Ukrainian nuclear power plant without external power for over a week
This is the 27th time since Russia invaded Ukraine that the Zaporizhzhia plant has had to rely on emergency diesel supplies.
By Al Jazeera Staff and AP, 29 Aug 2026
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in southeastern Ukraine has been without off-site power for more than a week, the world’s nuclear energy watchdog has warned.
The plant, which Russia has occupied since 2022, is currently relying on emergency diesel generators, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Saturday.
The plant needs power to keep its six non-operating reactors cool and has only a 10-day diesel supply on site, the IAEA said in a statement.
“The availability of diesel fuel is of paramount importance whenever a nuclear power plant loses off-site power,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has not had a delivery from an off-site storage facility in about six months but was supplied with diesel on Thursday and Friday from another off-site location, the IAEA said.
The Vienna-based agency is now trying to negotiate a local ceasefire to allow repairs to electrical lines.
Zaporizhzhia is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. It has not generated electricity since September 2022, over six months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February that year, but the plant’s reactors must be kept cool to prevent a meltdown of the fuel inside.
“This is the 27th blackout at the plant since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion,” Ukraine’s deputy head of military law enforcement, Gyunduz Mamedov, wrote on X on Saturday.
The IAEA has had a permanent presence at the site since September 2022, after Russia took control of the Ukrainian facility in March that year.
Japan Govt Asks Eastern City to Accept N-Waste Site Survey
Hitachiomiya, Ibaraki Pref., Aug. 31 (Jiji Press), https://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2026083100449
–The industry ministry Monday asked the city of Hitachiomiya in Ibaraki Prefecture, eastern Japan, to accept a literature survey for selecting a final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.
If realized, Hitachiomiya would become the fifth site in the country to accept a literature survey, after the town of Suttsu and the village of Kamoenai, both in the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido, the town of Genkai in the southwestern prefecture of Saga and Minamitorishima, a remote Tokyo island in the Ogasawara chain in the Pacific.
This is the second case of the central government seeking approval for the survey without request from local communities.
Senior ministry officials visited Hitachiomiya and handed a written request to Mayor Sadayuki Suzuki.
“I view the request very positively,” he said, adding that he wants to make a final decision after hearing from the city assembly.
Drilling Begins For First Final Disposal Hole At Onkalo Repository in Finland
By David Dalton, Nucnet 31st Aug 2026
‘Ambitious’ goal is for operational readiness at Olkiluoto facility by end of 2026
Posiva has begun drilling the first hole for the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel at the Olkiluoto deep geologic repository in southwest Finland.
Posiva, the company responsible for the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel in Finland, said the drilling began on began on 26 August at a depth of 400 metres in the 1.9-billion-year-old bedrock.
The first test disposal holes at the repository, known as Onkalo, were drilled in the autumn of 2022, Posiva said.
The start of drilling for the first actually disposal hole was accelerated followed drilling readiness checks that were carried out before the summer holiday season. In a kick-off meeting on 25 August, safety issues, technical specifications and more detailed plans for the drilling operation were reviewed.
“The final adjustments to the equipment were made in the morning and by early afternoon the drill was already hitting the rock,” said Kimmo Lehtola, construction manager at Posiva Käytö.
The hole, 8.4 metres deep and 1.75 metres in diameter, is where the final disposal canister containing the spent nuclear fuel will eventually be placed. It is being drilled vertically into the floor of a previously excavated final disposal tunnel………………….
Operating Licence Needed
Before final disposal operations can begin, Posiva needs an operating licence from the government. Testing and commissioning activities need to be completed.
“Our ambitious goal is to achieve operational readiness for the start of final disposal by the end of 2026,” said Posiva’s president and chief executive officer Ilkka Poikolainen in August.
At Onkalo, the spent fuel will first be encapsulated before being placed at a depth of approximately 430 metres in the repository, excavated into the bedrock.
Posiva is a private company jointly owned by Finland’s two nuclear power producers: Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO), which owns 60%, and Fortum Power and Heat Oy, which owns 40%. The companies are responsible by law for final disposal.
Onkalo is intended for spent nuclear fuel generated by TVO’s Olkiluoto and Fortum’s Loviisa nuclear power stations, which have five units between them.
Posiva’s final disposal plans use a multi-barrier principle. Spent nuclear fuel that has been cooled for several decades is isolated from the environment deep in the bedrock by means of several complementary engineered and natural barriers. https://www.nucnet.org/news/drilling-begins-for-first-final-disposal-hole-at-onkalo-repository-in-finland-8-1-2026
‘Bloodthirsty Psychopath’ Ben-Gvir Touts 2 Viewing Booths at Gallows for Palestinians
. The legislation changes the rules governing Israeli military courts in the illegally occupied West Bank so that the death penalty effectively applies only to Palestinians who kill Israelis.
Far-right Knesset members, including Ben-Gvir, wore noose-shaped lapel pins to show their support for the legislation. Ben-Gvir also handed out sweets to Knesset colleagues after the bill passed its first reading.
The vice president of the European Parliament condemned what she described as “a horrific spectacle that turns the death penalty into a show.”
by Brett Wilkins | Aug 21, 2026
Still drawing international censure for his genocidal call to kill dozens of Gazans daily, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir faced fresh condemnation Thursday after visiting the construction site of a gallows where Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis are set to be hanged to death, with select Israelis gathering as spectators.
Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, posted a video to social media in which he gloats about the construction of gallows, which is being built in an undisclosed location in central Israel.
“I promised to worsen the conditions of terrorists in prisons – we kept it,” Ben-Gvir says in the video. “I promised to pass the Death Penalty for Terrorists law – we did. And now the death row and hanging facility are also starting to take shape.”
The law to which Ben-Gvir referred was passed in March by the Knesset – Israel’s parliament – and took effect the following month. The legislation changes the rules governing Israeli military courts in the illegally occupied West Bank so that the death penalty effectively applies only to Palestinians who kill Israelis.
Far-right Knesset members, including Ben-Gvir, wore noose-shaped lapel pins to show their support for the legislation. Ben-Gvir also handed out sweets to Knesset colleagues after the bill passed its first reading.
Ben-Gvir said the execution site would include viewing booths where victims’ families could watch executions, describing this as something customary in various countries and specifically citing the United States as an example.
“Terrorists deserve only one thing – death by hanging,” said Ben-Gvir, who in 2007 was convicted by an Israeli court of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization, whose leader he has openly honored.
Abdullah al-Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, urged “effective international action” in response to Ben-Gvir’s comments. Al-Zaghari told Anadolu that the minister’s visit to the gallows site was part of the “continued determination of the Israeli occupation system” to codify incitement against Palestinians.
Leftist Israeli Knesset lawmaker Ofer Cassif excoriated Ben-Gvir’s actions.
“This criminal thug – a sympathizer of murderers of Palestinians, a supporter of terror, and a pathological racist – is also hopelessly infantile,” Cassif told The New Arab on Wednesday. “Soon we will oust him from the government, and next, throw him behind bars.”
European Parliament Vice President Pina Picierno accused Ben-Gvir of staging “a horrific spectacle that turns the death penalty into a show.”
The liberal US pro-Israel group J Street asked on X, “Are we supposed to believe, as some in the Jewish establishment would like us to, that Ben-Gvir’s words somehow tell us nothing about the country he helps govern?”
“He is Israel’s national security minister, and he is now celebrating a facility built to execute Palestinians while Jewish extremists are excluded from the law,” the group added. “As the old saying goes: When someone tells you who they are, believe them. When a government gives someone this much power, we have to reckon honestly with the agenda they are pushing.”
Ben-Gvir – who is under sanctions and banned from countries including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom for inciting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank – was still being denounced on Wednesday for advocating the daily mass killing of Palestinians, including civilians, in Gaza amid a nearly three-year war that United Nations experts, human rights groups, a South Africa-led case currently before the International Court of Justice, and many others call a genocide.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, said Wednesday – which was World Humanitarian Day – that Ben-Gvir’s “remarks are appalling, they’re outrageous, they’re dehumanizing, they’re dangerous, and we condemn them unequivocally.”
A spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Wednesday in Berlin that Merz “strongly condemns Minister Ben-Gvir’s inhumane statements, which violate international law – they are unacceptable.”
“As the occupying power, Israel must treat Palestinians with dignity, protect their property, and ensure public administration and humanitarian aid,” the spokesperson added.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called Ben-Gvir’s remarks “unbearable and inhumane,” adding that “further sanctions could be imposed, and all options are on the table.”
In the United States, actor and activist Mark Ruffalo said Thursday on Bluesky that “Ben-Gvir is a bloodthirsty psychopath, war criminal, and one of Israel’s beloved genocidal leaders.”
“America and the world should be sanctioning, divesting, and boycotting Israel in every way until this apartheid regime falls,” he added.
The law to which Ben-Gvir referred was passed in March by the Knesset – Israel’s parliament – and took effect the following month. The legislation changes the rules governing Israeli military courts in the illegally occupied West Bank so that the death penalty effectivelyapplies only to Palestinianswho kill Israelis.
Far-right Knesset members, including Ben-Gvir, wore noose-shaped lapel pins to show their support for the legislation. Ben-Gvir also handed out sweets to Knesset colleagues after the bill passed its first reading.
Ben-Gvir said the execution site would include viewing boothswhere victims’ families could watch executions, describing this as something customary in various countries and specifically citing the United States as an example.
“Terrorists deserve only one thing – death by hanging,” said Ben-Gvir, who in 2007 wasconvictedby an Israeli court of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization, whose leader he has openly honored.
Abdullah al-Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoner Society, urged “effective international action” in response to Ben-Gvir’s comments. Al-Zaghari told Anadolu that the minister’s visit to the gallows site was part of the “continued determination of the Israeli occupation system” to codify incitement against Palestinians.
Leftist Israeli Knesset lawmaker Ofer Cassif excoriated Ben-Gvir’s actions. Cassif toldThe New Arab on Wednesday:
Walt Zlotow -Trump first president in America’s 251 years to preside over 2 lost wars
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL .30 Aug 26
President Trump loves to brag he ended 8 wars. The truth is a tad darker. He’s presiding over the lost US proxy war in Ukraine to destroy Russia. At the same time he’s presiding over the lost war to destroy Iran in the Middle East on behalf of Israel.
Trump didn’t start the Ukraine war. He correctly blamed predecessor Joe Biden for provoking it on his watch in February 2022. Said it wouldn’t have occurred if Biden hadn’t stolen the 2020 election from him. That’s a wild claim as Trump spent the preceding term arming Ukraine to smash the Ukrainian separatists in Donbas and promoting NATO membership for Ukraine. Both actions were instrumental in Russia’s eventual invasion under Biden.
When reelected in 2024, Trump boasted he’d end the war on day one of his second term. Five hundred, eighty days on, Ukraine is a mere rump state largely land locked and near collapse. Trump has done nothing to end Ukraine’s impending defeat. Just the opposite. He’s still supporting Ukraine with intelligence to fire missiles and drones into Russia having no strategic value promoting victory whatsoever. He’s still selling weapons to NATO to gift Ukraine in their futile effort to stay in the fight.
Trump’s impending defeat in the Iran war is even more catastrophic. This war is all on Trump. He made the biggest foreign policy blunder in US history by believing Israeli war whisperer Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran would collapse within a couple of days if only Trump would assassinate Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
That two day victory expectation has turned into a six month catastrophe, not only for the US military, but possibly also for the world economy unless Trump admits defeat and settles on Iran’s sensible terms.
Two wars, one Trump helped facilitate in his first term, then prolonged in his second term into certain defeat. The second he started all by his demented self whose dire consequences have yet to be sorted out.
Trump’s two lost wars in term two…a dubious presidential achievement, unprecedented and likely never to be repeated or topped in US history.
Thank Trump for This: He Has Exposed the Leaking Guts of the War Machine
Every child in the US has a story of this sort, a rendezvous with military propaganda (disguised as amusement)
American warfare since Vietnam has aspired to be fought by gadgets that attack civilians from the sky.
Vietnam exposed a quiet ambivalence in public opinion—the American people have no stomach for massive body counts of US soldiers, and yet poll after poll reveals an atavistic longing for military strength.
There is, however, a new and sudden trickle of hope—Trump’s ham-fisted version of imperialism allows for the public to witness the unflattering inner machinery, the leaking guts of the wounded military organism. The ongoing war in Iran offers something brand new—a nation with a $9 billion military budget has just thrashed a country with a trillion dollar war budget.
As Trump’s approval ratings crater due to his war on Iran, there may never have been a time in US history so ripe for an attack on military spending and militarism.
Phil Wilson, Aug 28, 2026, Common Dreams, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-exposes-war-machine
Forget about Ancient Sparta, Attila the Hun, Hernán Cortés, Julius Ceasar, Alexander the Great, Adolf Hitler, and all of the conquerors that terrified the world with colonial aspirations and a psychopathic lust for blood. None of these ever imagined a $1.5 trillion military budget. President Donald Trump requested that grotesque figure, but don’t give him the kudos—our “fois gras” military machine is a US tradition that predates us all.
The US war machine has scaled Orwellian heights to achieve a virtual blank check to spend on death. For we, stateside, have built a culture entirely at the service of warfare, with myths, stories, and platitudes hardwired into the brains of 349 million people extolling war, not as a necessity, but as ritual, as cleansing, as meditation, and as redemption. We are bombing schools and hospitals to secure the rapture, for the war industry in the apocalyptic end times has been tasked with the creation of biblical events. A recent Huffpost piece by Brandi Buchman quotes US soldiers’ allegations of lunatic fringe Evangelical propaganda from haranguing superiors:
They (US soldiers) are promised a 200-mile-long river that is four-and-a-half feet deep filled with nothing but the blood that their weaponized version of Jesus will spill at the Battle of Armageddon.
Thus, war in the Middle East has morphed from the sterile narrative of fighting for freedom and democracy, to the more spectacular notion that US military force has been mobilized to serve Christian prophecy. A military budget cannot achieve the pinnacle of a trillion dollars without a highly evolved story telling industry to prime the population to either enthusiastically back each aggressive nationalistic paroxysm of violence, or to (at the very least) passively capitulate. Think of the advent of apocalyptic biblical warfare as a means of addictive escalation—the nation has gone from coffee and cigarettes to cocaine and crystal meth.
No other era has been forced to see war with the unflinching clarity that this moment demands.
The war propaganda machine in the US is a ceaseless, multifaceted contraption that includes legacy media, the educational system, and the entertainment industry. A nation does not eviscerate tens of millions of “enemy” civilians without first laying a meticulous foundation of brainwashing. I can run the tapes backward to a moment in my own childhood, riveted to the black and white TV absorbing the 1955 Disneyfied tale of Davey Crockett at “The Alamo.” There is Davey outsmarting a gambler, beating up an “Indian,” and bringing both along as conscripts to fight for an Independent Texas. Crockett met his end at the Alamo, but the manner of his death will never be resolved. Did he surrender to Mexican forces (and face execution) or did he die fighting to the death, wielding his exhausted rifle like a club, and falling from a bullet while standing on a hill comprised of Mexican corpses? Of course, the Disney version has Davey Crockett swinging his rifle madly against a vast onslaught of faceless Mexican soldiers as the background song plays out:
The story books say they were all cut low.
But the truth of it is that this just ain’t so,
The spirits will live and their legends grow,
so long as we remember the Alamo.
The film ends with the inscription: “March, 6, 1836, Liberty and Independence Forever.”
Regarding the Alamo, Raul Ramos wrote (in the context of the 2019 effort to remove confederate monuments):
It’s not that the Spanish-built presidio should be demolished or stashed away in some remote museum. The story of the Alamo should be widely studied—but it should be the real history, the one that intersects with and embodies the nation’s history of enforcing a racial order through violence, and the campaigns of white supremacy and slavery that accompanied America’s expansion. The Alamo’s history and myth belong to a war that was inspired, in part, by the drive for slavery, and by a belief in the superiority of whites and their divine right to conquer lands. The Alamo is where the campaign of southern slavery and Native American genocide migrated west and expressed itself in the demonization of Mexicans. It came to symbolize belonging, or, more accurately, defining who belongs and who doesn’t. Rather than being remembered for its historical context, the Alamo represents a litmus test for entry into participation and membership in civic society: Accept the dominant myth, or be marginalized.
The Alamo became a rallying cry, a foundational component of the emerging concept of “manifest destiny”—the ideological core of the most expansive colonial settler state in all of history. But for me it is personal—Davey Crocket at The Alamo inducted me into US war culture at the age of 7. I had my faux coon skin cap, my “smoke gun” that emitted a loud crack and a puff of smoke. The cocking mechanism on this “toy” sometimes snapped shut violently, and many children endured a trip to the ER to have a few stitches to repair a bloody thumb. I remember that well 71 years later.
Every child in the US has a story of this sort, a rendezvous with military propaganda (disguised as amusement) at a defenseless early age. War is implanted into our fragile subconscious at the very dawn of our awareness. But we are not largely destined to embrace warrior culture in the sense of the mythical Davey Crockett, but, rather, we have been trained to get out of the way. American warfare since Vietnam has aspired to be fought by gadgets that attack civilians from the sky. For most of us military patriotism means politely deferring to veterans with a muttered, “Thank you for your service.” We who do not enlist balance personal fear with the idea that war participation manifests the purest virtue.
Vietnam exposed a quiet ambivalence in public opinion—the American people have no stomach for massive body counts of US soldiers, and yet poll after poll reveals an atavistic longing for military strength. . A Gallup poll taken last February showed that 64% of respondents felt that it was important for the US to have the most powerful military on Earth. While the US military budget is larger than the combined military budgets of the next nine highest spending nations, Gallup polling seldom shows more than a third of people complaining that spending is too high.
The public is little more than a shadow of the media culture. In 2014 William A. Galston lamented about President Barack Obama’s minor military funding cuts in a piece posted on The Brookings Institute (a centrist, Democratic Party-adjacent think tank) website. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) recent proposal to cut military spending by a token 10% fell 88-11 in a Senate vote in which both parties reflexively succumbed to orthodox US jingoism. War is not a partisan issue. We all come together to praise and feed the military. US political performance art might be seen as a slavish competition to grovel before the war industry.
There is, however, a new and sudden trickle of hope—Trump’s ham-fisted version of imperialism allows for the public to witness the unflattering inner machinery, the leaking guts of the wounded military organism. The ongoing war in Iran offers something brand new—a nation with a $9 billion military budget has just thrashed a country with a trillion dollar war budget. The US defeat at the hands of Iran is unprecedented—while the US hasn’t won a significant war in 80 years, we have never suffered a defeat with comparable financial consequences. The Iran war, according to Reuters, has a disapproval rating of a staggering 63% of the electorate. The economic fallout from the bungled attack on Iran threatens to escalate to the point of financial collapse in future months. We all live within walking distance of a filling station offering $6 diesel—and that runaway price will almost certainly expand and double, threatening to strangle the US commercial transport system. Mass hunger looms.
We also have American Israel Public Affairs Committee approval ratings at an all-time low and Trump’s approval ratings at catastrophic and utter decline—ostensibly due to his war in Iran. There may never have been a time in US history so ripe for an attack on military spending and militarism.
War once had such an esteemed role in human progress that even the peaceful transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, could not wholly dismiss its virtues:
The student of history acquiesces the more readily in this copious bloodshed of the early annals, bloodshed in God’s name too, when be learns that it is a temporary and preparatory state, and does actively forward the culture of man. War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man. On its own scale, on the virtues it loves, it endures no counterfeit, but shakes the whole society, until every atom falls into the place its specific gravity assigns it.
Emerson believed that war would become obsolete, but I doubt that anyone from the mid 19th century could have imagined that war would one day be the cornerstone of societal and biological collapse. No other era has been forced to see war with the unflinching clarity that this moment demands.
War elevates the need for oil and oil demands war. The oil industry, the military-industrial complex, Big Tech, and mass media have all been structurally conjoined at the intersection of war. War is where capitalist profits interface with mass psychology.
But the gig is up. Public opinion has shifted as Trump and his goons have driven the war machine off of a cliff.
Climate sustainability abides no compromise with war. We are on the cusp of extinction, and war is the primary driver. The US, under Trump, has taken war out of the closet and decoupled it from its patriotic slogans and jingoistic habits. It’s all about the oil, stupid. War has followed the magnet of fossil fuels unerringly to the Middle East. And to compound the predicament, war is environmentally filthy, annually burning more fossil fuels in aggregate than most nations. The US military coughs as much CO2 into the atmosphere yearly as the nation of Portugal. War is also the gauge of our fossil fuel addiction, for US leaders have spent decades murdering millions to procure it.
We all have our psychological histories, our childhood encounters with Disney’s Alamo, with the domino theory, with Saddam Hussein’s invisible weapons of mass destruction. We have reverentially gawked at our father’s and grandfather’s WWII uniforms hanging in the attic, but we all need to thank Trump for creating history’s most transparent war machine. The US military needs to be gutted, cut out like a metastasizing lesion. The patient heaves at death’s door. Do we merely watch?
US Army to spend $2 bln on nuclear microreactors for bases
The Army program uses the military’s “deep pockets to provide a hidden subsidy” to nuclear companies that can’t find private-sector customers for their hypothetical and uneconomical reactors
DW Sean Sinico with AP, Reuters, August 27, 2026
The US Army has announced a plan to install what it calls nuclear microreactors at five of its bases across the country. The move would ensure the facilities’ energy independence from the rest of the electric grid.
The United States Army said Wednesday that it will award $2.2 billion (€1.7 billion) in contracts to five companies to build and operate small nuclear reactors on military bases. The program set a goal of deploying the first such reactor by the end of September 2028.
Called microreactors, developers say each of the nuclear plants would be easy to transport and provide up to 20 megawatts of power.
The reactors will adhere to all environmental and safety regulations that apply to commercial reactors, but an Army spokesperson said the reactors will be regulated by the Army rather than the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates commercial reactors.
“The whole idea here is that at the back end of this we want a commercial product,” said Jeff Waksman, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said the awards will speed up the military’s ability “to deliver safe, reliable baseload power directly to our installations.”
“We are building the energy resilience necessary to project combat power globally, without relying on potentially vulnerable external grids,” he added………………………………………………………………………
‘Hidden subsidy’ for expensive reactors, critics say
Critics of microreactors say they will be expensive compared to conventional reactors. Safety advocates point out that nuclear technology carries significant risks that other low-carbon energy sources don’t, such as the danger of accidents or targeted attacks.
The Army program uses the military’s “deep pockets to provide a hidden subsidy” to nuclear companies that can’t find private-sector customers for their hypothetical and uneconomical reactors, Alan J. Kuperman, associate professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and coordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project, told the AP news agency.
The Army’s Waksman said nobody thinks that microreactors will be lower in cost than conventional plants.
“What we are trying to do here with Janus … is to flesh out how can we get those prices down,” he said.
What will happen with the radioactive waste?
Waksman said the microreactors would safely shut down in case of a failure and that the Army wouldn’t add them to installations without being certain they are safe.
He added that the Army is working on a deal with the Energy Department to remove radioactive waste, and there won’t be any long-term storage on these installations.
Last month, five states offered to accept nuclear waste in exchange for federal support in developing nuclear energy facilities.
Trump pushing nuclear power in US
Executive orders signed by US President Donald Trump in May 2025 aimed to accelerate the development of nuclear power. Trump has called for the US to quadruple its nuclear energy production — just two new large reactors have been built from scratch in the United States in nearly 50 years. Those two reactors were completed years late and at least $17 billion over budget, AP reported.
The nation’s 94 nuclear reactors supply about 19% of U.S. electricity, compared to about 60% for fossil fuels and 21% for renewables, according to the US Energy Information Administration. https://www.dw.com/en/us-army-to-spend-2-billion-on-nuclear-microreactors-for-bases/a-78518374
Nuclear regulator prepares to abandon a decades-old radiation safety rule
August 27, 2026, Geoff Brumfiel, NPR
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is preparing to change a foundational rule designed to minimize radiation exposure. The update is part of President Trump’s expansive changes to nuclear oversight, as his administration seeks to revive nuclear energy to power data centers for artificial intelligence.
Under a new proposed rule, the agency is eliminating a 50-year-old standard known as “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” (ALARA), which requires the nuclear industry to drive radiation exposure for workers and the public below the stated limits where possible. The new rule also creates a carveout for some workers to get higher exposures to radiation in special circumstances.
For some, the elimination of ALARA is overdue. “Keeping doses as low as reasonably achievable was a fair idea,” said Emily Caffrey, a radiation health physicist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. But in practice, the standard forced companies to take increasingly stringent radiation protection measures. It also created ambiguity, Caffrey said, “because what’s ‘reasonable’ to one person isn’t reasonable to another person.”
But others warn that the change could lay the groundwork for higher radiation exposures.
For some, the elimination of ALARA is overdue. “Keeping doses as low as reasonably achievable was a fair idea,” said Emily Caffrey, a radiation health physicist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. But in practice, the standard forced companies to take increasingly stringent radiation protection measures. It also created ambiguity, Caffrey said, “because what’s ‘reasonable’ to one person isn’t reasonable to another person.”
But others warn that the change could lay the groundwork for higher radiation exposures.
Since shortly after the dawn of the nuclear age, scientists have been aware of the risks of radiation exposure, and decades of data makes it clear.
“At high radiation doses, nobody’s really arguing: radiation causes cancer,” said David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University. High doses of radiation damage DNA and can cause mutations that lead to cancer. But when the dose is low, it’s much harder to determine risk because about 40% of the U.S. population develops cancer at some point in their lifetime.
“As you go down in dose, what you’re looking for is a very small increase in cancer risk over a very large background,” Brenner said. “That’s what makes it really, really hard.”
For the past 50 years or so, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has dealt with this uncertainty by requiring that the nuclear industry adhere to ALARA and keep radiation exposure as low as possible.
Then last May, President Trump signed an executive order calling for a wholesale overhaul of nuclear regulations. The order specifically called out ALARA, claiming the principle was a “flawed” understanding of radiation risks.
The NRC decided not to change its scientific model of radiation risk, known as the Linear No Threshold model, but it has proposed eliminating ALARA.
Speaking this week on the Federal News Network, NRC Chairman Ho Nieh said that ALARA is no longer working…………………………………………………
“Loosey-goosey” rules
The NRC will instead use the existing current threshold of 5 rem for a worker and 0.1 rem for the public as the upper limit for radiation exposure. A whole body CT scan is about 1 rem, according to the EPA…………………………………
The proposed NRC rule doesn’t change its other regulatory limits, but it does create some carve-outs. In particular, the industry would now be able to ask for a “planned occupational dose limit extension,” which would allow workers to receive 10 rem instead of 5 in any given year, providing their overall exposure doesn’t pass 25 rem in a five-year period………………………………
But Lyman, with the Union of Concerned Scientists, thinks that ALARA should stay. He said while it may be imperfect, its net effect has been to reduce radiation exposure to very low levels. The harms of low-dose radiation exposure are difficult to see, but Lyman says NRC’s own models suggest those harms exist.
In his opinion, the revised rule ignores that risk and is designed to desensitize the public to the dangers of radiation. “It’s trying to devalue and deemphasize the harm of ionizing radiation exposure,” he warned. https://www.npr.org/2026/08/27/nx-s1-5920368/nrc-nuclear-radiation-safety-rules-alara-update
Evacuees from Fukushima nuclear meltdown reach settlement with Tepco
Aug 26, 2026, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/08/26/japan/crime-legal/tepco-fukushima-settlement/
SAPPORO – A total of 176 people who fled Fukushima Prefecture following the March 2011 nuclear disaster have reached a settlement with Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings in their damages lawsuit filed against the firm and the government.
The settlement was reached on Aug. 18 at the Sapporo High Court, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs.
All the plaintiffs withdrew their damages claims against the government. The decision came on the heels of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling, and a series of similar court decisions that followed, that the government was not liable for the nuclear accident.
The plaintiffs evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture to Hokkaido in the wake of the triple meltdown at the tsunami-stricken Fukushima No. 1 plant.
Under the settlement, Tepco apologized for the irreparable damage the plaintiffs suffered because of the accident.
The settlement amount was not disclosed. The plaintiffs’ lawyers said the sum was “not sufficient but took into account their claims to a certain extent.”
Seiichi Nakate, head of the plaintiffs, and his family evacuated from the city of Fukushima to Sapporo in 2012.
“The settlement is far from enough to make up for our indescribable suffering, but we decided (to accept it) because we cannot endure any more exhaustion,” he said.
In its March 2020 ruling, the Sapporo District Court ordered the government and Tepco to pay about ¥53 million in total to some of the plaintiffs, finding both liable for the accident. The plaintiffs, Tepco and the government all appealed the ruling.
Ukraine’s Maidan Regime, Army, and People Are Not on the Same Page
Gordonhahn August 31, 2026
The recent two-day delay by Ukraine in extending state of martial law was largely the result of the need to adopt a reform of the Kiev’s brutal forced mobilization of men to fight in the beleaguered Ukrainian armed forces.
On April 27th the Rada passed an extension of martial law and military mobilization until August 2nd on the basis of the standard three-month term, and Zelenskiy signed the law the next day. But without redressing the population’s increasing alienation from the war effort and the regime as a result of coerced mobilization of men to fight at the front, some deputies were unprepared to pass the martial law resolution.
The violent recruitment process has included the killing and maiming of captured draft evaders, mass resistance against the mobilizers’ attempts to seize evaders, and even the use of firearms by both mobilizers and evaders resisting capture.
This has raised a firestorm of criticism, resentment, and anger teetering on the edge of open revolt among the public, forcing Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelenskiy, the government, and the Verkhovna Rada deputies to at least feign an attempt to right the situation. Even the police are now hated by the public for failing to protect citizens against the mobilizers’ violent methods and often siding with the latter. Many are asking why can not the Rada deputies, government ministers, their sons, the 120,000 police, and 100,000 mobilization center press gangs be subjected to the draft…………(Subscribers only) https://gordonhahn.substack.com/p/ukraines-maidan-regime-army-and-people
Experts: How Putin’s nuclear sub could decimate Britain
Daily Mail, By FRED KELLY, FEATURE WRITER, 28 August 2026
It weighs over 10,000 tons, it is 135 metres long, and it carries half a dozen two-megaton ‘Domesday’ torpedoes capable of triggering a radioactive tsunami large enough to ‘plunge Britain to the depths of the ocean’. No wonder the world held its breath last week as Russia’s latest nuclear-armed submarine departed Severodvinsk Port to begin trials in the White Sea, 140 miles from the Finnish border.
Named after Russian explorer Yerofey Khabarov, the Khabarovsk will now undergo rigorous testing before being considered fit for active service.
The 100-strong crew as well as a team of onshore engineers will stress-test everything from mooring protocols to propulsion, steering and diving capabilities, as well as the integration of sonar and onboard computing systems. The vessel is eventually expected to travel east to join Russia’s Pacific Fleet, which itself launched a series of missile tests last week from the disputed archipelago of islands north of Japan – triggering a major diplomatic incident.
So what would the Khabarovsk role be in a future conflict? Why is Russia spending a rumoured billion dollars on this vessel when its navy already boasts at least 60 active submarines?
And it is not the only one, it is just one of a mooted trio of new nuclear-armed subs that could be unleashed on the West.
While the design of the Khabarovsk is based on Russia’s Borei-A class nuclear ballistic missile submarines that are a cornerstone of Moscow’s nuclear deterrent, it is, in fact, a bespoke ‘special purpose’ vessel in a class of its own.
Khabarovsk is the first submarine designed with a widened bow to accommodate six Poseidon nuclear torpedoes, each measuring 20 metres in length, two metres in diameter and weighing 110 tonnes each. The only other submarine capable of launching these ‘Domesday’ weapons is the RFS Belgorod, which can carry three Poseidon torpedoes, half the number of the Khabarovsk.
Russia’s ‘Unstoppable’ Torpedo Threatens Britain
Unlike traditional surface-to-air missiles which risk being intercepted in the sky, Poseidon warheads travel underwater at speeds of roughly 70 knots, 1000 metres below the waves. And thanks to an onboard nuclear reactor that propels them, they have an essentially unlimited range. They aren’t just missiles but autonomous, manoeuvrable vessels in their own right.
The idea for Poseidon torpedoes was first conceived by Soviet engineers as far back as the 1950s, though the plans were scrapped as the technology did not exist to fit the weapons with their own propulsion system.
Unlike traditional weapons, the torpedoes are designed to self-detonate before reaching their target. It is not the blast itself that is the danger, but the subsequent tsunami of radioactive water triggered by the two-megaton bombs – more than one hundred times the strength of the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
And while countless thousands would no doubt be drowned in the initial surge or killed by collapsing buildings, the after-effects of the radioactive flooding would render any land within two hundred miles uninhabitable for generations and result in the deaths of millions.
No surprise then that the Kremlin believes Poseidon torpedoes are the future of its nuclear deterrent. Indeed, Dr Richard Connolly, a military expert on Russia and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, describes Poseidon as a ‘boutique capability’ that has been designed only for the ‘very worst of scenarios’…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….https://www.dailymail.com/vertical-galleries/article-16087311/Experts-Putins-nuclear-sub-decimate-Britain.html
Provoked: How Decades of American Policy Set the Stage for Catastrophe in Ukraine
In conversation with Scott Horton
Ian Proud, Aug 29, 2026
In my conversation with Scott Horton about his landmark book Provoked: How Washington Started a New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, one theme emerged with striking clarity: the Ukraine war that began in 2022 did not erupt from nowhere. It was the culmination of more than three decades of deliberate American choices.
Horton’s eight-hundred-page account is not a polemical rant but a meticulously documented timeline. Drawing on thousands of primary sources, he traces the story president by president—from George H.W. Bush through Clinton, the younger Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden.
The central argument is straightforward and devastating: successive U.S. administrations systematically dismantled the post-Cold War settlement, broke explicit assurances given to Moscow, and treated Russian security concerns with open contempt.
The most consequential early breach concerned NATO expansion.
During the negotiations over German reunification in 1990, James Baker, Helmut Kohl, Hans Dietrich Genscher, Robert Gates and others repeatedly assured Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move “one inch to the east.”
Those assurances were not casual asides. They formed the basis on which Gorbachev agreed to allow a reunified Germany to remain inside the alliance while Soviet troops were still stationed in the east.
Later State Department reviews under Warren Christopher quietly confirmed that the Russians had every reason to believe those promises were binding. Yet the Clinton administration proceeded with expansion anyway, first into Central Europe and later, under George W. Bush, into the Baltic states—leaving the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad stranded behind NATO lines.
Opposition to this course was widespread and bipartisan. With great prescience, George Kennan, the architect of containment, warned that the policy would produce a “devastating reaction” from Russia and that the very people dismissing those concerns would later claim the reaction proved their point.
Two-thirds of the Council on Foreign Relations opposed expansion. Career diplomats, military officers and even hardline hawks such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski argued that Ukraine required a special neutral status—something resembling the Cold War Finland or Austria model—precisely to avoid a catastrophic collision.
Those voices were ignored.
The pattern continued.
The 2008 Bucharest Summit promised eventual membership to Ukraine and Georgia without a membership action plan or credible security guarantees—the “worst of all worlds,” as several analysts later described it.
Color revolutions, the deliberate sidelining of the Partnership for Peace, and the refusal to implement the Minsk agreements further eroded any residual trust.
When the same cohort of officials who had driven the policy under earlier administrations returned under Biden – most notably Daniel Fried – the trajectory accelerated toward open conflict.
Horton is careful not to justify Russia’s invasion. He simply insists that calling the attack “unprovoked” is an exercise in willful blindness.
The word itself, repeated endlessly by Western governments and media, seeks to close off inquiry rather than invite it.
Horton’s book reopens that inquiry with forensic detail—names, dates, cables, memoirs—leaving readers free to draw their own conclusions.
What makes Provoked essential is precisely this refusal to operate on the short time horizon of the daily news cycle.
Most public discussion still treats either 2014 or 2022 as year zero. Horton shows that the roots stretch back to the moment the Cold War ended, when a victorious America chose (to quote the title of Professor Jonathan Haslam’s also excellent book) hubris over restraint.
The result is a tragedy that was both foreseeable and avoidable.
I am taking the book with me on holiday.
It is heavy—literally and figuratively—but the weight is justified.
Anyone who wants to understand how we arrived at the present catastrophe, rather than simply recycle the slogans of the moment, should read it.
You can see the full conversation here.
Three of four reactors at Ontario’s refurbished Darlington nuclear power plant face frequent outages.
MATTHEW MCCLEARN, The Globe and Mail, Aug 28, 2026, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ontario-darlington-nuclear-power-plant-three-reactors-out-of/
Three of four reactors at Ontario’s Darlington Nuclear Generating Station are experiencing prolonged outages, data from the Independent Electricity System Operator show, even as the province faces a further large drop in nuclear power generation in just a few weeks’ time.
Ontario Power Generation completed a $12.8-billion, decade-long refurbishment of its station in Clarington, Ont., in March. Although provincial officials have portrayed that overhaul as an unqualified success, Darlington’s units have meandered in and out of service ever since.
The most recently refurbished unit, Unit 4, suddenly stopped generating power on Aug. 1 – its third outage since returning to service. Two days later, Unit 2 abruptly stopped supplying power to the grid. Unit 3 had already been out of service for several months because of long-planned work, leaving Unit 1 as the lone operational unit.
Officials have disclosed little about the causes and implications of the outages at Units 2 and 4, nor when they might return to service. In response to questions from The Globe seeking details of the outages, OPG spokesperson Neal Kelly wrote in a statement that the two units were taken offline “to complete required maintenance.” He added that Unit 2 is expected to restart in September, and Unit 4 will follow in October.
Braeson Holland, a spokesperson for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, wrote in a statement that OPG reported the forced outages of Units 2 and 4 to its staff.
“CNSC inspectors maintain regulatory oversight of the outage work to verify that the appropriate actions are being taken. CNSC staff are satisfied that these events do not present a risk to the health and safety of persons or to the environment,” he wrote.
Representing nearly 900 megawatts of generating capacity each, Darlington’s units are the largest in Ontario. The station boasts a total generating capacity of roughly 3,500 megawatts, making it the province’s second largest, eclipsed only by the eight-reactor Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Tiverton, Ont., operated by Bruce Power.
Ontario’s third nuclear power plant, OPG’s Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, is just weeks away from shutting down. Its four operational reactors, representing 2,100 megawatts of generating capacity, are scheduled to come offline next month for their own $26.8-billion refurbishment, expected to wrap up in the mid-2030s.
Will soaring electricity rates kill Ontario’s nuclear expansion?
Michael Dodsworth, a spokesperson for the Independent Electricity System Operator, said his organization had no concerns that the outages would affect Ontario’s ability to meet electricity demand in the coming months.
“Ontario’s electricity system has remained reliable this summer thanks to our diverse supply mix, bolstered by recent investments in new generation and energy storage,” he wrote.
In a July filing to the Ontario Energy Board, OPG forecast that there would be 286 outage days at Darlington in 2026 – the most taken in any year since at least 2008. Nonetheless, the forced outages of Units 2 and 4 seem likely to push the actual total higher still.
OPG forecast planned outages totaling 512 days in 2027, including a major outage for work on Unit 2’s steam generators. The entire Darlington station will be out of service next year for nearly 46 days to allow work on its vacuum building, which is designed to suck out and condense steam from a reactor during a major accident.
Since outages of a single reactor can cost a utility $1-million or more a day in lost revenue – and because large, unexpected fluctuations in power generation can stress power grids, utilities invest considerable manpower and resources to avoiding unplanned outages, according to David Novog, a professor of engineering at McMaster University who specializes in nuclear safety and maintenance.
“Of course there’ll be unplanned outages,” he said. “But because of the value that the reactor represents on the grid and the amount of revenue it provides, it is probably one of the most looked-after assets that the government has.”
Ontario’s proposed nuclear plants could cost nearly $300-billion, study finds
However, several of this year’s outages at Darlington have been entirely unexpected. Unit 4 was officially returned to service on March 13 following a refurbishment lasting nearly three years. Since then, it has been taken offline three times with little explanation; OPG has disclosed only that the first outage was taken “to assess an operational matter unrelated to the refurbishment” and that it had completed repairs.
“When you stop and start and stop and start, that’s atypical of how we would typically choose to run the reactors,” Prof. Novog observed.
The Bruce and Darlington plants suffered many unplanned outages in their early years of operation, he added. During the years leading up to refurbishment, however, Darlington’s units were “exceptionally well-run.”
Prof. Novog said OPG should pro-actively publish more information about outages.
“When you’re not upfront with the information, it can lead to speculation and a lack of confidence,” he said.
“Without knowing the details, it’s hard to even tell whether it’s teething pain [at Darlington] or whether it is something else.”
The provincial government has said that Ontario’s nuclear projects were completed ahead of schedule and under budget, which Energy Minister Stephen Lecce repeated Tuesday at a press conference in St. Clair Township.
As the output of Ontario’s nuclear fleet has fallen because of refurbishments and outages, the province has increasingly relied on natural gas-fired plants to supply electricity. On Thursday afternoon, the 11 operational reactors provided 38.5 per cent of the province’s electricity, as compared to 31.5 per cent from gas plants, according to the Gridwatch monitoring web site.
For 2024 and 2025, the nuclear plants provided roughly half of Ontario’s power; gas plants provided less than 20 per cent.
Nuclearelectrica CEO steps down amid ‘shortcomings’ in 462 MW Doicești (NuScale) SMR project
August 26, 2026, by Vladimir Berbatović,
https://balkangreenenergynews.com/nuclearelectrica-ceo-steps-down-amid-shortcomings-in-462-mw-doicesti-smr-project/
Cosmin Ghiță, CEO of Romania’s state-controlled nuclear power producer Nuclearelectrica, has resigned amid “shortcomings” related to the joint venture developing a 462 MW small modular reactor (SMR) project in Doicești, as well as the project itself. Ghiță’s resignation comes after a government body identified the issues and recommended determining the accountability of Nuclearelectrica’s top executives and other individuals.
Last month, Acting Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan’s control body said that it had identified several shortcomings related to Nuclearelectrica’s partnership with state-owned energy company Nova Power&Gas in a joint venture called RoPower Nuclear, established to develop the nuclear power plant in Doicești using US-based NuScale’s SMR technology, according to Profit.ro.
The body said that it had also identified shortcomings related to the Doicești project itself, and it recommended “an analysis of the possibility of holding accountable” the top people of Nuclearelectrica and other individuals.
Shortcomings have also been identified concerning the SMR project itself
Nuclearelectrica has rejected the findings.
The Ministry of Energy said it “respects” the resignation and that it had been informed the CEO’s decision came “in the context of a new professional opportunity.”
According to government spokesperson Ioana Dogioiu, Ghiță’s 90-day notice period may be shortened by mutual agreement, after which a selection process for a new CEO will take place.
Ghiță has been at the helm of Nuclearelectrica for nearly nine years, since September 2017. He previously served as advisor to Romania’s prime minister on energy security and energy policies, according to Nuclearelectrica’s website.
The Ministry of Energy also said that Nuclearelectrica and its Cernavodă nuclear power plant continue to operate as usual and that it will take all necessary steps to maintain the company’s stability and continuity.
Cernavodă, Romania’s only nuclear power plant, has been offline since August 13. The plant, which normally generates about 20% of Romania’s electricity, has been unable to ensure enough reactor cooling water from the Danube due to heatwaves and drought.
The push to clear nuclear power’s waste-disposal hurdle
The technical issues have mostly been solved, but the long-term potential peril of radioactive material has made it difficult to find politically acceptable sites.
Nature, By Brian Owens, 26 August 2026
Inside a nondescript warehouse in an industrial park in Oakville, Canada, sits a squat forklift truck that requires no driver. When activated by its remote operator, the vehicle trundles to a stack of huge clay blocks, each weighing 8,000 kilograms, and carries them into a narrow rock tunnel. Another custom-built machine then fills the spaces around the blocks with crumbled clay.
Each block is made of bentonite clay and encases a copper-coated steel container built to hold spent fuel from a nuclear reactor. The blocks will be sealed behind yet more clay and concrete in tunnels deep underground, and the radioactive material inside will be left to slowly decay over thousands of years.
Or it would be, if there were any nuclear waste stored on-site. The warehouse is a test facility for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), the group in Toronto, Canada, that is responsible for dealing with the long-term storage of the country’s nuclear waste. The life-sized mock-up, complete with simulated rock tiling, enables Peter Keech, manager of engineered barrier science at the NWMO, and his colleagues to test technologies that will be used to store the waste and to demonstrate the storage process to the public.
The metal fuel containers, for example, are designed to withstand the pressure of being buried under a 3-kilometre-thick glacier, should the next ice age arrive before the radiation has decayed fully. But Keech and his team take the testing much further, subjecting several canisters to crushing forces equivalent to being more than 6 km under the ocean. The containers looked like toothpaste tubes that had been squeezed in the middle — but they were still fully sealed.
“These are much higher forces than they will ever see in the repository, but we take it to failure to understand the materials,” says Keech. “And even in failure it still offers containment.”
Canada’s real waste repository will be built roughly 1,600 km to the northwest of the test facility, hosted by the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation and the town of Ignace. It is buried some 750 metres under the hard rock of the Canadian Shield, which was once the base of a vast mountain range. When the facility opens in around 2040, its 80–100 km of tunnels will be capable of storing the nearly 6 million bundles of spent fuel that will be produced by Canada’s four nuclear-power plants over their operational lives, isolating the waste from people and the environment until long after the material’s radiation levels return to that of natural uranium.
World tour
Almost every country with a nuclear-power industry is working on some variation of this plan. Finland’s is the most advanced: its Onkalo repository on the country’s west coast is expected to open later this year.
The storage facility is built 430 metres below ground in a hard crystalline bedrock, and will eventually consist of about 50 km of tunnels that can store around 6,500 tonnes of spent uranium fuel, says Linda Kumpula, a nuclear-safety engineer at Finland’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment in Espoo.
A site in Sweden, also built into hard crystalline rock, is expecting to begin accepting radioactive waste in the 2030s. France and Switzerland have each selected a site in natural clay formations and are in the process of gaining regulatory approval. And in December 2025, China completed the first stage of construction for its underground laboratory in the Gobi Desert, a facility that will test the area’s suitability for long-term waste storage.
In the United States, plans for a spent-fuel repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have been a political hot potato for decades, and the project is currently stalled. But the nation does already have one permanent facility: the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a repository for radioactive waste from the country’s nuclear-weapons programme that is located in salt caverns beneath New Mexico’s desert. That facility has been a major source of learning for other countries, says Keech — particularly how to protect communities when transporting waste to the site and how to minimize the time the material spends on the surface when it arrives.
These issues and other technical ones, such as how best to build a deep geological repository, have now mostly been resolved. “We’ve been working on this for a long time and it is no longer a major technical or scientific challenge,” says Stefan Mayer, team leader of radioactive waste disposal at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
The real challenge is political and social. “You have to find a site that’s technically suitable, but you also need a site that is hosted by a community that is willing,” says Allison Macfarlane, a geologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “It turns out that the latter problem is harder than the former.”
Types of waste
Waste from nuclear plants generally falls into four categories: materials with very low, low, intermediate and high levels of radioactivity.
Very-low-level and low-level waste make up most radioactive waste — about 95%. Very-low-level waste consists of the soil, concrete and rubble generated when a nuclear plant is decommissioned. Low-level waste is made up of used protective equipment and other lightly contaminated materials from the plant. Both types can be disposed of in near-surface secure facilities and need to be isolated for several hundred years.
Intermediate-level waste consists mainly of metal parts of the reactor that are contaminated with radiation. These metallic isotopes are so concentrated and long-lived that the material remains radioactive for thousands of years and cannot be disposed of near the surface — it needs to be isolated underground.
The biggest issue is the high-level waste. This is the spent nuclear fuel and its containers, as well as the waste from the reprocessing of spent fuel that some countries do to extend their fuel supplies. By volume, it represents just 3% of the waste generated by a power plant, but it is responsible for 95% of the radioactivity. And it remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years — longer than any human civilization has yet lasted. Because of the waste’s longevity, it must be safely isolated deep underground where it cannot contaminate the ecosystem or harm future generations………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Another important adjustment for the United States would be to change who is responsible for dealing with the waste. Instead of the Department of Energy, with its revolving door of politically appointed leaders, Macfarlane thinks that it should be an independent organization: either a government agency similar to New York’s port authority or an industry-led group such as Canada’s NWMO.
“You need more of a corporate structure with leadership that’s going to be there a long time, because this is a slow process,” Macfarlane says. “It takes decades to do properly.”
This was one of the main recommendations in 2012 of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, which Macfarlane took part in. But so far there has been no movement on the issue.
The United States, Macfarlane says, should not be afraid to admit defeat on Yucca Mountain and start again with a more consent-based process. “I think the US has failed and they just have to acknowledge that — and decide they’re going to try again,” she says.
The long timelines involved in dealing with nuclear waste make it tempting to continually kick the can down the road and trust that future generations will eventually find a solution. But Macfarlane is adamant that it is the responsibility of people today to at least get the ball rolling.
“It’s imperative that we do something sooner rather than later,” she says. “I can tell you one thing with 100% certainty: if we do nothing, this material will get into the environment and will harm humans in the future.”
1 This Month
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- September 2026 (184)
- August 2026 (330)
- July 2026 (355)
- June 2026 (287)
- May 2026 (306)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (267)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (375)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 