versa.” But this ultranationalist, messianic Israeli government is not an ally of the United States […] We can continue to ignore the number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip—more than 52,000, including approximately 18,000 children—question the credibility of the figures, and resort to every mechanism of repression, denial, apathy, distancing, normalization, and justification. None of this will change the bitter fact: they killed them. Our hands did it. We must not close our eyes. We must wake up and shout loud and clear: stop the war.
In any case, if no one in the United States can question the alliance with Israel, this in no way implies support for the “revisionist Zionists” now in power in Tel Aviv.
Slowly, President Donald Trump is disassociating Israel from Benjamin Netanyahu. Receiving him at the White House while he was the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, he had his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, proclaim that his administration was the most pro-Israeli in history. In doing so, he firmly opposed Netanyahu’s plan to disrupt the peace agreement signed with Hamas and, instead, to military occupation of the Gaza Strip. He went so far as to claim that the US (not Israeli) armies would take “control” of this territory. Noting that his provocations are having no effect on Tel Aviv, President Donald Trump has just taken a decisive step: without warning his Israeli ally, he negotiated a separate peace with Ansar Allah at the very moment that Yemeni movement was bombing Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport.
Reestablishing the division between North and South Yemen, Ansar Allah, led by the Houthi family (hence its pejorative Western nickname, “Houthi gang” or “Houthis”), managed to end the war with the help of Iran, then to rescue Palestinian civilians by bombing Israeli or Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea. The United Nations Security Council never condemned these attacks, only the disruption of the freedom of navigation of ships unrelated to the Gaza conflict. Contemptuous of the United Nations, the United States and the United Kingdom first created a military coalition to respond to Ansar Allah and rescue the Israelis during the massacre of Gazan civilians. They targeted military targets without significant results (all Yemeni military targets being buried underground), then they targeted political figures, collaterally killing many civilians.
The Anglo-Saxons continued to accuse Iran of militarily supporting Ansar Allah, portraying Tehran as a player in the current war. However, General Qassem Soleimani (assassinated on Donald Trump’s orders on January 3, 2020) had helped Ansar Allah reorganize so that it could manufacture its own weapons and continue its war without Iranian help. Although Iran has repeatedly stated that it is no longer involved in Yemen, the Anglo-Saxons still consider Ansar Allah to be a “proxy” for Iran, which is now completely false.
It is now important to understand how Donald Trump views conflicts in the “Broader Middle East.” He intends to forcefully compel the groups waging wars, whether they are right or wrong in these conflicts, to cease their military operations. But he does not want to go to war against either group. Then, he hopes to negotiate compromises to establish just and lasting peace. He therefore had General Qassem Soleimani assassinated in 2020, just after having the caliph of Daesh, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, assassinated. He authorized operations against Ansar Allah and has just ended them when he realized that it was not a terrorist group, but a legitimate political power administering a yet-to-be-recognized state. He authorized arms deliveries to Israel during the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, but began supporting the peace movement within the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), so that today the “revisionist Zionists” no longer have the means to massacre Gazans and are retreating from their siege aimed at starving them.
The separate agreement reached with Ansar Allah must therefore be assessed as a break from Washington’s alignment with Tel Aviv and a step toward the agreement with Tehran. When, in mid-March, Tel Aviv perceived the possible US withdrawal—it had not envisaged a separate peace—it once again escalated its stance and attacked Yemen 131 times.
The US-Israeli Ron Dermer, a close friend of Natan Sharansky with whom he wrote a book, became Israel’s ambassador to Washington and is now Minister of Strategic Affairs. As such, he is primarily responsible for the plans to annex Gaza and massacre the civilian population. Reacting to the separate US-Yemen peace agreement, this revisionist Zionist visited the White House on May 8, where he was received “in a private capacity” by Donald Trump [7]. The encounter went very badly: he tried to tell President Trump what to do. The latter immediately put him in his place.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote the following day, on May 9: “I have no doubt that, generally speaking, the Israeli people continue to regard themselves as an unwavering ally of the American people—and vice versa.” But this ultranationalist, messianic Israeli government is not an ally of the United States […] We can continue to ignore the number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip—more than 52,000, including approximately 18,000 children—question the credibility of the figures, and resort to every mechanism of repression, denial, apathy, distancing, normalization, and justification. None of this will change the bitter fact: they killed them. Our hands did it. We must not close our eyes. We must wake up and shout loud and clear: stop the war.” [8]
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar this week, but will not meet with Benjamin Netanyahu. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also canceled a planned trip to Israel at the same time, reinforcing the president’s message. Reuters revealed on May 8 that Washington, in negotiating with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), was no longer making recognition of Israel a precondition for any deal. [9] If confirmed, this would mean that to recognize that the Jewish state has become a racist Jewish state would no longer be a crime in the West.
In early March, it was announced that President Donald Trump had authorized Adam Boehler, his negotiator for the release of the American hostages, to establish direct contact with Hamas, which is still officially considered a “terrorist organization. “On May 12, this change of attitude was rewarded with the announcement of the release of the American-Israeli, Edan Alexander, kidnapped while carrying weapons, on October 7, 2023. Moreover, in early May, rumors of a possible recognition by the United States of the State of Palestine during Donald Trump’s trip to Riyadh spread like wildfire. In early March, it was announced that President Donald Trump had authorized Adam Boehler, his negotiator for the release of the American hostages, to establish direct contact with Hamas, which is still officially considered a “terrorist organization. “On May 12, this change of attitude was rewarded with the announcement of the release of the American-Israeli, Edan Alexander, kidnapped while carrying weapons, on October 7, 2023. Moreover, in early May, rumors of a possible recognition by the United States of the State of Palestine during Donald Trump’s trip to Riyadh spread like wildfire. https://www.voltairenet.org/article222255.html
False promises, real costs: The nuclear gamble we can’t afford
Beyond the financials, nuclear represents a specific vision of governance; centralised, top-down, and resistant to scrutiny. A small number of well-connected corporations manage most facilities. The civilian sector remains intertwined with military infrastructure. Decision-making processes often exclude community consultation. Most notably, nuclear generates waste that remains hazardous for thousands of years, demanding long-term institutional stability that even the Nuclear Waste Management Organization acknowledges no government can guarantee.
Scotland and Canada must forge an energy future that works
by Ben Beveridge, 11-05-2025 , https://bylines.scot/environment/false-promises-real-costs-the-nuclear-gamble-we-cant-afford/
Nuclear power is staging a quiet comeback. In boardrooms across Scotland and Canada, familiar promises are being repackaged as bold new solutions: reliable baseload electricity, energy security, and climate alignment. But behind the sleek rhetoric, the same truths remain. Nuclear power is still the slowest, most expensive, and least flexible energy option on the table.
Both countries now face pressure to commit to a nuclear future they neither need nor can afford. This isn’t the natural evolution of energy policy. It’s the resurrection of a failing model, defended not on merit, but on legacy interests.
In the UK, projects like Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C have seen cost projections soar, with current estimates exceeding £30bn. Scotland, despite producing 97% of its electricity from renewable sources, remains tied to a UK-wide strategy shaped by Westminster’s nuclear ambitions
In Canada, Ontario’s Darlington refurbishment has grown from C$6bn to more than C$12bn. Saskatchewan and New Brunswick are investing heavily in Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which have yet to prove commercial viability. The Canadian Environmental Law Association has raised significant concerns over the feasibility, safety, and cost of these technologies, yet federal investment continues, often at the expense of grid modernisation and renewable storage.
Nuclear: more expensive, less flexible, needs political intervention
The narrative has shifted from energy independence to climate urgency, but the fundamentals have not. Lazard’s 2023 analysis puts the levelised cost of new nuclear at US$131–204 per megawatt-hour, while utility-scale solar sits at US$26–41, and wind at US$24–47. Nuclear projects frequently exceed ten-year construction timelines. By contrast, wind and solar facilities can be operational within five. Nuclear plants also lack the flexibility modern grids require, locking in oversupply and reducing the effectiveness of variable renewable sources.
Private capital has walked away. No nuclear facility proceeds without government subsidies, price guarantees, or risk backstops. The market has made its judgment. Nuclear survives only through political intervention, not economic logic.
Beyond the financials, nuclear represents a specific vision of governance; centralised, top-down, and resistant to scrutiny. A small number of well-connected corporations manage most facilities. The civilian sector remains intertwined with military infrastructure. Decision-making processes often exclude community consultation. Most notably, nuclear generates waste that remains hazardous for thousands of years, demanding long-term institutional stability that even the Nuclear Waste Management Organization acknowledges no government can guarantee.
Renewables: decentralised, democratic and resilient
In contrast, the model offered by renewables is decentralised, participatory, and adaptive. Community energy projects across Scotland – from the Isle of Eigg to the Outer Hebrides – demonstrate how generation can be local, democratic, and resilient. In Canada, provinces like Quebec and British Columbia have built near-100% clean grids through hydroelectricity, rejecting nuclear while Clean Energy Canada shows generational energy security and affordability.
So why does nuclear persist? The answer lies in its structure. Nuclear development creates concentrated profit centres, contracts for reactor manufacturers, engineering giants, uranium suppliers, and vertically integrated utilities. These stakeholders benefit from centralised generation, not distributed ownership. Regulatory frameworks often entrench their advantages, creating barriers for smaller-scale or community-led projects. The result is a policy environment that protects incumbents rather than enabling transition.
This is not a neutral technological debate. It’s a structural contest between legacy systems and emergent models of energy democracy. The framing may be about climate, but the stakes are about convention, and control.
Scotland and Canada renewable partnership
Scotland and Canada are uniquely positioned to lead an alternative path. Their respective strengths are complementary. A Scotland-Canada renewable partnership, modelled after the North Sea oil and gas collaboration, could drive investment in shared technologies like offshore wind, pumped hydro storage, and smart grid systems. Agencies such as Scottish Enterprise and Scotland Development International already maintain Canadian operations and could broker this cooperation directly.
The Commonwealth presents another opportunity. A Commonwealth Energy Transition Alliance could support shared investment frameworks, model policy design, and collaborative R&D between countries with aligned infrastructure and ambitions. It could also serve as a counterbalance to the lobbying power of the nuclear-industrial complex, directing climate funding towards solutions that scale affordably and equitably.
The choice facing both nations is not nuclear or catastrophe. It is between centralised systems that demand public subsidy and deliver rising costs, versus renewable models that are increasingly faster, cheaper, and community-driven. The facts are clear. The economics are settled. What remains is the political will to choose a future built for the many, not the few.
Scotland and Canada no longer need permission to lead. They need resolve. The nuclear mirage still shimmers, but it’s time to walk towards the real oasis: a clean, democratic energy future, and we have it already.
Trump considers weakening nuclear agency in bid for more power plants.
The draft orders accuse the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of unnecessary
“risk aversion.” The White House is drafting plans to weaken the
independence of the nation’s nuclear safety regulators and relax rules
that protect the public from radiation exposure, moves it says are needed
to jump-start a nuclear power “renaissance,” according to internal
documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
Four draft executive orders circulating in the administration would streamline approvals for new nuclear power plants. The White House contends the current process at the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission is bogged down by excessive safety concerns.
“The NRC does not view its duty as promoting safe, abundant nuclear
energy with regulatory clarity, flexibility and speed but rather insulating
Americans from the most remote risks without regard for the domestic or
geopolitical costs of its risk aversion,” says a draft order directing
“reform” of the agency. It notes that the agency — which is charged
with protecting the American public from nuclear disaster — has approved
only five new reactors since 1978, and only two have been built. There are
94 nuclear reactors operating in the United States.
Washington Post 10th May 2025,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2025/05/09/nuclear-power-plants-nrc-trump-safety/
[SMRs] Trump wants to speed up construction of more NPP, bypass safety regulations
“That’s my number one worry,” said Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a frequent critic of the industry. “We’re talking about new reactor technologies where there’s a lot of uncertainty, and the NRC staff often raise a lot of good technical questions. To short-circuit that process would mean sweeping potential safety issues under the rug.”
The potential actions could include overhauling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and leaning on the U.S. military to deploy new reactors.
By Brad Plumer and Lisa Friedman, Reporting from Washington. Christopher Flavelle contributed reporting. May 9, 2025 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/climate/trump-draft-nuclear-executive-orders.html
The Trump administration is considering several executive orders aimed at speeding up the construction of nuclear power plants to help meet rising electricity demand, according to drafts reviewed by The New York Times.
The draft orders say the United States has fallen behind China in expanding nuclear power and call for a “wholesale revision” of federal safety regulations to make it easier to build new plants. They envision the Department of Defense taking a prominent role in ordering reactors and installing them on military bases.
They would also set a goal of quadrupling the size of the nation’s fleet of nuclear power plants, from nearly 100 gigawatts of electric capacity today to 400 gigawatts by 2050. One gigawatt is enough to power nearly 1 million homes.
“As American development of new nuclear reactor designs has waned, 87 percent of nuclear reactors installed worldwide since 2017 are based on Russian and Chinese designs,” reads one draft order, titled “Ushering In a Nuclear Renaissance.”
“These trends cannot continue,” the order reads. “Swift and decisive action is required to jump-start America’s nuclear renaissance.”
The four draft orders are marked “pre-decisional” and “deliberative.” They are among several potential executive orders on nuclear power that have been circulating but it is not clear which, if any, might be issued, according to a person familiar with the discussions, who spoke on a condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
It also was not immediately clear who had written the draft orders or what stage of internal administration discussions the documents reflected. The White House declined to comment on whether any orders would ultimately be issued.
In one of his first acts in office, President Trump declared a “national energy emergency,” saying that America had inadequate supplies of electricity to meet the country’s growing needs, particularly for data centers that run artificial intelligence systems. While most of Mr. Trump’s actions have focused on boosting fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas, administration officials have also supported nuclear power.
“Our goal is to bring in tens of billions of dollars during this administration in private capital to get reactors built, and I’m highly confident we will achieve that goal,” Chris Wright, the energy secretary, said at a hearing before a House appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday.
In recent years, nuclear power has been attracting growing bipartisan support. Some Democrats endorse it because the plants don’t emit planet-warming greenhouse gases, although environmentalists have raised concerns about radioactive waste and reactor safety. It also gets backing from Republicans who are less concerned about global warming but who say nuclear power plants could strengthen U.S. energy security.
Tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon that have ambitious climate goals have expressed interest in nuclear power to fuel their data centers, since the plants can run 24 hours a day, something wind and solar power can’t do.
Yet building new reactors in the United States has proved enormously difficult. While the nation still has the world’s largest fleet of nuclear power plants, only three new reactors have come online since 1996. Many utilities have been scared off by the high cost. The two most recent reactors built at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia cost $35 billion, double the initial estimates, and arrived seven years behind schedule.
In response, more than a dozen companies have begun developing a new generation of smaller reactors a fraction of the size of those at Vogtle. The hope is that these reactors would have a lower upfront price tag, making them a less risky investment for utilities. That, in turn, could help the industry reduce costs by repeatedly building the same type of reactor.
So far, however, none of these next-generation plants have been built. One of the draft executive orders blames the sluggish pace at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the independent federal agency that oversees reactor safety and must approve new designs before they are built. The draft would order the agency to undertake a “wholesale revision” of its regulations and impose a deadline of 18 months for deciding whether to approve a new reactor.
The draft order also urges the agency to reconsider its safety limits for radiation exposure, saying that current limits are too strict and go beyond what is needed to protect human health. It is unclear whether the president could order sweeping changes at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which Congress established to be independent from the White House. In recent months, Mr. Trump has sought to exert greater authority over independent agencies, setting up a potential showdown in the courts. Some pronuclear groups have said that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is already beginning to streamline its regulations in response to a bipartisan bill passed by Congress last year. But skeptics of nuclear power say they fear that pressure from the White House could cause the agency to cut corners on safety.
“That’s my number one worry,” said Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a frequent critic of the industry. “We’re talking about new reactor technologies where there’s a lot of uncertainty, and the NRC staff often raise a lot of good technical questions. To short-circuit that process would mean sweeping potential safety issues under the rug.”
The draft orders suggest other possible steps, including having the U.S. military use its deep pockets to finance next-generation reactors. One option under consideration would be to designate certain A.I. data centers as “defense critical infrastructure” and allow them to be powered by reactors built on Department of Energy facilities, which may allow projects to avoid review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Another order would call on the secretary of energy to develop a plan to rebuild U.S. supply chains for enriched uranium and other nuclear fuels, which in recent years have largely been imported from Russia.
It remains to be seen whether such steps would be enough to usher in a wave of new reactors, experts said. Under the Biden administration, the Energy Department also made a major push to expand nuclear power in the United States, with some signs of progress. Yet some of the federal offices that led that effort are now being thinned out by firings, buyouts and budget cuts. For instance, the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, which provided nearly $12 billion in loan guarantees to help finance the Vogtle reactors, is poised to lose more than half its staff, according to several current and former employees. Those losses, pronuclear groups have said, could hobble a key program for financing new reactors.
“The big question is how you build up a big order book of new reactors so that costs start coming down and supply chains get built up,” said Joshua Freed, who leads the climate and energy program at Third Way, a center-left think tank. “There are a lot of moving parts that have to come together.”
1 This Month
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