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.
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
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.”
Conflicts of interest in the Trump group’s push to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia.
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The Trump administration is eager to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia. But why? Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Aileen Murphy, M. V. Ramana, April 16, 2019 US government officials appear to be advancing a potential sale of nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia. Late last month, Reuters reported that Energy Secretary Rick Perry approved six secret authorizations for companies to do preliminary work on a Saudi nuclear deal without congressional oversight. The Reuters article followed an interim staff report that US Rep. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, released in February; the report cited whistleblowers who had warned that the White House was trying to rush the transfer of nuclear technology to the Kingdom.
Many experts have expressed concern about the terms of a US-Saudi nuclear cooperation agreement now apparently under negotiation. Some despair at the very idea of transferring such sensitive technology to a regime known to have been involved in the gruesome murder of a prominent US-based journalist and to have led a bloody war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia has attempted to justify its nuclear power program as a way to shift its electrical system away from fossil fuels, in part because of climate change concerns and in part because it is economically useful for the Kingdom to sell its oil and gas on the international market, rather than use them to generate electricity. But for sun-baked Saudi Arabia, the economical and obvious switch is to solar energy, which also doesn’t result in carbon emissions and can be used to reduce domestic consumption of oil and gas. The limited efforts in installing solar power capacity on the part of the Saudi government suggest that climate action and economics may not be the driving motivations for its extensive nuclear energy plan. Indeed, members of the Saudi regime have, on other occasions, made it clear that their interests in nuclear energy derive from the idea that it would help them acquire the capability to make nuclear weapons and match Iran, whose regional status is seen to have risen as a result of its uranium enrichment program, even though it is now apparently limited by the Iran nuclear deal. The contrast between Saudi Arabia’s solar potential and its focus on nuclear power raises a question: Why is the Trump administration so eager to provide nuclear technology to such a questionable partner? We offer some tentative answers to this question and argue that it would be best for the United States to stop trying to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia, and to use its considerable diplomatic capacity to encourage other countries to do the same. Outside inducement, inside interest. Despite President Trump’s outspoken interest in maintaining a close relationship with the Saudi leadership, the White House is not seeking a Saudi nuclear agreement entirely on its own volition. It is also responding to a major lobbying effort. In February, representatives from several nuclear energy firms, including NuScale, TerraPower, Westinghouse, and General Electric, met with President Trump reportedly with the aim of having the president “highlight the role US nuclear developers can play in providing power to other countries.” The motivation for nuclear reactor suppliers is understandable. Thanks in part to the multibillion-dollar cost of reactors, the nuclear energy market is slim. One can literally count the number of new reactor construction projects starting each year since 2010 on the fingers of one hand. Westinghouse, the leading company among those that lobbied Trump, has not signed a new reactor contact in more than a decade. The Middle East has been an especially competitive market for companies interested in building reactors in the Kingdom. If any reactors are sold, it will only be with the help of high-level support, probably involving national governments or even heads of state. But the effort to sell US nuclear power plants has also garnered some new players: companies involving ex-members of the armed forces. For about two years now, there have been reports of former national security advisor Michael Flynn playing an important role in trying to start nuclear exports to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia. More recently, a host of articles have uncovered the role of the newly established IP3 Corporation (derived from International Peace, Power, and Prosperity), a company dominated by a number of retired military officials. The extent of IP3’s lobbying became apparent only after the House Oversight Committee report was published. The influence trail is murky, and the various conflicts of interest within the Trump administration render the picture even murkier. One example is the case of Westinghouse and Jared Kushner, son in law of and senior advisor to President Donald Trump and a close friend of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Westinghouse is the largest nuclear reactor supplier in the United States, but, thanks to cost escalations in multiple projects involving its AP1000 nuclear reactor design, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017. It was then purchased by the Canadian company Brookfield Business Partners. Brookfield Business Partners is a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management Inc., which reached a deal in August 2018 with the Kushner family’s real estate company to lease a highly unprofitable building in New York. The Kushner company had purchased 666 Fifth Avenue in New York for $1.8 billion in 2007, just before the property markets collapsed. The company had been trying for years to offload this debt. Brookfield’s deal might be just a coincidence, but the timing and the earlier foray into the nuclear business raise obvious conflict of interest questions………. Three reasons to question. Three aspects of the proposed sale of nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia demand attention. The first, which has received much media attention, involves the opaque tangle of shady talks and negotiations between the Trump administration and the Kingdom, in the realm of nuclear energy and in other areas. Second, it is clear that nuclear energy makes little economic sense for Saudi Arabia, suggesting that there are other motives for its nuclear power program. Third, one of these motives need no longer be the subject of speculation: Saudi Arabia’s leaders have clearly stated their interest in potentially developing nuclear weapons. The acquisition of nuclear power and associated technology could well aid that process. Given these questions, neither the United States nor any other country should be exporting nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia. This will not just be in the interest of the United States, but also in the economic interest of the Saudis. To the extent that there is concern that other countries like Russia and China might step in and sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia, the obvious corollary is that the United States should use its considerable diplomatic capacity to discourage such efforts. Success is, of course, not guaranteed, but not trying is the surest way to fail. https://thebulletin.org/2019/04/the-trump-administration-is-eager-to-sell-nuclear-reactors-to-saudi-arabia-but-why/ |
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Close the US military bases in Asia!
The US acts as if Japan needs to be defended against China. Let’s have a look. During the past 1,000 years, during which time China was the region’s dominant power for all but the last 150 years, how many times did China attempt to invade Japan? If you answered zero, you are correct. China did not attempt to invade Japan on a single occasion.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, Swiss Standpoint, Sun, 04 May 2025, https://www.sott.net/article/499470-Close-the-US-military-bases-in-Asia
(2 May 2025) President Donald Trump is again loudly complaining that the US military bases in Asia are too costly for the US to bear. As part of the new round of tariff negotiations with Japan and Korea,1 Trump is calling on Japan and Korea to pay for stationing the US troops. Here’s a much better idea: close the bases and return the US servicemen to the US.
Donald Trump implies that the US is providing a great service to Japan and Korea by stationing 50,000 troops in Japan and nearly 30,000 in Korea. Yet these countries do not need the US to defend themselves. They are wealthy and can certainly provide their own defense. Far more importantly, diplomacy can ensure the peace in northeast Asia far more effectively and far less expensively than US troops.
The US acts as if Japan needs to be defended against China. Let’s have a look. During the past 1,000 years, during which time China was the region’s dominant power for all but the last 150 years, how many times did China attempt to invade Japan? If you answered zero, you are correct. China did not attempt to invade Japan on a single occasion.
You might quibble. What about the two attempts in 1274 and 1281, roughly 750 years ago? It’s true that when the Mongols temporarily ruled China between 1271 and 1368, the Mongols twice sent expeditionary fleets to invade Japan, and both times were defeated by a combination of typhoons (known in Japanese lore as the Kamikaze winds) and by Japanese coastal defenses.
Japan, on the other hand, made several attempts to attack or conquer China. In 1592, the arrogant and erratic Japanese military leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi launched an invasion of Korea with the goal of conquering Ming China. He did not get far, dying in 1598 without even having subdued Korea. In 1894-1895, Japan invaded and defeated China in the Sino-Japanese war, taking Taiwan as a Japanese colony. In 1931, Japan invaded northeast China (Manchuria) and created the Japanese colony of Manchukuo. In 1937, Japan invaded China, starting World War II in the Pacific region.
Nobody thinks that Japan is going to invade China today, and there is no rhyme, reason, or historical precedent to believe that China is going to invade Japan. Japan has no need for the US military bases to protect itself from China.
The same is true of China and Korea. During the past 1,000 years, China never invaded Korea, except on one occasion: when the US threatened China. China entered the war in late 1950 on the side of North Korea to fight the US troops advancing northward towards the Chinese border. At the time, US General Douglas MacArthur recklessly recommended attacking China with atomic bombs. MacArthur also proposed to support Chinese nationalist forces, then based in Taiwan, to invade the Chinese mainland. President Harry Truman, thank God, rejected MacArthur’s recommendations.
South Korea needs deterrence against North Korea, to be sure, but that would be achieved far more effectively and credibly through a regional security system including China, Japan, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, than through the presence of the US, which has repeatedly stoked North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and military build-up, not diminished it.
In fact, the US military bases in East Asia are really for the US projection of power, not for the defense of Japan or Korea. This is even more reason why they should be removed. Though the US claims that its bases in East Asia are defensive, they are understandably viewed by China and North Korea as a direct threat – for example, by creating the possibility of a decapitation strike, and by dangerously lowering the response times for China and North Korea to a US provocation or some kind of misunderstanding.
Russia vociferously opposed NATO in Ukraine for the same justifiable reasons. NATO has frequently intervened in US-backed regime-change operations and has placed missile systems dangerously close to Russia. Indeed, just as Russia feared, NATO has actively participated in the Ukraine War, providing armaments, strategy, intelligence, and even programming and tracking for missile strikes deep inside of Russia.
Note that Trump is currently obsessed with two small port facilities in Panama owned by a Hong Kong company, claiming that China is threatening US security (!), and wants the facilities sold to an American buyer. The US on the other hand surrounds China not with two tiny port facilities but with major US military bases in Japan, South Korea, Guam, the Philippines, and the Indian Ocean near to China’s international sea lanes.
The best strategy for the superpowers is to stay out of each other’s lanes. China and Russia should not open military bases in the Western Hemisphere, to put it mildly. The last time that was tried, when the Soviet Union placed nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962, the world nearly ended in nuclear annihilation. (See Martin Sherwin’s remarkable book, “Gambling with Armageddon” for the shocking details on how close the world came to nuclear Armageddon). Neither China nor Russia shows the slightest inclination to do so today, despite all the provocations of facing US bases in their own neighborhoods.
Trump is looking for ways to save money – an excellent idea given that the US federal budget is hemorrhaging $2 trillion dollars a year, more than 6% of US GDP. Closing the US overseas military bases would be an excellent place to start.
Trump even seemed to point that way at the start of his second term, but the Congressional Republicans have called for increases, not decreases, in military spending. Yet with America’s 750 or so overseas military bases in around 80 countries, it’s high time to close these bases, pocket the saving, and return to diplomacy. Getting the host countries to pay for something that doesn’t help them or the US is a huge drain of time, diplomacy, and resources, both for the US and the host countries.
The US should make a basic deal with China, Russia, and other powers. “You keep your military bases out of our neighborhood, and we’ll keep our military bases out of yours.” Basic reciprocity among the major powers would save trillions of dollars of military outlays over the coming decade and, more importantly, would push the Doomsday Clock back from 89 seconds to nuclear Armageddon.2
Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia raises the prospect of US nuclear cooperation with the kingdom
By ASSOCIATED PRESS, Daily Mail, 10 May 2025
WASHINGTON (AP) – Saudi Arabia wants U.S. help developing its own civil nuclear program, and the Trump administration says it is “very excited” at the prospect. U.S.-Saudi cooperation in building reactors for nuclear power plants in the kingdom could shut the Chinese and Russians out of what could be a high-dollar partnership for the American nuclear industry.
Despite that eagerness, there are obstacles, including fears that helping the Saudis fulfill their long-standing desire to enrich their own uranium as part of that partnership would open new rounds of nuclear proliferation and competition. Saudi Arabia’s pursuit of a nuclear agreement is likely to play into the ever-evolving bargaining on regional security issues involving the U.S., Iran and Israel.
This coming week, Republican President Donald Trump will make his first trip to Saudi Arabia of his second term. Here´s a look at key issues involved in the Saudi request…………………………………………………………………………………………
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman also is pushing to build up Saudi Arabia’s mining and processing of its own minerals. That includes Saudi reserves of uranium, a fuel for nuclear reactors.
For the Trump administration, any deal with Iran that lets Tehran keep its own nuclear program or continue its own enrichment could increase Saudi pressure for the same.
That’s even though Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have toned down their enmity toward Iran in recent years and are supporting the U.S. efforts to limit Iran´s nuclear program peacefully.
For the U.S., any technological help it gives the Saudis as they move toward building nuclear reactors would be a boon for American companies…………………………………..
“Without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we would follow suit as soon as possible,” Prince Mohammed said in 2018, at a time of higher tension between Arab states and Iran.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states stress better relations and diplomacy with Iran now. But Prince Mohammed’s comments – and other Saudi officials said similar – have left open the possibility that nuclear weapons are a strategic goal of the Saudis.
The Saudis long have pushed for the U.S. to build a uranium enrichment facility in the kingdom as part of any nuclear cooperation between the two countries. That facility could produce low-enriched uranium for civilian nuclear reactors. But without enough controls, it could also churn out highly enriched uranium for nuclear bombs.
Trump administration officials cite the Saudis’ desire to make use of their country´s uranium deposits. The kingdom has spent tens of millions of dollars, with Chinese assistance, to find and develop those deposits. But the uranium ore that it has identified so far would be “severely uneconomic” to develop, the intergovernmental Nuclear Energy Agency says.
It has been decades since there has been any state-sanctioned transfer of that kind of technology to a nonnuclear-weapon state, although a Pakistani-based black-market network provided enrichment technology to Iran, North Korea, Libya and possibly others about 20 years ago, Robert Einhorn noted for the Brookings Institute last year.
Allowing Saudi Arabia – or any other additional country – to host an enrichment facility would reverse long-standing U.S. policy. It could spur more nuclear proliferation among U.S. allies and rivals, Einhorn wrote………………………………….
After Wright’s trip, some Israelis expressed their opposition to allowing Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium, and Iran and Saudi Arabia are both carefully watching the other’s talks with the U.S. on their nuclear issues…………………………
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-14698407/Trumps-trip-Saudi-Arabia-raises-prospect-US-nuclear-cooperation-kingdom.html
Iran calls latest nuclear talks with US ‘difficult’ but both sides agree negotiations will continue
By CNN, May 12, https://www.9news.com.au/world/us-iran-nuclear-talks-iran-calls-latest-nuclear-talks-difficult-but-both-sides-agree-negotiations-will-continue/0d7dc1d5-72da-4a91-a356-4676ac116ea8
The latest round of high-stakes nuclear talks between Iran and the US have ended, with Tehran calling them difficult but with both sides agreeing to further negotiations.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei confirmed on X on Sunday that the talks had concluded, saying they were “difficult but useful to better understand each other’s positions and to find reasonable & realistic ways to address the differences”.
A senior Trump administration official gave a more positive assessment, telling CNN the discussions “were again both direct and indirect” and lasted over three hours, calling them encouraging.
“Agreement was reached to move forward with the talks to continue working through technical elements,” the official said, adding that the US side was “encouraged by today’s outcome” and looked forward to their next meeting, “which will happen in the near future”.
No date has been agreed for the next round although Baqaei said it would be announced by mediator Oman.
The talks on Sunday were aimed at addressing Tehran’s nuclear program and lifting sanctions
That they are happening at all is something of a breakthrough – the talks are the highest-level in years – but signs of firm progress are slim.
Both countries have expressed a willingness to resolve their disputes through diplomacy. A central issue remains Iran’s demand to continue enriching uranium for its nuclear program, which is insists is peaceful, something the US calls a “red line.”
US President Donald Trump, who is headed to the Middle East next week, has threatened that the US would resort to military strikes against Iranian nuclear sites, with Israel’s help, should Tehran fail to reach a deal with its interlocutors.
The Iranian delegation was led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who said before the talks got underway that the US side “holds contradictory positions which is one of the issues in our negotiations”.
“We have been clear about our boundaries,” Araghchi added, according to the Fars news agency.
Iranian officials told CNN on Saturday that recent talks with the US were “not genuine” from the American side. The Iranian source also reiterated that allowing uranium enrichment on Iranian soil is Iran’s “definite red line” in the negotiations.
US special envoy Steve Witkoff, who has been heading the American side, warned that if this session of talks were not productive, “then they won’t continue and we’ll have to take a different route”.
Speaking to Breitbart, Witkoff outlined the US’ expectations for the talks, including on the country’s uranium enrichment program.
“An enrichment program can never exist in the state of Iran ever again. That’s our red line. No enrichment,” he said.
Iran has said it will not surrender its capability to enrich uranium. The country has long insisted it does not want a nuclear weapon and that its program is for energy purposes.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, warned last month that Iran was “not far” from possessing a nuclear bomb.
“It’s like a puzzle. They have the pieces, and one day they could eventually put them together,” Grossi told French newspaper Le Monde.
Lawsuit Compels Nationwide Public Review of Plutonium Bomb Core Production
9 May 25, https://nukewatch.org/lawsuit-compels-nationwide-public-review-of-plutonium-bomb-core-production
AIKEN, S.C. — Today the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency within the Department of Energy, published a formal Notice of Intent in the Federal Register to complete a nationwide “programmatic environmental impact statement” on the expanded production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores. Pits are the essential radioactive triggers of modern nuclear weapons. The NNSA is aggressively seeking their expanded production for new-design nuclear weapons for the new nuclear arms race.
The South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP) successfully represented the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition and Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch and Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment in a legal challenge to NNSA’s attempt to improperly jump start dual site pit production. On September 30, 2024, United States District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis ruled that the NNSA had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to properly consider alternatives before proceeding with its plan to produce at least 30 pits per year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and at least 50 pits per year at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.
The Court found that NNSA’s plans for pit production had fundamentally changed from its earlier analyses which had not considered simultaneous pit production at two sites. Co-plaintiffs argued that these changes required a reevaluation of alternatives under NEPA, which Defendants failed to undertake prior to moving forward and spending tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars.
As a result of this ruling and a subsequent settlement, the Defendants are now required to newly analyze pit production at a nationwide programmatic level. This means undertaking a thorough analysis of the impacts of pit production at NNSA sites throughout the United States, including the generation of new radioactive wastes and their uncertain future disposal. Under NEPA, this will provide the opportunity for public scrutiny on NNSA’s aggressive production plans. In addition, NNSA is enjoined from building certain facilities and introducing nuclear materials to the plutonium pit plant at SRS until it completes the PEIS.
Virtual public hearings to determine the needed scope of the programmatic environmental impact statement are scheduled for May 27 and 28. The public comment period for scoping ends July 14 and can be emailed to PitPEIS@nnsa.doe.gov. NNSA expects to complete its draft PEIS within a year, after which in-person public hearings will be held in Livermore, CA; Santa Fe, NM; Kansas City, MO; Aiken, SC; and Washington, DC.
As an indicator of the potential importance of this PEIS process, SCELP and co-plaintiffs have been asked by the Nobel Peace Prize Center in Oslo, Norway, to present (by video) on “how it is possible to do activism inside the court room” on August 6, the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing. Also, in recognition of its astute legal strategy, SCELP will be receiving an award from the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability comprised of some three dozen public interest organizations (including three of the lawsuit’s co-plaintiff) at a ceremony in Washington, DC, on June 10th.
As background, plutonium pits are the fissile cores of nuclear weapons. The Los Alamos Lab was assigned a mission of limited pit production after a 1989 FBI raid investigating environmental crimes abruptly stopped production at the notorious Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, CO. In 2018 the NNSA decided to pursue pit production at both LANL and SRS. The agency erroneously claimed that an outdated 2008 programmatic environmental impact statement that did not consider simultaneous production was sufficient legal justification under the National Environmental Policy Act.
No future pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing, extensively tested nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead, future production is only for speculative new-design nuclear weapons that can’t be tested because of an international testing moratorium, thereby perhaps eroding confidence in stockpile reliability. Or, instead, the first new design nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War could prompt the U.S. to return to full-scale testing, which would have severe national and international consequences.
Independent experts have found that plutonium pits have reliable lifetimes of at least 100 years (their average age is now around 42). Moreover, at least 15,000 pits are already stored at the NNSA’s Pantex Plant near Amarillo, TX. Expanded plutonium pit production will cost taxpayers more than $60 billion over the next thirty years.
The independent Government Accountability Office (GAO) has repeatedly pointed that the NNSA has no credible cost estimates for its largest and most complex program ever, nor an “Integrated Master Schedule” between the two production sites. Further, the Department of Energy and the NNSA have been on the GAO’s “High Risk List” for project mismanagement and waste of taxpayers’ money since 1991. All of these issues and the basic need or not for expanded plutonium pit production are ripe for analysis and public comment in the now required programmatic environmental impact statement.
Ben Cunningham, SCELP’s lead attorney in this case, declared the following: “We implore the public to participate fully in the PEIS process—from attending the scoping hearings to commenting on the draft PEIS. The vast expansion of the nuclear arsenal that is facilitated by the increase in pit production will be exorbitantly expensive, will create radioactive wastes that can last for thousands of years, and the new weapons produced by this expansion could ultimately endanger hundreds of millions of lives. Please weigh in and express your concerns to the decisionmakers.”
Queen Quet, elected Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, said: “I am thankful to SCELP and the rest of our national team that stood together to ensure that we protect our communities not only today but also for future generations. The type of compliance that we have fought for is even more crucial given the current environmental and political climate. I am looking forward to us being able to engage in the next phase of this process so that we can ensure that the waters that reach the Sea Islands will be safe.”
Tom Clements, director of Savannah River Site Watch, noted, “Given that we are armed with a decisive federal court ruling that requires the preparation of the PEIS by NNSA, we expect a thorough examination of all environmental and health impacts of pit production at all impacted sites. The draft PEIS must include an analysis of plutonium aging and pit reuse, the proliferation risks of new U.S. warheads, plans for plutonium transportation and the uncertain future disposal of plutonium wastes in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico.”
“Prior to our lawsuit, the agency failed to include other sites involved in future plutonium pit production in its required analyses, chief among them the Lawrence Livermore Lab in California, the Kansas City Plant in Missouri, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The judge clearly saw these violations and ordered the NNSA to complete the programmatic nationwide analysis which should have been done from the outset. This is a victory for public involvement. It will hopefully result in credible alternatives that are more protective of the environment and the impacted communities,” said Scott Yundt, Executive Director at Tri-Valley CAREs, in Livermore, CA.
Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico commented, “This programmatic environmental impact statement that we fought long and hard for empowers citizens to tell policy makers what they think about decisions being made in their name. Let them know what you think about the $2 trillion ‘modernization’ program to keep nuclear weapons forever while domestic programs are gutted to pay for tax cuts for the rich. We should demand that this required process under the National Environmental Policy Act becomes a public referendum on the new nuclear arms race and the hollowing out of our society.”
Trump tightens control of independent agency overseeing nuclear safety
Geoff Brumfiel, NPR. May 9, 2025
The Trump administration has tightened its control over the independent agency responsible for overseeing America’s nuclear reactors, and it is considering an executive order that could further erode its autonomy, two U.S. officials who declined to speak publicly because they feared retribution told NPR.
Going forward, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must send new rules regarding reactor safety to the White House, where they will be reviewed and possibly edited. That is a radical departure for the watchdog agency, which historically has been among the most independent in the government. The new procedures for White House review have been in the works for months, but they were just recently finalized and are now in full effect.
NPR has also seen a draft of an executive order “ordering the reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.” The draft calls for reducing the size of the NRC’s staff, conducting a “wholesale revision” of its regulations in coordination with the White House and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, shortening the time to review reactor designs and possibly loosening the current, strict standards for radiation exposure.
“It’s the end of the independence of the agency,” says Allison Macfarlane, director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Canada who was nominated by President Obama to serve as Chair of the NRC from 2012 to 2014. Macfarlane believes the changes will make Americans less safe.
“If you aren’t independent of political and industry influence, then you are at risk of an accident, frankly,” Macfarlane says.
The draft executive order was marked pre-decisional and deliberative. It was one of several draft orders seen by NPR that appeared to be aimed at promoting the nuclear industry. Other draft orders called for the construction of small modular nuclear reactors at military bases, and for the development of advanced nuclear fuels. Axios first reported on the existence of the executive orders.
It remains unclear which, if any, will be signed by President Trump.
In a statement, the NRC said it was working with the White House “as part of our commitment to make NRC regulatory processes more efficient. We have no additional details at this time.”
“The President of the United States is the head of the executive branch,” a spokesperson for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget wrote to NPR in an email. “The President issued an independent agencies executive order which aligns with the president’s power given to him by the constitution. This idea has been talked about for nearly 40 years and should not be a surprise.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Going nuclear
The NRC has been working to respond to the new law, but it has historically operated largely outside the purview of the White House. That began to change with an executive order signed by the president in February that called for independent agencies to begin reporting directly to the White House Office of Management and Budget………………………………………………………..
Only after the rule is finalized will the commissioners’ votes be made public. It was not immediately clear how the public would know whether the White House had changed a safety rule for a nuclear reactor.
Some questioned what the White House could gain from reviewing abstruse rules for nuclear safety.
“Who has the technical knowledge to actually do a substantive review?” asks Edwin Lyman, a nuclear physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit that has been critical of the nuclear industry. “To have political appointees meddling in these technical decisions is just a recipe for confusion and chaos.” https://www.npr.org/2025/05/09/nx-s1-5392382/trump-nuclear-regulatory-commission-watchdog-safety-radiation
Trump administration considers orders expediting nuclear plant construction, NYT reports.
By Reuters, May 10, 2025,
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trump-administration-considers-orders-expediting-nuclear-plant-construction-nyt-2025-05-09/
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is considering several executive orders to expedite the construction of nuclear power plants, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing drafts it has reviewed.
Why Is US Congress Silent on the Manmade Nightmare It Is Enabling in Gaza? -Bernie Sanders
With Israel having cut off all aid, what we are seeing now is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death by the denial of basic necessities. This is methodical, it is intentional, it is the stated policy of the Netanyahu government.
Bernie Sanders, May 08, 2025 , https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/congress-silent-gaza
I want to say a few words about an issue that people all over the world are thinking about—are appalled by—but for some strange reason gets very little discussion here in the nation’s capital or in the halls of Congress. And that is the horrific humanitarian disaster that is unfolding in Gaza.
Thursday marks 68 days and counting since ANY humanitarian aid was allowed into Gaza. For more than nine weeks, Israel has blocked all supplies: no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel.
Hundreds of truckloads of lifesaving supplies are waiting to enter Gaza, sitting just across the border, but are denied entry by Israeli authorities.
There is no ambiguity here: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government talks openly about using humanitarian aid as a weapon. Defense Minister Israel Katz said, “Israel’s policy is clear: No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers.”
Starving children to death as a weapon of war is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, the Foreign Assistance Act, and basic human decency. Civilized people do not starve children to death.
What is going on in Gaza is a war crime, committed openly and in broad daylight, and continuing every single day.
There are 2.2 million people who live in Gaza. Today, these people are trapped. The borders are sealed. And Israel has pushed the population into an ever-smaller area.
With Israel having cut off all aid, what we are seeing now is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death by the denial of basic necessities. This is methodical, it is intentional, it is the stated policy of the Netanyahu government.
Without fuel, there is no ability to pump fresh water, leaving people increasingly desperate, unable to find clean water to drink, wash with, or cook properly. Disease is once again spreading in Gaza.
Most of the bakeries in Gaza have now shut down, having run out of fuel and flour. The few remaining community kitchens are also shutting down. Most people are now surviving on scarce canned goods, often a single can of beans or some lentils, shared between a family once a day.
The United Nations reports that more than 2 million people out of a population of 2.2 million face severe food shortages.
The starvation hits children hardest. At least 65,000 children now show symptoms of malnutrition, and dozens have already starved to death.
Malnutrition rates increased 80% in March, the last month for which data is available, after Netanyahu began the siege, but the situation has severely deteriorated since then.
UNICEF reported Wednesday that “the situation is getting worse every day,” and that they are treating about 10,000 children for severe malnutrition.
Without adequate nutrition or access to clean water, many children will die of easily preventable diseases, killed by something as simple as diarrhea.
For the tens of thousands of injured people in Gaza, particularly the countless burn victims from Israeli bombing, their wounds cannot heal without adequate food and clean water. Left to fester, infections will kill many who should have survived.
With no infant formula, and with malnourished mothers unable to breastfeed, many infants are also at severe risk of death. Those that survive will bear the scars of their suffering for the rest of their lives.
And with little medicine available, easily treatable illnesses and chronic diseases like diabetes or heart disease can be a death sentence in Gaza.
What is going on there is not some terrible earthquake, it is not a hurricane, it is not a storm. What is going on in Gaza today is a manmade nightmare. And nothing can justify this.
What is happening in Gaza will be a permanent stain on the world’s collective conscience. History will never forget that we allowed this to happen and, for us here in the United States, that we, in fact, enabled this atrocity.
There is no doubt that Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this terrible war with its barbaric October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages.
The International Criminal Court was right to indict Yahya Sinwar and other leaders of Hamas as war criminals for those atrocities.
Clearly, Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas.
But Netanyahu’s extremist government has not just waged war against Hamas. Instead, they have waged an all-out barbaric war of annihilation against the Palestinian people.
They have intentionally made life unlivable in Gaza.
Israel, up to now, has killed more than 52,000 people and injured more than 118,000—60% of whom are women, children, and the elderly. More than 15,000 children have been killed.
Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment has damaged or destroyed two-thirds of all structures in Gaza, including 92% of the housing units. Most of the population now is living in tents or other makeshift structures.
The healthcare system in Gaza has been essentially destroyed. Most of the territory’s hospitals and primary healthcare facilities have been bombed.
Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been totally devastated, including almost 90% of water and sanitation facilities. Most of the roads have been destroyed.
Gaza’s education system has been obliterated. Hundreds of schools have been bombed, as has every single one of Gaza’s 12 universities.
And there has been no electricity in Gaza for 18 months.
Given this reality, nobody should have any doubts that Netanyahu is a war criminal. Just like his counterparts in Hamas, he has a massive amount of innocent blood on his hands.
And now Netanyahu and his extremist ministers have a new plan: to indefinitely reoccupy all of Gaza, flatten the few buildings that are still standing, and force the entire population of 2.2 million people into a single tiny area, where hired U.S. security contractors will distribute rations to the survivors.
Israeli officials are quite open about the goal here: to force Palestinians to leave for other countries “in line with President [Donald] Trump’s vision for Gaza,” as one Israeli official said this week.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said this week that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” and that its population will “leave in great numbers.”
For many in Netanyahu’s extremist government, this has been the plan all along: It’s called ethnic cleansing.
This would be a terrible tragedy, no matter where or why it was happening. But what makes this tragedy so much worse for us in America is that it is our government, the United States government, that is absolutely complicit in creating and sustaining this humanitarian disaster.
Last year alone, the United States provided $18 billion in military aid to Israel. This year, the Trump administration has approved $12 billion more in bombs and weapons.
And for months, Trump has offered blanket support for Netanyahu. More than that, he has repeatedly said that the United States will actually take over Gaza after the war, that the Palestinians will be pushed out, and that the U.S. will redevelop it into what Trump calls “the Riviera of the Middle East,” a playground for billionaires.
This war has killed or injured more than 170,000 people in Gaza. It has cost American taxpayers well over $20 billion in the last year. And right now, as we speak, thousands of children are starving to death. And the U.S. president is actively encouraging the ethnic cleansing of over 2 million people.
Given that reality, one might think that there would be a vigorous discussion right here in the Senate: Do we really want to spend billions of taxpayer dollars starving children in Gaza? You tell me why spending billions of dollars to support Netanyahu’s war and starving children in Gaza is a good idea. I’d love to hear it.
But we are not having that debate. And let me suggest to you why I think we are not having that debate.
That is because we have a corrupt campaign finance system that allows the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to set the agenda here in Washington.
In the last election cycle, AIPAC’s PAC and Super PAC spent nearly $127 million combined.
And the fact is that, if you are a member of Congress and you vote against Netanyahu’s war in Gaza, AIPAC is there to punish you with millions of dollars in advertisements to see that you’re defeated.
One might think that in a democracy there would be a vigorous debate on an issue of such consequence. But because of our corrupt campaign finance system, people are literally afraid to stand up. If they do, suddenly you will have all kinds of ads coming in to your district to defeat you.
Sadly, I must confess, that this political corruption works. Many of my colleagues will privately express their horror at Netanyahu’s war crimes, but will do or say very little publicly about it.
History will not forgive our complicity in this nightmare. The time is long overdue for us to end our support for Netanyahu’s destruction of the Palestinian people. We must not put another nickel into Netanyahu’s war machine. We must demand an immediate cease-fire, a surge in humanitarian aid, the release of the hostages, and the rebuilding of Gaza—not for billionaires to enjoy their Riviera there—but rebuilding Gaza for the Palestinian people.
‘It’s deceitful’: Critics slam owners of TMI Unit 2 for not reporting fire at plant
Penn Live, By Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com, May. 08, 2025
Accidents can happen.
But when they happen at a nuclear power plant, who gets told, and when?
That’s a question that some neighbors of the still-shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power stations are asking after recent disclosures about a small fire at the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor building this winter.
The owners of Unit 2 – the scene of the notorious March 1979 partial meltdown – have received a “non-cited violation” from federal regulators for the fire that broke out at its reactor building on Feb. 11.
The fire got its first public disclosure through a May 2 posting on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s public library.
No one was hurt in the incident, in which a partition surrounding a worksite at the crippled plant’s ongoing deconstruction ignited.
And according to the NRC’s inspection report, there were no releases of radiation associated with it.
Overall, and importantly, the inspection report concludes, the incident itself was one of “very low safety significance.”
But the fact the fire was not publicly reported in real time is raising some alarm bells with some of the plant’s critics.
Neither plant owners TMI-2 Solutions nor federal or state regulators put out a real-time public notice about the incident.
It also wasn’t briefed at a March meeting of a community advisory panel established specifically “to enhance open communication, public involvement and education about the… decommissioning project,” according to two people who attended that session.
“It’s not only tone-deaf. It’s deceitful, because they know how the public feels about it,” said Joyce Corradi, a Lower Swatara Township resident who 45 years ago was a founding member of Concerned Mothers’ and Women, a grassroots group concerned about the accident.
To be clear, TMI-2 Solutions wasn’t exactly hiding the situation.
The company did make same-day courtesy calls to “appropriate stakeholders” including the NRC, the state Department of Environmental Protection …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
“Constellation Energy does not own Three Mile Island Unit 2, but anything that happens at Unit 1 can be influenced by accidents at Unit 2,” Stilp said.
“The best solution is not to restart Unit 1, so that there will never be a chance that a nuclear incident will occur there.”
And the lack of full public disclosure infuriated others.
“It undermines confidence in their ability to communicate during a (bigger) incident or accident,” said Eric Epstein, longtime leader of Three Mile Island Alert.
“This is how we had the (1979) accident in the first place,” said Corradi, who co-founded the women’s group after the partial meltdown. “A lack of checking out the details and doing things safely.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The Stakes of Donald Trump’s Negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
First, the United States, faithful to Trump’s Art of the Deal technique, threatened Iran while trying to placate it. International relations are not governed by the same rules as business. Giving in to threats is a sign of weakness that the Iranians could not accept in these negotiations.
by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network | Paris (France) | 29 April 2025
The general public is completely unaware of the real stakes in the negotiations between Washington and Tehran. This article presents a situation in which lies have been piling up over three decades, making any progress particularly difficult. Contrary to popular belief, the nuclear issue in Iran is not whether Tehran will acquire an atomic bomb, but whether it will be able to help Palestine without resorting to weapons.
month and a half ago, I announced that even before concluding peace in Ukraine, President Donald Trump would open negotiations with Iran [1]. As usual, commentators steeped in Joe Biden’s ideology showered me with sarcasm, while my colleagues, specialists in international affairs, noted my observations [2].
The difference between the two lay in their understanding of the negotiations in Ukraine. For the former, it was Donald Trump’s revenge against Volodymyr Zelensky, or a genuflection before Vladimir Putin. For the latter, it was, on the contrary, a desire for peace with Russia in order to devote US resources to its economic recovery.
It follows that the two sides approach the Iranian issue differently. For the former, it is a matter of continuing the chaos that began during the first term with the withdrawal from the nuclear agreement (JCPOA). Conversely, for the latter, it is a desire for peace with Iran, given that it is the only regional power that supports the resistance to Israel.
In early March 2024, President Donald Trump sent a letter to the leader of the Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The existence of this document was mentioned by the author himself during his speech to Congress on March 4, and then debated in the press. According to Sky News Arabia, which read this document, Donald Trump called for negotiations, while specifying: “If you reject the outstretched hand and choose the path of escalation and support for terrorist organizations, I warn you of a swift and determined response […] I am writing this letter with the aim of opening new horizons for our relations, away from the years of conflict, misunderstandings and unnecessary confrontations that we have witnessed in recent decades […] The time has come to leave hostility behind and open a new page of cooperation and mutual respect.” A historic opportunity presents itself to us today […] We will not stand idly by in the face of your regime’s threats against our people or our allies […] If you are willing to negotiate, so are we. But if you continue to ignore the world’s demands, history will testify that you missed a great opportunity.”
Simultaneously, the United States and the United Kingdom launched several attacks against Ansar Allah in Yemen. Unlike previous attacks, these did not target hidden military targets, but rather political targets scattered among the civilian population. They therefore killed leaders of the movement and many other collateral victims, which constitutes war crimes.
It should be recalled that Ansar Allah, pejoratively referred to by Westerners as the “Houthi family gang” or “the Houthis,” attacks Israeli ships in the Red Sea in order to force Tel Aviv to agree to allow humanitarian aid to pass through to Gaza.
Washington and London, believing that this was hampering international trade, and having failed to obtain approval from the Security Council, resumed the war. They initially targeted military objectives and quickly realized that these, buried deep within the country, could not be significantly affected.
Donald Trump’s letter only arrived in Tehran on March 12, and the Iranian response was slow in coming. It is important to understand that while Tehran was flattered by Washington’s secret handwritten approach, it could not accept several aspects of its behavior.
• First, the United States, faithful to Trump’s Art of the Deal technique, threatened Iran while trying to placate it. International relations are not governed by the same rules as business. Giving in to threats is a sign of weakness that the Iranians could not accept in these negotiations. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei commented on March 28: “The enmity of the United States and Israel has always existed. They threaten to attack us, which we believe is not very likely, but if they commit a misdeed, they will certainly receive a strong blow in return.” If the enemies think they can instigate sedition in the country, the Iranian nation itself will respond to them.” President Donald Trump further emphasized this on March 30, telling NBC News: “If they don’t reach an agreement, there will be bombing. It will be bombing like they’ve never seen before.”
According to the United Nations Charter (Article 2, paragraph 4), “members of the Organization shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
The negotiations were therefore compromised before they even began.
• Moreover, massacring the leaders of Ansar Allah was a gratuitous war crime: General Qassem Soleimani, by reorganizing the “Axis of Resistance,” had given Iran’s former proxies their complete freedom. Tehran currently has no influence, other than ideological, over Ansar Allah. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani therefore raised these points at the United Nations [3].
• Finally, and most importantly, Donald Trump, by accumulating contradictory signals, did not allow the Iranians to assess his relations with Israel. Does he support the project of a binational state in Palestine (the one promoted by the United Nations)? Or of a Jewish state in Palestine (“Zionism”)? Or that of a “Greater Israel” (“Revisionist Zionism”)? No one knows for sure.
Ultimately, Iran sent a secret response to the secret letter from the United States, and negotiations were able to begin, but only indirectly. That is, the two delegations did not speak directly to each other, but only through a mediator. In this way, Tehran responded to the invitation, but expressed its disapproval of the manner in which it was convened.
ntervening directly, France and the United Kingdom convened a closed-door meeting of the Security Council. Paris and London wished to address several outstanding issues. As nothing has been leaked, it is unclear whether President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Keir Starmer wanted to clarify what had caused all other attempts at negotiations to fail or, on the contrary, to obscure what could have been further obscured…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.voltairenet.org/article222165.html
1 This Month
of the week – Shut Down Drone Warfare!
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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