More Nuclear Reactors? Deceptive Tunes from the Pied Piper of Vienna
Image by Lukáš Lehotský.
Rafael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Director General, has been busy over the last few years. The media has often reported on his efforts to highlight “the risk of a major nuclear accident” at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Grossi has also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin twice to discuss the situation at Zaporizhzhia, arguing that a “severe nuclear accident…would recognize no borders” and “we must do everything possible to prevent” such an accident.
But Grossi has also simultaneously been increasing the risk of accidents, albeit inadvertently, by calling for building more nuclear reactors. This advocacy takes many forms. He has written op-eds in prominent outlets like Foreign Affairs. He has been trying to canvas countries to start nuclear power programs. For example, in March 2024. he went to Baghdad and committed to working with Iraq to help build a nuclear reactor “for peaceful purposes”. And as a way to deal with the unaffordable costs of nuclear reactors, he has pushed the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to provide funding for building nuclear plants.
None of this make sense. When viewed as investment advice to banks, Grossi’s promotion of nuclear power does not meet the laugh threshold. According to Grossi, the banks’ lack of funding for nuclear energy is “out of date, out of step with what is happening”. But it is Grossi’s advocacy that is out of step with happening to nuclear energy in the real world.
When nuclear energy is evaluated through how much it contributes to the world’s electricity production, the technology has been declining continuously for over 25 years, from 17.5 percent in 1996 down to 9.2 percent in 2022. For reasons discussed later, this trend will likely continue. In other words, the importance of nuclear energy is diminishing. Investing more money into a technology that some scholars argue is “destined for decline” makes little sense.
When analyzing Grossi’s advice to these development banks, one should remember what these institutions are supposed to do. The World Bank’s mission is “to end extreme poverty and boost prosperity on a livable planet”. And the Asian Development Bank has a similar mission, with a regional focus on Asia and the Pacific. The World Bank’s mission, in particular, mentions the multiple, intertwined crises we are confronting and emphasizes both the need for “affordable energy” and how quickly these crises should be addressed, stating “time is of the essence”. Nuclear energy fails on both counts.
Expensive and Slow
Electricity from nuclear reactors is costly and does not provide affordable energy, especially when compared to other low-carbon, renewable sources of energy. During the same period mentioned earlier, the share of all electricity generated by modern renewables has risen from just over 1 percent of in 1996 to 15.9 percent in 2023. Today, it is utility-scale solar photovoltaic power that provides the least costly option for generating electricity plants in many countries. This is why, in 2020, the International Energy Agency dubbed solar “the new king of the world’s electricity markets”. Money spent on nuclear reactors by banks would only divert funds away from investing in renewables and associated technologies and infrastructures.
Nuclear reactors have also almost never been on time. An astonishing 89 percent of all reactors that were connected to the grid between 2020 and 2022 were delayed: just two reactors in China were on schedule. In the United States, the two AP1000 reactors that just started operating in the state of Georgia ended up costing nearly $35 billion. In 2011, when the utility company building the reactor sought permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it projected a total cost of $14 billion, and “in-service dates of 2016 and 2017” for the two units. These cost escalations and delays are even more extreme than the historical pattern identified in an academic study that examined 180 nuclear power projects and found that 175 had exceeded their initial budgets, by an average of 117%, and took 64% longer than initially projected
That is not all. Around the world, 92 nuclear projects have been cancelled or suspended, usually after hundreds of millions, if not billions, have been spent. In the United States, the latest such cancellation was a project involving a small modular reactor from NuScale that the company advertised as “smaller, safer, and cheaper”. Cheaper, it certainly wasn’t, with a final cost estimate that was around 250% more than the initial per megawatt cost for the Vogtle project in Georgia. The earlier cancellation, of the V. C. Summer project involving two AP1000 reactors in South Carolina, was canceled after over $9 billion was spent—electricity consumers in the state will be paying for decades for this bad investment.
Necessary Conditions for Nuclear Power
It is not as though development banks have not considered nuclear energy. Back in 1959, the World Bank did invest in a nuclear project in Italy, based on a set of conditions, most importantly the unavailability of other cost-competitive alternatives. That project was not a success. More important for the present discussion is that with the reduced cost and increasing availability of solar and wind power, nuclear power no longer meets these conditions to be cost-effective.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB), too, undertook an analysis of various technologies and published an Energy Policy paper in 2009 that highlighted a number of barriers confronting nuclear power development, including “public concerns related to nuclear proliferation, waste management, safety issues, high investment costs, long lead times, and commercial acceptability of new technologies”. Thanks to these concerns, the paper declared that “ADB will maintain its current policy of non-involvement in the financing of nuclear power generation”. None of these barriers have disappeared.
The challenge of ensuring safety was reinforced just two years after the ADB’s paper when multiple reactors at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant melted down spreading radioactive materials widely, and posing difficult technical, socio-political and economical challenges: including an estimated future bill of 35 to 80 trillion yen (around $322 to $736 billion). Fukushima served as a reminder that the nature of nuclear technology ensures “the inevitability of accidents”.
The Unlearned Lessons of Zaporizhzhia
A different route to a severe nuclear accident is on display at the Zaporizhzhia power plant—and Grossi has been eloquent about how such an accident will “have ripples and reverberations all over the world”. But instead of considering Zaporizhzhia as a wake-up call to reflect on whether the world should continue to build more nuclear power plants, Grossi has taken recourse to advocating for five principles of nuclear safety and security. Unfortunately for him these rules are unlikely to be widely accepted—as evidenced by the many attacks on the Zaporizhzhia plant.
This is not for lack of precedence. Well before Russia occupied Zaporizhzhia, Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 and, then in 2007, bombed the Al-Kibar nuclear facility where Syria was building a reactor. Iran and the United States have also attacked Iraq’s nuclear facilities. None of the attackers faced any consequences.
Grossi’s principles and calls for new regimes might also contradict other imperatives. In a recent paper published in The Nonproliferation Review, two scholars have examined the history of such attacks in detail and concluded that “attacks on nuclear facilities endure as a feature of the global nonproliferation regime because the international community—or at least some of the most influential members of the community—deem them a necessary option for the maintenance of that regime”. In other words, Zaporizhzhia is unlikely to be the last nuclear plant at risk of being attacked.
None of this information is new but they don’t appear to play any part in Grossi’s advocacy for nuclear energy. When advising the World Bank to invest in nuclear power, he doesn’t explain that the tens of billions of dollars the Bank might invest in a nuclear reactor could, within a matter of minutes, be converted into a cleanup project that would cost hundreds of billions. Or explaining to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni that the small modular reactors he recommended that Italy build could be blown up and the result might, as with Zaporizhzhia, cause “enormous suffering”.
Grossi’s silence about this risk should be troubling at the best of times. But it is particularly inexcusable when he is, in parallel, emphasizing the risks of suffer a major accident at the Zaporizhzhia power plant. When he went to Iraq recently, he actively downplayed the legitimate concerns in that country thanks to its nuclear reactors being bombed by Israel and the United States. Grossi’s prescription is to simply call for “turning the page on this complex past”. Can he genuinely and credibly assure Iraq that such an attack will not happen again?
The deeper problem is a conflict of interest. As the head of the International Atomic Energy, Rafael Grossi, like his predecessors, tasked with two separate objectives: “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world” and to “ensure, so far as it is able, that assistance provided by it or at its request or under its supervision or control is not used in such a way as to further any military purpose”. The case for promoting nuclear energy was never very strong and has completely collapsed in recent years. It is past time to simply abandon the first objective and focus on the second.
The ADVANCE Act: a Bipartisan Surrender to the Nuclear Lobby
Image by Viktor Kiryanov.
With the passing of the ADVANCE Act (S870, section B), or the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy Act, the nuclear lobby has seized our democratic processes and co-opted the climate movement with pervasive lies and profit grabbing. The bipartisan support of the bill arose through widespread corruption, coupled with a nearsighted fantasy of innovation. The already-underregulated nuclear industry has now obtained the legislative means to sacrifice a survivable future for all living things.
Senate Bill 870 was passed “to authorize appropriations for the United States Fire Administration and Fire Fighter Assistance grant programs, [and] to advance the benefits of nuclear energy”. It is evident that the latter clause, and the 93 page ADVANCE Act, was included in the non-contentious 3 page Fire Grants and Safety bill because as a stand-alone bill, it did not garner widespread support. The ADVANCE Act irresponsibly changed the NRC’s regulatory emphasis of public health, safety and environmental protection to a promotional emphasis; “fast tracking” commercial reactors and “updating” reactor licensing regulations which “do NOT limit civilian use (of nuclear power).” With little debate and without public testimony, this nuclear energy legislation passed the Senate by a vote of 88-2 and passed the House by a vote of 393-13. The imprudent decision to pass this bill is unconscionable for reasons detailed here.
1. The decision to combine incompatible mission statements into one agency is bureaucratically and financially untenable. While the Advance Act purports to preserve the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) existing mission of protecting public health, safety and the environment, the act contradicts that mission by mandating the NRC to promote nuclear energy and to “fast track” nuclear licensing regulations. This double mission of protection and promotion is paradoxical and illogical. This conflict is why, in 1974 the U.S. dissolved the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and created the NRC as an independent agency to regulate commercial nuclear power, with oversight of public health, safety and the environment. Nuclear promotion and advancement was delegated to the Department of Energy (DoE). These conflicting missions were unacceptable in 1974 and are still unacceptable today.
2. The ADVANCE Act ignores the crisis of pervasive radioactive contamination impacting our country and the imminent threat of widespread catastrophe. It is indisputable that building more nuclear reactors correlates to higher contamination and nuclear disasters. The NRC ought to enforce stringent regulatory processes, but it does not enforce regulations to ensure that existing nuclear energy infrastructure can withstand the increase in natural hazards as a result of climate change. This gap in regulatory standards will be compounded with the consequences of changing the NRCs mission to “advance the benefits of nuclear energy” as the agency will face insufficient funding and infrastructure.
No entity in the United States has the resources to administer a response to a nuclear disaster. On July 1, 2024, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding that exonerates the NRC from responsibility to respond to a nuclear disaster. However, FEMA does not currently have a nuclear response division, and it has already faced budget cuts and staff shortages, all while natural disasters continue to increase at an alarming rate. Additionally, the recent 40 year extension to the Price-Anderson Act (PAA) does not hold the nuclear industry comprehensively liable for a nuclear disaster. According to Beyond Nuclear, “PAA renewal limits the nuclear industries collective cost to just over $16 billion per accident – leaving federal taxpayers liable for the remaining compensation costs.” For comparison, the cost of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is estimated to exceed $200 billion. No insurance company has adequate fiscal reserves to offer coverage to homeowners for nuclear disasters. Thus, in addition to threatening the survival of all living things, the ADVANCE Act places the economic burden of a nuclear catastrophe onto the public.
Due to the entire life cycle of producing nuclear energy—including uranium mining, milling, conversion to HF6, centrifuge enrichment, deconversion, fuel fabrication, reactor operations, decommissioning, and spent fuel storage—there have been and continue to be widespread adverse health outcomes. The nuclear industry is an affront to our existing water crisis which will become worse if there is an increase in nuclear power facilities. Nuclear reactors are typically sited on lakes, rivers, and oceans. Water cooled reactors consume between 30 million to 3 billion gallons of water per day, and routinely discharge and release thermal pollution (hot water and hot radioactive particles) into these waterways, devastating marine and ocean ecosystems. Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, is the most common element routinely released by nuclear power plants in the form of tritiated water and tritiated vapor (which can result in radioactive rainfall). Between 1990-2017, radioactive leaks were found at 70% of nuclear power plants in the United States. These leaks included cesium-137, which causes radiation sickness and cancer, strontium-90, (nicknamed “bone seeker”) which causes bone cancers, and tritium which causes cancers and birth defects. The impending bioaccumulation of tritium and other radioactive isotopes in U.S. waterways will also result in economic loss, in particular for fishing and agriculture dependent communities. Regardless of any reactor models, without the rigorous oversight of a federal regulatory entity, this industry will continue to harm our environment and livelihoods on a daily basis.
3. Research shows that radiation impacts are gender disproportionate. According to biologist Mary Olson, with equal exposure, girls between the ages of birth to five years suffer from cancer at a rate seven times higher than adult men. Fetuses, and pregnant people are also at heightened risk. When ingested as water, tritium can penetrate a placenta and cause miscarriages and birth defects. However, current NRC standards do not take into consideration non-cancer causing harms to a pregnant person and the fetus when determining regulatory standards. The NRC determines the threshold level of radiation exposure based on “Reference Man”, an adult Caucasian male whose height, weight, anatomy and physiology place “him” in the prime of life. This ideal excludes the majority of Americans, placing more vulnerable individuals and populations at risk and ignoring Tribal Sovereignty, racial and gender equity. Expanding the nuclear industry and accelerating deployment of new reactor technologies will necessarily release more radioactive effluents, create more waste, and worsen contamination burdens and health effects. Those who do not fit within the Reference Man category, in particular children and disadvantaged genders, will bear the brunt.
4. The ADVANCE Act undermines the self-determination of Tribal Nations and creates sacrifice zones in already underserved communities. Low-income, Hispanic, and Indigenous peoples have been disproportionately harmed for generations by private and federal nuclear activities. Author Traci Brynne Voyles writes, in her book Wastelanding, that “patterns of environmental racism tell us that race has become a primary way by which those landscapes of extraction and pollution… are excluded from or ignored by the regulatory protection of the state”. Facilities that constitute the entire nuclear fuel chain are commonly situated nearby communities that are already disadvantaged— the rendering of certain bodies and places as dispensable and pollutable will be amplified through the programs in the ADVANCE Act.
The nuclear industry has committed egregious infractions on the self-determination of Tribal Nations through the entire fuel chain. This criminal and genocidal behavior is evident in the staggering amounts of deaths and illnesses faced by the Native Peoples as a result of the federal and private uranium mining operations: according to Leona Morgan, co-founder of the Nuclear Issues Study Group, “on the Navajo Nation alone, there are over 1100 uranium waste sites associated with approximately 520 abandoned uranium mines”. The Pinyon Plain Mine, which is situated within Havasupai Tribal Lands, reopened in 2024 due to demand by the nuclear industry, despite the Tribe’s unequivocal opposition.
The beginning of the nuclear fuel chain precludes a future with clean water. It is especially egregious to mine uranium during a water crisis in the Southwest which impacts all living things. According to a study conducted by the University of New Mexico’s Native American Budget and Policy Institute, “uranium extraction in and of itself requires vast amounts of water, and even more concerning, no uranium mining operation has ever successfully protected nearby ground or surface water from contamination.” Uranium contamination has disproportionately impacted Tribal Nations; uranium has been found in 85% of homes in the Navajo Nation, and the same study found that the bodies of every single person, including babies, had traces of uranium in their blood. This legacy compounds with the 1979 Church Rock Uranium Mill Tailings Spill which released 94 million gallons of liquid waste and 1100 tons of solid waste into the Puerco River which is the primary source of water for Diné (Navajo) Tribal Members downstream.
The U.S. has had a shameful history of genocide of Indigenous peoples: for the past 700 years Indigenous Peoples have been denied land and water rights, and for the past 60 years many have been poisoned, exploited, and manipulated by the nuclear industry. The harmful consequences of the ADVANCE Act will undoubtedly fall on the Tribal Nations whose sovereignty, spiritual systems and health have already been decimated due to nuclear extraction, exploitation, and contamination. Funding experimentation with new SMR technologies undermines the responsibility of the federal government to remediate harms, particularly as it coincides with the recent expiration (2024) of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), the outcome of the 2023 Arizona vs Navajo Nation Supreme Court ruling which denied water rights to the Navajo Nation, along with the refusal by the United States to ratify the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The compounding outcomes of these legislative failures will continue to compromise the self-determination of Tribal Nations.
5. The ADVANCE Act commits the NRC to promote and sell a myth—Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and so-called “advanced” reactors are unproven and nonexistent. If these experimental SMR designs were developed, they would create high-level radioactive waste (in the form of spent fuel) that is more lethal than the waste already produced by conventional commercial reactors. There is no solution for the permanent isolation and disposal of high-level radioactive waste. SMR designs are proposed to run on high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel which would be enriched to slightly less than 20 weight percent U-235 — just below the internationally recognized value for nuclear weapons potential. Experts have pointed out that enriching reactor fuel to this level overcomes the hardest technological barrier of transforming uranium into nuclear weapons capable material, thereby increasing the likelihood of nuclear proliferation and consequently threatening global security. According to a paper written by five nuclear proliferation experts, HALEU production would “[eliminate] the sharp distinction between peaceful and nonpeaceful nuclear programs,” and would therefore dismantle the entire legal framework for nonproliferation and disarmament. The mass-production of SMRs and HALEU fuel as a result of the ADVANCE Act would diminish the credibility of the United States to uphold nonproliferation standards, and would possibly inspire a Cold War-like race to develop this dangerous and untenable technology.
HALEU would also create more lethal spent fuel and pose serious nuclear proliferation and terrorism risks. Nuclear waste expert Lindsey Krall, in a study co-authored with former NRC Chair Allison MacFarlane, wrote, “our results show that most small modular reactor (SMR) designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30 per unit of energy generated for the reactors in our case study.” SMR’s will necessarily increase environmental and health risks, burdens and impacts from radioactive waste which will build up across generations and threaten not only those of us alive now, but future generations of Americans.
6. The massive subsidies the ADVANCE Act and other recent policies bestowed on the nuclear industry put the financial burden for extension and expansion of the nuclear industry on US taxpayers and ratepayers. The nuclear industry is selling a fantasy of economic growth as a means to harvest subsidies, extracting enormous profits with no mercy, and no federal oversight. The cost overruns at Georgia’s new Vogtle plant reactors are resulting in a 10% increase in monthly electricity bill costs for ratepayers. The total spending on the Vogtle project has already exceeded $35 billion, an astounding increase from the initial $14 billion budget, and the excess in spending is falling on customers.
Ratepayer-financed Decommissioning Trust Funds (DTF) are intended to be used for the safe dismantling of closed nuclear power plants yet are routinely misused for non-decommissioning activities, including promotional spending, restarting shuttered reactors, and preparing decommissioned plant sites for re-nuclearization in particular by Holtec International, LLC. Holtec International has already faced charges of criminal conspiracy, extortion, and bribery, in addition to raiding DTFs. However, in response to the Office of Inspector General’s Audit of the NRC’s Oversight of the Adequacy of Decommissioning Trust Funds, the NRC claimed it is unable to hold the nuclear industry accountable (including Holtec International) for upholding agreements and investment restrictions in 10 CFR 50.75. This self-admitted refusal by the NRC to to develop and implement procedures for oversight into trustee compliance is evidence of existing infrastructural incompetence. The ADVANCE Act will enable the appropriation of what could be hundreds of billions of dollars from the public by means of accelerating the licensing of costly and unproven reactor designs (with expected cost overruns), and the inevitable weakening of oversight as a result of the NRC’s changed mission. The overhaul in the NRC’s commitment to protect public health, safety, and the environment will put Americans at risk while reaching into their pockets.
7. Nuclear energy is NOT clean energy— it is the dirtiest, most dangerous, and hottest energy source. The ADVANCE Act endorses a profound lie that climate change can be solved by expediting licensing to expand the nuclear industry, encourage re-nuclearization of decommissioned sites, and “fast track” unproven reactor designs (Title II, No.4 “accelerated review process to site and construct reactors at existing nuclear sites”). To the contrary, nuclear reactors accelerate climate change through the release of Carbon 14, a radioactive isotope that reacts with oxygen in the atmosphere to create CO2, a greenhouse gas. Nuclear power will also worsen climate disruption through diverting funds away from true clean energy solutions. The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council has concurred that nuclear power should not be included in the green energy transition.
Conventional commercial nuclear reactors take between 10 and 20 years to bring on line. We are decades away from any possible commercialization of SMRs, SMR projects have already failed, and production will not materialize before 2030. Money the DoE awards to the nuclear industry to pursue unproven SMR designs would be better allocated to truly clean renewable energy sources as a more reliable means to respond to the already-here climate crisis. The passing of the ADVANCE Act reflects a deplorable habit of capitulating to nuclear lobbyists and misdirecting public funding to the nuclear industry. This is an egregious expropriation and will impede an urgent and legitimate clean energy transition.
8. There is no existing solution to the permanent storage and disposal of radioactive waste. The Yucca Mountain Deep Geological Waste Repository project was canceled in 2010 after widespread public opposition as it is located on the Western Shoshone Nation and is prone to seismic and volcanic activity. After the closure of Yucca, the NRC was forced into a moratorium on licensing of nuclear reactors as it could not confidently presume a solution to safely storing waste. Consequently, the NRC developed a revised Waste Confidence policy to streamline licensing and relicensing of nuclear reactors which alleges that irradiated spent nuclear fuel waste may be stored at nuclear reactor sites indefinitely, which contradicts its own admissions that existing on-site storage casks will leak. The NRC Waste Confidence policy ignores the distinct characteristics of individual reactor sites and analyzes environmental impacts through sweeping generalities. It also neglects to consider the aforementioned heightened risk of natural hazards due to climate change. Despite the NRC’s claims to the contrary, high-level radioactive waste cannot remain indefinitely on environmentally unsuitable reactor sites (on potable and ecologically-vulnerable surface water, and in areas prone to earthquakes, erosion, and unstable soil conditions). The ADVANCE Act will result in the production of more waste, and more lethal waste despite the unsolved issue of identifying a permanent, site-specific, scientifically sound, and safe solution to its storage.
The NRC continues to work towards licensing centralized interim storage (CIS) facilities (temporary radioactive waste dumps) sited in eastern New Mexico and West Texas, home to already disproportionately overburdened communities. The construction of CIS sites would be illegal under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which requires that the United States identifies a permanent solution for storing high-level waste prior to any construction of a temporary site. These proposed storage facilities are the subject of a current federal court challenge. Transporting spent nuclear fuel to the proposed CIS facilities would entail thousands of shipments through unfit transportation infrastructure. In 2022 alone, there were 952 Class I freight train derailments; a single derailment of radioactive waste could result in widespread catastrophe.
A proposed solution to the waste issue endorsed by the ADVANCE Act is to reprocess nuclear waste; a chemical process to extract plutonium from spent reactor fuel. The reprocessing of fuel does not decrease the total volume of waste, it actually increases the total amount of irradiated materials that will need to be isolated and disposed of. The cost of reprocessing is also exorbitant, both in terms of the price of separating usable fissile materials, and also in terms of the inherent public health and environmental hazards. Reprocessing of spent fuel results in the stockpiling of plutonium (the primary element used in nuclear weapons), thereby increasing the aforementioned threats of proliferation.
Leaving our future generations with the existing task of dealing with over 90,000 metric tons (and growing) of nuclear waste is unconscionable. The ADVANCE Act will exacerbate the impossible: the safe, environmentally just, and permanent storage of high-level radioactive waste which will be lethal for millions of years in the future.
9. The ADVANCE Act would allow foreign entities to buy, build and operate nuclear power reactors here in the United States, and would encourage the export of American nuclear technology. Title III, No 1. of the ADVANCE Act authorizes that “rules will be modernized to reduce restrictions on international investment and issuing reactor licenses to certain foreign corporations and entities.” This compromises our resilience to the climate crisis by empowering an industry that is sincerely committed to corruption to extract uranium, expand harmful technologies, and produce radioactive waste across the globe.
Foreign licensing of nuclear reactors is unacceptable on global security grounds and it increases risks of terrorism and proliferation inherent in SMR and HALEU production. Every nuclear facility can become a target of an attack—the planes that struck the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 flew directly above the Indian Point Nuclear Reactor, awakening fear that a nuclear disaster can be the result of intentional, politically fueled violence. The vulnerability of reactors—and their link to militarism—has been made evident more recently as threats of a full-scale attack on the Zaporizhzhia Power Plant in Ukraine linger. Israel’s near-miss of two nuclear facilities in Iran in April, 2024, laid bare how any site with radioactive materials is a military strike zone. Foreign licensing of reactors and sharing of nuclear materials will no doubt be perceived as expansionist and antagonistic. The provocative intent to achieve nuclear supremacy with coalition nuclear states is hardly different from the Cold War arms race with inevitable outcome: harm to human health and the environment, and an increased threat to national and global security.
What can we do?
The ADVANCE Act will undermine the climate movement, place humans and the environment at a heightened risk, and disproportionately impact overburdened communities. There are viable, sustainable, and more just ways for the United States to inaugurate a robust and earnest commitment to climate change. Survival is not political and is not optional. In the words of the Nuclear Energy Information Service; “nothing more needs to be invented; just implemented.” The only solution to preventing nuclear reactor accidents, unsolvable waste issues, and increased threat of proliferation is to rapidly phase out nuclear power and direct resources to legitimate clean energy resources like wind and solar, energy efficiency, energy storage; all of which are cheaper, reduce carbon emissions, produce no radioactive wastes, are not vulnerable to meltdowns, and do not threaten global and national security. We need to look critically at the hidden agenda behind the so-called “nuclear revival,” and collectively refute the normalization of legislative corruption, militarism, and greenwashing.
While the ADVANCE Act may look like the final nail in the coffin, we still have the opportunity to unearth a sense of collectivity, and foreground environmental justice in the climate movement. Every piece of legislation that sustains the vestiges of human liberties and environmental protection in the United States have been enacted as a result of popular movements. Increasing public awareness of nuclear issues is a key building block to inspiring a larger movement. Environmental organizations ought to hold themselves accountable for taking a strong position against extraction and pollution of all varieties, and call for a carbon-free AND nuclear-free future.
This article was drafted through the collaborative efforts of the National Radioactive Waste Coalition (NRWC). The NRWC is a campaign of over 45 member organizations working to build a collective voice for environmental justice in national radioactive waste policy that foregrounds the needs of affected communities, and emphasizes the self-determination of Indigenous Peoples.
Naomi Zoka delivers ICAN statement to the NPT PrepCom. Photo: ICAN | Seth Shelden
“Nuclear risks are on the rise. The chance of nuclear weapons use [is] higher than at any time in my—and many others in this room’s—lifetime,” said Naomi Zoka at a meeting this week of the Preparatory Committee for the Eleventh Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference.
“The path to a world without nuclear weapons lies through the TPNW [Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons],” said Zoka delivering to diplomats from around the world the statement of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
“Nuclear-armed states are launching threats faster than they are test-launching delivery systems, resulting in a less stable, less secure and more dangerous world,” said Zoka at the meeting June 23rd in Geneva, Switzerland. She is a member of Belgium’s Pax Christi Flanders.
“With Russia’s stationing of weapons in Belarus, and the continued U.S. deployment of [nuclear] weapons in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Türkiye, the NPT [Nuclear Anti-Proliferation Treaty] is failing to meet its first principles,” the ICAN statement continued.
The TPNW was adopted in 2017 by the UN General Assembly with 122 nations in favor. It bans the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons. Some 163 nations have now either formally signed or ratified the TPNW.
“Let’s eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us,” Secretary-General Guterres has said of the TPNW, a treaty “toward our shared goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.”
In 2017, ICAN received the Nobel Peace Prize with cited its major work leading to the passage of the TPNW.
ICAN declares on its website: “Nuclear weapons are the most inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. They violate international law, cause severe environmental damage, undermine national and global security, and divert vast public resources away from meeting human needs. They must be eliminated urgently.”
The so-called nuclear-armed states, which include the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom, have, however, not signed on to the TPNW.
“The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty opened for signature in 1968….A total of 191 states have joined the treaty, including the five [then acknowledged] nuclear-weapon states,” notes the website of the UN’s Office for Disarmament Affairs. More countries have ratified the NPT than any other arms limitation and disarmament agreement, a testament to the treaty’s significance.”
The NPT declares: “Considering the devastation that would be visited upon all mankind by a nuclear war and the consequent need to make every effort to avert the danger of such a war and to take measures to safeguard the security of peoples, Believing that the proliferation of nuclear weapons would seriously enhance the danger of nuclear war, In conformity with resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly calling for the conclusion of an agreement on the prevention of wider dissemination of nuclear weapons.”
The ICAN statement delivered by Zoka at NPT review meeting continued: “Despite their commitments under NPT’s Article VI, the nuclear-armed states in the NPT spent $86 billion dollars on their [nuclear] arsenals in 2023. U.S. spending accounts for 54% of the global total, at $51.5 billion, while China and Russia also spent exorbitant amounts at $11.8 billion and $8.3 billion respectively. The UK increased spending by 17% from the previous year. Across the board, every nuclear-armed state increased the amount spent on their arsenals. Meanwhile the profit-seeking private industry hires powerful lobbyists to secure billion dollar contracts to develop these weapons of mass destruction.”
It went on: “Runaway nuclear spending is increasing the risks of nuclear weapons use—as are the applications of emerging technologies to nuclear weapons command, control, communications and delivery systems. We are entering an era of AI assisted information gathering to facilitate decision making.”
“That is not the world in which we want to live. We cannot abide by policies in which one—or nine [now the number of acknowledged nuclear-armed states]…are allowed to hold the rest of the world hostage through weapons of mass destruction, because the use of those weapons knows no borders. A conflict involving nuclear weapons thousands of miles from this conference room will still cause chaos and catastrophe to all of us, our families, and our future.”
“Yet, the nuclear-armed countries are recklessly embarking on a new nuclear arms race. Every year, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, exposes the unacceptable nuclear weapons.”
What needs to be done? Indeed, as the ICAN statement said, the “the path to a world without nuclear weapons lies through the TPNW,” and added to that was: “we invite all states to join us as we move closer to it without delay.”
Can the atomic genie be put back in the bottle? Anything people have done other people can undo. And the prospect of massive loss of life from nuclear destruction is the best of reasons.
There’s a precedent: the outlawing of chemical warfare after World War I when its terrible impacts were horrifically demonstrated, killing 90,000. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 and the Chemicals Weapons Convention of 1933 outlawed chemical warfare and to a large degree the prohibition has held.
ICAN executive director Melissa Parke has said: “Despite sceptics saying nuclear-armed states will not eliminate their nuclear weapons, it has happened before so it can happen again. South Africa got rid of its nuclear arms and is now one of the leading TPNW countries. Other states, including Brazil, Sweden, and Switzerland, had programs to develop nuclear weapons that they decided would not bring them security and abandoned them.”
There are some in the U.S., in Russia, and elsewhere who think nuclear war is winnable.
Journalist Robert Scheer wrote a book published in 1982: With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush & Nuclear War. The title was from T.K. Jones, a deputy undersecretary of defense, who said that with a shovel, anyone could dig a fallout shelter—”a hole in the ground with a door over the top.”
Nuclear weaponry today—79 years after the atomic-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—involves yet more gigantic destructive power.
Take the Ohio-class U.S. ballistic missile submarines. As The National Interest describes them: “If you do the math, the Ohio-class boats may be the most destructive weapon system created by humankind. Each of the 170-meter-long vessels can carry twenty-four Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles which can be fired from underwater to strike at targets more than seven thousand miles away…As a Trident II reenters the atmosphere at speeds of up to Mach 24, it splits into up to eight independent reentry vehicles, each with a 100- or 475-kiloton nuclear warhead. In short, a full salvo from an Ohio-class submarine—which can be launched in less than one minute-could unleash up to 192 nuclear warheads to wipe twenty-four cities off the map. This is a nightmarish weapon of the apocalypse.”
As CNN reported this May: “President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian forces to rehearse deploying tactical nuclear weapons, as part of military drills to respond to what he called ‘threats’ by the West. Since invading Ukraine in 2022, Putin has repeatedly made veiled threats to use tactical nuclear weapons against the West.”
“UN Secretary-General Guterres also has said: “Today, the terrifying lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are fading from memory….In a world rife with geopolitical tensions and mistrust, this is a recipe for annihilation. We cannot allow the nuclear weapons wielded by a handful of states to jeopardize all life on our planet. We must stop knocking at doomsday’s door.”
Abolition of nuclear weapons globally has long been a top priority of the UN. Indeed, in 1946 its first resolution—Resolution 1—adopted by consensus, called for the creation of a commission to “make specific proposals…for the elimination from national armaments of nuclear weapons.”
NextEra eyes restart opportunity for shuttered Iowa plant
26 July 2024
Four years after it shut down, NextEra Energy is looking into restarting the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant, CEO John Ketchum has confirmed.
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Duane Arnold pictured before its closure in 2020 (Image: NextEra Energy)The single-unit 615 MWe boiling water reactor plant in Iowa was taken out of service in 2020 after over 45 years of operation. The plant was the only operating nuclear unit in Iowa and had been producing around 9.2% of the state's electric generation and 19% of its emission-free electricity, but the decision to close it was made in 2018 when utility Alliant Energy and owner NextEra Energy Resources agreed to shorten their existing power purchase agreement by five years, ending in 2020 rather than 2025. The plant had been scheduled to shut in October 2020, but did not return to service after a severe storm in August that year damaged its cooling towers. The reactor itself was not damaged.
"I think there would be opportunities and a lot of demand for the market if we were able to do something with Duane Arnold," CEO John Ketchum told investors in response to questions during the company's second quarter results announcement on 24 June, although bringing a nuclear plant back into service would need "a lot of thought" and assessment of risks, he added.
"So sure, we're looking at it," he said. "We would only do it if we could do it in a way that is essentially risk free with plenty of mitigants around the approach. There are a few things that we would have to work through, but yes, we are. We are looking at it."
The reactor has been defuelled - all of its fuel is now in an on-site dry storage facility - but the buildings are not scheduled to be demolished until 50 years have passed. This deferred approach to decommissioning, with the facility placed into a safe storage configuration with eventual dismantling and decontamination activities taking place after residual radioactivity has decayed, is sometimes referred to as SAFESTOR.
The threat of premature closure of US nuclear generating capacity - and the resulting loss of its carbon-free generation attributes - has led to policy reforms and support mechanisms at the state and federal level to ensure that plants that might otherwise shut down can continue to operate.
Of those plants that have already closed, one - Palisades, in Michigan - is being prepared for a restart by now-owner Holtec International, with support from federal loan guarantees. Palisades is set to be the first power reactor to be returned to commercial operation after its being declared shut down, but may not be the last: Constellation Energy CEO Joe Dominguez also did not rule out a restart of the shut-down unit 1 at the Three Mile Island, which closed in 2019 in comments to investors earlier this year.
Tailwinds
NextEra Energy owns Florida Power & Light Company, the USA's largest electric utility, and NextEra Energy Resources, which it describes as the world's largest generator of renewable energy from wind and solar. It also, through its subsidiaries, generates power from seven commercial nuclear power units in Florida, New Hampshire and Wisconsin.
NextEera Energy Resources' renewables and storage backlog increased by more than 3000 MW during what had been the company's second-best-ever quarter, including 860 MW from agreements with Google to meet its data centre power demand, Ketchum said.
Researched and written by World Nuclear News
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