Just one question in response to the “The Hill” article below: Would you trust Trump to be in charge of the the nuclear button, or ‘football’, as it is called these days? ~llaw
Bo
ok recalls Trump’s quip on pressing nuclear button: US ‘won’t be second’
Former President Trump said many controversial things in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017, but it was something he told then-Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rosselló about nuclear war while touring storm damage that stunned Rosselló.
In a memoir due out Tuesday, Rosselló recounts Trump’s visit to the island to tour damage from the Category 5 storm that killed thousands of people and devastated the island’s infrastructure.
In an excerpt obtained exclusively by The Hill, Rosselló details a conversation with Trump during a helicopter tour.
“‘Nature has a way of coming back,’ Trump said. ‘Well, it does until it does not. Who knows with nuclear warfare what will happen…,’” Rosselló writes in “The Reformer’s Dilemma.”
“And then, he said the one thing that made me more concerned than anything else in the entire visit. ‘But I tell you what…’ He paused for effect. ‘If nuclear war happens, we won’t be second in line pressing the button.’ This statement floored me. I could not believe what I was hearing. It was surreal. Was he really talking about total annihilation as we flew over the ravaged sights of the island?” Rosselló wrote.
During Trump’s presidency, lawmakers and activists frequently raised concerns about the prospect that he might trigger a nuclear war. Those concerns were particularly heightened over his rhetoric toward North Korea, such as when he posted in 2018 that he had a “much bigger & more powerful” nuclear launch button than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Trump has in recent years warned of the dangers of a nuclear war, citing the conflict in Europe after Russia invaded Ukraine and suggesting it could bring about the start of World War III.
The Trump campaign in a statement defended his foreign policy record and said the former president and presumptive GOP presidential nominee for November “abhors the idea of nuclear war.”
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the world was safer and more peaceful than any time in decades. President Trump abhors the idea of nuclear war,” campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Hill. “That’s why his historic diplomacy with North Korea stopped the regime’s nuclear tests and long range missile launches, which resumed after Biden took office.
“President Trump negotiated historic UN Security Council sanctions on Iran that left the regime weak and broke—until Biden enriched them,” he continued. “And it’s Joe Biden who is leading the world to the precipice of World War 3. President Trump’s top priority will be the safety and security of the American People. He is determined to return the world to peace.”
Hurricane Maria was one of the early flash points of Trump’s term, as he visited the island to tour damage but also disparaged some local officials and cast doubt on an official death toll, while his administration was slow to deliver aid.
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A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
(Bloomberg) — New England’s power grid operator declared a level 1 emergency alert in a bid to shore up supplies, as a powerful heat wave gripped the …
This article from the European Leadership Network caught my eye today as I was glancing through the headlines, wondering why two of my categories had no articles at all in the ‘Nuclear Power Emergencies’ and the ‘Nuclear War Threats’ sections. (Yet there was a relatively rare Yellowstone story) Go figure . . .
This presentation from the “ELN” is depressing, of course, as are all presentations of every kind about nuclear war and particularly a WWIII, but this one underestimates the initial blow to humanity from the very beginning and points out the after-affects of humanity attempting to recover from something similar, but much gentler, than most depictions of what a nuclear WWIII would be like — more like just one nuclear bomb dropped on one or two major cities in one or two major countries — with no further retaliation (which would not be the case) allowing that country or two along with the rest of the human world a chance at recovery struggling to survive, which in and of itself should not be underestimated difficulties associated with ongoing life, but none of which which fits into most WWIII scenarios.
But the story is worth reading, considering, pondering over, and acknowledging that even then, we might never succeed in restoring humanity and our ‘old’ comfortable ways of life, nor would we deserve to . . . I wonder if our beautiful Mother Earth would survive. Given enough time, I believe She would recover and support a more deserving kind of life. ~llaw
Paul Ingram |Research affiliate at the University of Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER)
Most people prefer not to think about the worst that can happen. Even those who talk of World War Three experience a mental block about imagining the aftermath.
But decisions taken over nuclear posture and potentially the use of nuclear weapons must fully account for the consequences. Ignorance weakens deterrence and exacerbates risk. We don’t plan national resilience so well. We reduce the chances of national survival, or at least human civilisation’s survival. We make recovery from catastrophe that much harder.
Scientists have been analysing what the physical consequences of an all-out nuclear war would be. Would soot in the atmosphere trigger a nuclear winter? What effects would a nuclear electro-magnetic pulse have on IT systems? Could nuclear survivors grow enough food to live? They have even tried to estimate the number of fatalities arising from different scales of nuclear war, concluding that fatalities from famine and climatic effects would likely be far greater than those from direct effects.
But if the concern is around deterrence, resilience, the survival of civilisation, and recovery, something is missing from their analysis. The cascading damage to human relations – social, economic, and political – could be just as destructive as the physical consequences. These social, economic, and political factors have barely begun to feature in the research, and (with some exceptions) there is little planning within governments for the aftermath of a nuclear exchange.
We can guess that in the face of extreme hardship, there would be heroism, compassion, inventiveness, and efforts at recovery. We can hope that there might be statesmanship and collaboration. But there would also be anarchy and chaos, driven by fear, misinformation, and tribalism.
Our complex world is now more vulnerable than it was when nuclear weapons were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The trains were running into Hiroshima within three days of the blast because nuclear radiation was not understood. Today, the fear of radiation is universal. It is easy to imagine that tens of millions would flee. It is harder to imagine borders being opened to them unless those borders were overwhelmed. Is Africa ready for the European migrant flood? Or Mexico for the American one?
Moreover, in 1945 only two cities were hit – with bombs relatively small by today’s standards. Each of the 40 or so UK nuclear warheads aboard a Trident submarine is more powerful by a factor of about six. There are thousands of weapons available to Russia and the US and hundreds to the other seven nuclear-armed states. The main nodes of civilisation in warring states – transport, shipping, energy, communications – might be hit multiple times.
Our highly interdependent modern systems of organisation, finance, and international trade mean that there are many more single points of failure. This risks triggering cascading disruptions through the value chains of the world’s economies.
At least 70% of global trade is in or with the North. Some 60% of the world’s servers are in the USA. The Euro-Atlantic and China account for over 50% of the world’s GDP. If all this were eliminated or massively disrupted, southern hemisphere societies might also implode.
Nuclear war would occur in the northern hemisphere. At least 70% of global trade is in or with the North. Some 60% of the world’s servers are in the USA. The Euro-Atlantic and China account for over 50% of the world’s GDP. If all this were eliminated or massively disrupted, southern hemisphere societies might also implode.
Even the leaderships within countries not immediately affected would experience severe challenges to governance – potentially without TV, radio, internet, social media, finances or even functioning economies. Evidence is mixed on how humans react when in mortal crisis. But it seems likely that those local communities that still retained some resources and capabilities would prioritise their own survival in possibly self-defeating protectionism.
The nature, scale, and longevity of climatic, radiation and electromagnetic pulse effects from a nuclear Armageddon would be harder to forecast than a pandemic or rising sea levels. And compared to climate change or a bio disaster its effects could be quite sudden and simultaneous, leaving little or no time for most of the international community to brace for the shock, let alone to adapt. Those areas unaffected directly by blast and radiation would need rapidly to anticipate reduced sunlight and cascading socio-economic impacts and take emergency action.
In summary, no communities, no corner of the planet would be immune. The second and third-order human effects could be massive. This includes vast population displacements, sudden disruptions to ordinary ways of life in countries far removed from the conflict, extreme dislocations of economies, acute tensions between affected nations, and significant loss of leadership and coordination capacity. Human civilisation might continue. But it could be a pale shadow, constrained, localised, and diminished.
So, what to do?
Avoiding nuclear catastrophe in the first place is the best answer. However, better understanding the full consequences of failure would enable us to factor the risk into our strategies going forward. ~Adam Thomson and Paul Ingram
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
We are blessed in Australia with ideal resources of sunshine, wind and land for renewable generation. That is our big comparative advantage. But what …
… nuclear reactor technologies. Expanding nuclear power has broad bipartisan support, with Democrats seeing it as critical to decarbonizing the power …
Sovaida Ma’ani Ewing, the writer of this article, is an author and a humanitarian after my own heart. Her words, warnings, and their meanings fit my own views of present day-to-day human life perfectly well. Her recognition of our long-lost curiosity and attention to the maniacal world around us in favor of inattention and ignorance — sleepwalking, as she calls it — a society unaware or concerned about critical human issues, such as ‘all things nuclear’ that has the nuclear power to destroy human and most all other life on planet Earth in a matter of days.
What I doubt about her correctional conclusion of hope, though, that I am certain will never happen. Her book, “Building a World Federation: The Key to Solving Our Global Crises” was written nearly a decade ago, and, as might have been expected — even by her — the ‘global crises’ have only grown considerably greater. Although she pointed out that human nuclear agreements have never worked before, meaning that a world-wide agreement of world leaders to subjectively, humanitarianly, socially, and judicially save us from exterminating ourselves will never happen without an uprising and unification by the masses of us around the world demanding our world leaders step down along with their greed and egotistical world-dominating agendas, or an unlikely other-worldly unknown intervention from above and beyond our normal human mindset(s). What are the odds of that happening? ~llaw
The threat of nuclear war is at the highest level it has been since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. However, there is a crucial difference: in 1962, most of us were alert to the threat and its existential nature. Today, by contrast, many of us are oblivious to our history or have simply forgotten it, which poses a huge danger: that of sleepwalking our way into a nuclear war with catastrophic consequences for our country and all of humanity.
This danger is exacerbated by three factors.
The first is the proliferation of nuclear arms and the renewed interest on the part of non-nuclear weapons states to acquire nuclear weapons. The war in Gaza has stirred fears that Iran will race for the bomb and join the nuclear weapons’ club. There are good reasons for such a fear: Recent reports quote the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as saying that Iran is now enriching uranium up to 60 percent, considerably more than the 3.67% permitted under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The IAEA also believes Iran already possesses enough fissile material to make three nuclear weapons. Moreover, the breakout time (the time required to produce enough fissile material at the 90 percent concentration needed for nuclear weapons, not taking into account the time needed to build a deliverable nuclear warhead) is now zero. The fact that the Iran has prevented the IAEA, the world’s nuclear watchdog, from properly monitoring its nuclear activities since early 2021 only exacerbates these concerns. Added to all this are Iran’s own threats that she will reconsider her nuclear stance if her nuclear facilities are threatened.
These fears have a potentially cascading effect: they are likely to spur other countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to seek nuclear capabilities of their own starting with civilian capabilities. Indeed, Saudi Prince Mohammad has already stated that were Iran to build nuclear weapons, Saudi would follow suit. Alas, the more nuclear weapons the world has, the greater the chance they will be used intentionally or accidentally.
A similar scenario is playing out further afield in Asia where China’s assertion of territorial claims to disputed islands in the South China Seas like the Paracels and Spratlys and their adjacent waters rich in reserves of natural resources and its claims to the islands of Senkaku/Diaoyu in the East China Sea, coupled with China’s stated desire to absorb Taiwan, are making other countries in the region fearful of China’s power. Japan and South Korea are particularly nervous, especially given the nuclear threat from North Korea. Their fears have been exacerbated by America’s uneven support of Ukraine in the face of Russian territorial aggression. Even though the United States is bound by a trilateral cooperation agreement to defend Japan and the Republic of Korea under its nuclear umbrella they are worried that the support they have been promised may not be forthcoming. These factors taken together are leading both countries to float the idea of acquiring their own nuclear weapons.
The second factor exacerbating the threat of nuclear war is that the guardrails in the form of a treaty regime so painstakingly crafted by the international community designed to reduce the number of nuclear weapons have been crumbling. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty collapsed in 2019. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is defunct; and while the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START Treaty) — the last Treaty governing nuclear weapons between the U.S. and Russia– is theoretically in effect until 2026, Russia has suspended its participation in the Treaty and has allegedly not complied with her obligations under it since 2023.
The third factor enhancing the threat of nuclear war is the escalating rhetoric of countries like Russia. In early May of this year, Russia sent a clear warning that its arsenal of nuclear weapons was always in a state of combat readiness and announced that it would be holding military drills with troops based near Ukraine to prepare for the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons. This was Russia’s most explicit threat to date that it might use such weapons in Ukraine.
The combination of these three factors should serve to wake us up to the reality facing us before it’s too late. We can no longer afford to be complacent about the dangers of nuclear war, especially as we know, from past experience, that conflicts can escalate rapidly, spin beyond our control and lead to unintended consequences. It’s time we stopped and considered the price humanity would have to pay if we had even a “limited” nuclear war – limited geographically or in time. Experts suggest that using even one percent of our nuclear weapons would have a severe impact on the world’s climate, leading to a nuclear winter and a global famine in which 2 billion people―a quarter of the world’s population―would be at risk of starvation. These are unacceptable costs. Are we really willing to pay them?
As we stand on the precipice of unprecedented horror and untold suffering, we have a choice to make: we can continue our self-destructive dive into the abyss or work assiduously as a community of nations to build a global system of collective security that will ensure global peace and security. Such a system should be grounded in collectively agreed-upon international rules which are enforced even-handedly against any nation that threatens the peace using an international standing force that acts at the behest of, and in service to, the international community.
About Sovaida Ma’ani Ewing
Sovaida Ma’ani Ewing is the founder and director of The Center for Peace and Global Governance (cpgg.org), a virtual think tank and online forum that pools and proposes principled solutions to pressing global problems through publications, podcasts, lectures, workshops and targeted consulting. Sovaida Ma’ani Ewing is an international lawyer turned independent scholar who writes and lectures in the area of collective security and global governance. She is the author of five books including “Collective Security Within Reach” (2008) with a foreword written by an Under-Secretary General of the United Nations. It offers concrete recommendations for action by world leaders, national and international, to solve some of the pressing global problems of our time including the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the equitable distribution of energy resources, terrorism and the international use of force. In 2015 her book “Building a World Federation: The Key to Solving Our Global Crises” was published.
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There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Russia and the United States have together almost 90% of all nuclear weapons, SIPRI said. … All Things Considered. 3:00 PM PDT. Today, Explained. 6:00 …
All Things Gardening · Brave Little State · Homegoings · But Why · The … Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel Federal Nuclear Waste Policy …
… nuclear threats, the NATO Secretary General is flaunting a nuclear response. … Daily Mail: Putin warns West of nuclear war risk · AboutBanning Nuclear …
In this photo released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Friday, Feb. 2, 2024, Russian troops load an Iskander missile onto a mobile launcher during drills at an undisclosed location in Russia.
“The group said that figures show a $10.7 billion increase in global spending on nuclear weapons in 2023 compared with 2022, with the United States accounting for 80% of that increase. The U.S. share of total spending, $51.5 billion, is more than all the other nuclear-armed countries put together.” (excerpt from the article)
This is astonishing but not surprising to me. Mainly it is irresponsible and borders on irresponsible insanity. The U.S. always spends more on military budgets on military party, but any increase on nuclear war power is useless, because just about any single nuclear endowed country (5 of the 9 are no doubt capable) with these weapons of mass destruction can create “Armageddon”, and if one does, others will retaliate and WWIII will wipe out substantially all life on planet Earth.
We are addicted to something called ‘deterrence’, a thought-to-be way of preventing nuclear war by domination and fear threats in place of such things as human agreements, pacts, treaties, and common sense that have all essentially been tossed out as an honest, cooperative way to prevent global conflicts of war — especially nuclear war. As I have said before, ‘deterrence’ cannot sustain its purpose, partly because of economic reasons as well as the capitalistic power-mongering egos of our world leaders. All I can say tonight is that we have chosen the wrong kind of leadership to guide ourselves since the caveman days, and now look what we’re up against for our admiration of powerful, wealthy, and ruthless leadership all around the world.
The following article ought to help us all understand that nuclear “doomsday” is seething right around the corner, most likely inevitable . . . ~llaw
Nuclear powers are deepening their reliance on their nukes, a watchdog group says
JUNE 17, 20244:29 AM ET
By
The Associated Press
Russian Defense Ministry Press Service/AP
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — The world’s nine nuclear-armed states continue to modernize their nuclear weapons as the countries deepened their reliance on such deterrence in 2023, a Swedish think tank said Monday.
“We have not seen nuclear weapons playing such a prominent role in international relations since the Cold War,” said Wilfred Wan, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s weapons of mass destruction program.
Earlier this month, Russia and its ally Belarus launched a second stage of drills intended to train their troops in tactical nuclear weapons, part of the Kremlin’s efforts to discourage the West from ramping up support for Ukraine.
In a separate report, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, said the nine nuclear-armed states spent a combined total of $91.4 billion on their arsenals in 2023 – equivalent to $2,898 per second. The Geneva-based coalition of disarmament activists won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.
The group said that figures show a $10.7 billion increase in global spending on nuclear weapons in 2023 compared to 2022, with the United States accounting for 80% of that increase. The U.S. share of total spending, $51.5 billion, is more than all the other nuclear-armed countries put together.
“There has been a notable upward trend in the amount of money devoted to developing these most inhumane and destructive of weapons over the past five years,” said Alicia Sanders-Zakre, Policy and Research Coordinator with ICAN.
The next biggest spender was China at $11.8 billion, she said, with Russia spending the third largest amount at $8.3 billion.
“All this money is not improving global security, in fact it’s threatening people wherever they live,” Sanders-Zakre said.
SIPRI estimated that some 2,100 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles, and nearly all belong to Russia or the U.S. However, it said that China is also believed to have some warheads on high operational alert for the first time.
“Regrettably we continue to see year-on-year increases in the number of operational nuclear warheads,” said Dan Smith, SIPRI’s director. He added that the trend will likely accelerate in the coming years “and is extremely concerning.”
Russia and the United States have together almost 90% of all nuclear weapons, SIPRI said. The sizes of their military stockpiles seem to have remained relatively stable in 2023, although Russia is estimated to have deployed around 36 more warheads with operational forces than in January 2023, the watchdog added.
In its SIPRI Yearbook 2024, the institute said that transparency regarding nuclear forces has declined in both countries in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and debates around nuclear-sharing arrangements have increased in importance.
Washington suspended its bilateral strategic stability dialogue with Russia, and last year Moscow announced that it was suspending its participation in the New START nuclear treaty.
Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12,121 warheads in January, about 9,585 were in military stockpiles for potential use. An estimated 3,904 of those warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft — which is 60 more than in January 2023 — and the rest were in central storage.
In Asia, India, Pakistan and North Korea are all pursuing the capability to deploy multiple warheads on ballistic missiles, the institute said. The United States, Russia, France, UK and China already have that capacity, enabling a rapid potential increase in deployed warheads, as well as the possibility for nuclear-armed countries to threaten the destruction of significantly more targets.
SIPRI stressed that all estimates were approximate, and the institute revises its world nuclear forces data each year based on new information and updates to earlier assessments.
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There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Weekend All Things Considered. Next Up: 6:00 PM Live from the Word Barn … Russia and the United States have together almost 90% of all nuclear weapons …
Gates and his energy company TerraPower are spearheading a major project that broke ground in Kemmerer, Wyoming last week — a nuclear power plant that …
But after two large plants in Georgia came online in 2023 and 2024 billions of dollars over budget and delayed by years, no U.S. nuclear reactors are …
The threats have failed to materialize, and Russia continues to wage its all-out war without its nuclear arsenal. Stoltenberg also urged NATO members …
An image shows the TerraPower and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Natrium technology, which features a sodium fast reactor combined with a molten salt energy storage system. (TerraPower)
CNN. in this story refers, to Bill Gates as a philanthropist. He may been at one point in his professional life, but philanthropy includes this qualification in its definition: A philanthropist “helps create a better world”.
Anyone who promotes anything nuclear, including an alternative kind of nuclear power plant is definitely not, in my opinion, a philanthropist. But for the edification of others I have posted a short 4 minute interview this evening about Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ view of the coming nuclear power world along with questions about known problems with all nuclear power plants as well as the unique uranium fuel this plant intends to use. The answers offered by Bill Gates are, at best, highly optimistic. ~llaw
Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates talks to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria about building a nuclear power plant in Wyoming and the future of nuclear energy.
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A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
… Things newsletter, and we’ll give you the 5 … All is Not Well Between Macron and Meloni. … Russian Nuclear Submarine Docks in Cuba: Putin’s Warning to …
This Bloomberg article, reprinted by “The Japan Times”, indicates the world’s global investors and banks are not going to support the next generational attempt to rely on nuclear power to resolve not only the shortage of energy, but also the concept of investing in nuclear power to solve the CO2-caused climate change/global warming issue. So where will the unaffordable nuclear industry find financing? Obviously, from you, the taxpayer demanded of you under penalty of law by your country’s government.
This ought to tell the average citizen everywhere that new nuclear power plants are not only a terrible idea from a world-wide health and safety issue, but also a financial disaster simply waiting to destroy economies everywhere. If the capitalists expected to capitalize nuclear energy, chances are it will never be financed, and therefore our collective world leaders should abort their concept of eliminating increased CO2 by 2050 pie-in-sky thumb-sucking pacifier to us all. They told the lie; they know it’s never going to happen; and they should come clean and admit they are wrong. But they won’t.
So that means we are all living on borrowed time that we all have long known is running short. We have been fed similar lies over a few decades before to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, and no progress was ever made, and this one is the same, only worse, and most likely the last because our borrowed time has run out . . . To survive we must learn to relive a different, older kind of life, but that’s not going to happen either until it’s too late; in fact it is probably already too late. ~llaw
Building nuclear power is a bridge too far for world’s private investors
The next generation of nuclear reactors will need to be financed by taxpayers because private investors aren’t willing to bear the risks associated with building new plants.
That was the warning from bankers at a meeting of industry and government officials in Prague this week. The Nuclear Energy Agency event underscored the hard decisions Western economies soon need to make to keep one of their biggest clean energy sources going. While the public have warmed to nuclear in recent years, spiraling project costs have made private equity cautious.
Officials have estimated that the world needs to spend $5 trillion to triple nuclear-power generation over the next 25 years. The problem is that years of delays and billion-dollar budget overruns at European and the U.S. projects are spooking investors, and scores of reactors already running on borrowed time will need to be replaced. No private investors want to take on construction risks, said Simon Taylor, a financier at the Cambridge Nuclear Energy Center.
“We’re at a critical juncture of in the history of nuclear energy,” said William Magwood, director general of the Nuclear Energy Agency. “We have to move quickly. Financing is critical.”
Earlier this year, Electricite de France said its nuclear project at Hinkley Point in the U.K. would cost as much as £10 billion ($13 billion) extra to build and take several years longer than planned. In the U.S., Southern’s Vogtle nuclear facility came in more than $16 billion over budget and seven years behind schedule.
“Unfortunately, the nuclear industry has been its own worst enemy,” said Anurag Gupta, chief risk officer at Sequoia Investment Management.
While some private capital has gone toward designing small modular reactors — factory-built units theoretically cheaper to build than traditional plants — those projects have also been plagued by delays pushing full commercialization years later than expected. That leaves nuclear advocates struggling for investor support with the technology at hand.
Rothschild & Co.’s Steven Vaughan, an adviser for U.K.’s proposed Sizewell C nuclear plant, echoed the view that investors are wary of taking on exposure to construction risk.
Equity investment interest in Sizewell, currently owned by the U.K. government and minority stakeholder EDF, has been muted, with Centrica suggesting it could become a stakeholder.
Compounding nuclear power project risks are the long life span of the assets and the uncertain development of electricity markets. Historically, nations alleviated that risk by building reactors themselves. That’s still the case in China and Russia — the two countries building the most plants.
“It’s hard for any investor to think about market design 50 years into the future,” said Iain Smedley, chairman of global banking at Barclays. “It’s therefore very important they’re comfortable with the social contract.”
Some delegates in Prague suggested economies need to think about nuclear power beyond simply profit and loss. It’s an emissions-free energy source that can help meet climate targets, as well as supporting a skilled workforce.
“There is a vast need for state involvement,” said Marcin Kaminski, risk manager building Poland’s first reactors at Polskie Elektrownie Jadrowe.
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FILE – An aerial photo shows the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, California’s last nuclear power plant, in Avila Beach, Calif., June 20, 2010. On Thursday, June 13, 2024, former state and federal officials joined environmentalists to spotlight soaring cost estimates for keeping the plant running beyond 2025. (Joe Johnston/The Tribune via AP, File)
This late story is an important last-minute fill-in article and cannot be found in the daily “TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS” selections posted, as always, below. But it is about PG&E and the California fight over extending the nuclear power plant’s operating future beyond its scheduled shutdown next year, which, if extended, would be one of the most irresponsible decision California ever made if the Diablo Canyon plant were allowed even 5 more years of operation. And now PG&E (the plant’s evil owner) is asking for twice the money originally estimated, and also the extension of its ultimate shutdown 20+ years hence to 2050.
But the backstory is not about money, which is the basic political argument, of course, against extending the plant’s life. Though the argument should be entirely about nuclear safety, but money, sadly, always comes first in virtually all scenarios. There are a few points about the multiple nuclear dangers and other negative issues of continuing to operate the plant, but it is a small part of the argument.
I have long responded to those negative issues over the years as well as several times in this blog. I am also writing a novel I call “El Nuclear Diablo”, which deals with a potential North American issue of a national nuclear power plant grid-system failure that puts the entire continent at a developing risk of nuclear radiation poisoning, beginning with this very power plant fictionalized. Also, if you read Annie Jacobsen’s new best-selling book “Nuclear War: A Scenario”, you will learn what happens should an invading nuclear armed country (North Korea in her story) drops a nuclear bomb on an operating nuclear power plant. The nuclear power plant she chose? PG&E’s “Diablo Canyon” — the same one I am writing about . . . ~llaw
California legislators break with Gov. Newsom over loan to keep state’s last nuclear plant running
BY MICHAEL R. BLOOD
Updated 3:14 PM PDT, June 13, 2024
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The California Legislature signaled its intent on Thursday to cancel a $400 million loan payment to help finance a longer lifespan for the state’s last nuclear power plant, exposing a rift with Gov. Gavin Newsom who says that the power is critical to safeguarding energy supplies amid a warming climate.
The votes in the state Senate and Assembly on funding for the twin-domed Diablo Canyon plant represented an interim step as Newsom and legislative leaders, all Democrats, continue to negotiate a new budget. But it sets up a public friction point involving one of the governor’s signature proposals, which he has championed alongside the state’s rapid push toward solar, wind and other renewable sources.
The dispute unfolded in Sacramento as environmentalists and antinuclear activists warned that the estimated price tag for keeping the seaside reactors running beyond a planned closing by 2025 had ballooned to nearly $12 billion, roughly doubling earlier projections. That also has raised the prospect of higher fees for ratepayers.
Operator Pacific Gas & Electric called those figures inaccurate and inflated by billions of dollars.
H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the California Department of Finance, emphasized that budget negotiations are continuing and the legislative votes represented an “agreement between the Senate and the Assembly — not an agreement with the governor.”
The votes in the Legislature mark the latest development in a decades-long fight over the operation and safety of the plant, which sits on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Diablo Canyon, which began operating in the mid-1980s, produces up to 9% of the state’s electricity on any given day.
The fight over the reactors’ future is playing out as the long-struggling U.S. nuclear industry sees a potential rebirth in the era of global warming. Nuclear power doesn’t produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels, but it leaves behind waste that can remain dangerously radioactive for centuries.
A Georgia utility just finished the first two scratch-built American reactors in a generation at a cost of nearly $35 billion. The price tag for the expansion of Plant Vogtle from two of the traditional large reactors to four includes $11 billion in cost overruns. In Wyoming, Bill Gates and his energy company have started construction on a next-generation nuclear power plant that the tech titan believes will “revolutionize” how power is generated.
In 2016, PG&E, environmental groups and plant worker unions reached an agreement to close Diablo Canyon by 2025. But the Legislature voided the deal in 2022 at the urging of Newsom, who said the power is needed to ward off blackouts as a changing climate stresses the energy system. That agreement for a longer run included a $1.4 billion forgivable state loan for PG&E, to be paid in several installments.
California energy regulators voted in December to extend the plant’s operating run for five years, to 2030.
The legislators’ concerns were laid out in an exchange of letters with the Newsom administration, at a time when the state is trying to close an estimated $45 billion deficit. Among other concerns, they questioned if, and when, the state would be repaid by PG&E, and whether taxpayers could be out hundreds of millions of dollars if the proposed extension for Diablo Canyon falls through.
Construction at Diablo Canyon began in the 1960s. Critics say potential earthquakes from nearby faults not known to exist when the design was approved could damage equipment and release radiation. One fault was not discovered until 2008. PG&E has long said the plant is safe, an assessment the NRC has supported.
Last year, environmental groups called on federal regulators to immediately shut down one of two reactors at the site until tests can be conducted on critical machinery they believe could fail and cause a catastrophe. Weeks later, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission took no action on the request and instead asked agency staff to review it.
The questions raised by environmentalists about the potential for soaring costs stemmed from a review of state regulatory filings submitted by PG&E, they said. Initial estimates of about $5 billion to extend the life of the plant later rose to over $8 billion, then nearly $12 billion, they said.
“It’s really quite shocking,” said attorney John Geesman, a former California Energy Commission member who represents the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, an advocacy group that opposes federal license renewals in California. The alliance told the state Public Utilities Commission in May that the cost would represent “by far the largest financial commitment to a single energy project the commission has ever been asked to endorse.”
PG&E spokesperson Suzanne Hosn said the figures incorrectly included billions of dollars of costs unrelated to extending operations at the plant.
The company has pegged the cost at $8.3 billion, Hosn said, adding that “the financial benefits exceed the costs.”
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Suddenly, potential nuclear war has turned urgently serious. The news is everywhere, full of questions with no answers, so I have returned to my old standby for accurate information, Sky News . . . This Post is set up so you can pick and choose their ‘Key Points’ links of your choice if you want to examine specific issues more thoroughly; or you can read the entire story if you have the time and the curiosity. I will leave opinions, facts and the discussion of issues and circumstances to “Sky News” reporting for now. (Let me just add this: I hope Russia’s movement of ships to Cuba is not a more serious move than the old Cuban Missile crisis in October of 1962) . . . ~llaw
Ukraine-Russia war: Biden and Zelenskyy sign 10-year security deal; Putin’s plan ‘has failed’, Germany says; Russia tells West not to ‘worry’ as its warships arrive in Cuba
Russia reassures the West as its warships arrive in Cuba – while its troops elsewhere practise the electronic launch of missiles in tactical nuclear drills. Meanwhile, world leaders gather in Italy today for a G7 meeting – with the US and Ukraine signing a 10-year security deal.
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… war effort. Most of the money would be … Russia practiced electronic missile launches during tactical nuclear drills … Footage shows Russian sailors …
The following “Bulletin f the Atomic Scientists” long discussion today indicates to me that the Russia/Ukraine war has become the most likely circumstance to suddenly turn into all out nuclear war with the Russian/Belarus considering what are called ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons, defined by Russia as “non-strategic.” and the beginning of military training operations with Belarus. Regardless of what these weapons are called, they make the atomic bombs that decimated Japan little more than, say, 4th of July fireworks compared to dynamite.
NATO’s threats, similar to the United States’, make for an extremely contentious split of how nuclear weapons could become weapons of war, which has never happened since 1945, and only once in world history.
But any kind of nuclear use, no matter how destructive the weapons may or may not be, will instantly create a full-blown nuclear war by retaliation and the suddenly forgotten long-time concept that nuclear ‘deterrence’ that nuclear armed Nations have used as a sense of fear to prevent nuclear war rather than ordinary common sense or the meaningless useless treaties and other agreements among nuclear armed countries. And then there is the Middle East conflict, adding to the world-wide tension. But the possibility or probability of WWII seems to be, at least for now, between the United States and Russia along with their allies. ~llaw
Read on . . .
Why the West should take Russia’s nuclear threats more seriously
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned of nuclear conflict during his annual speech to the nation on February 29, 2024. On June 5, he said the West was wrong to assume Russia would never use nuclear weapons and that the Kremlin’s nuclear doctrine should not be taken lightly. (Credit: Kremlin.ru)
Russian nuclear threats have returned to the forefront of the war in Ukraine, but this time with a new feature: exercises involving tactical nuclear weapons.
These exercises come in response to Western powers signaling broader support for Ukraine. On April 29, for instance, French President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed his position that France remains open to sending ground troops to Ukraine to bolster European security against Russian aggression. Shortly after, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, announced that the UK government would support Ukraine using UK-supplied weapons against Russian territory.
In response, Russia characterized these statements as a “completely new round of escalation of tension” and announced on May 6 that it would conduct drills simulating the use of tactical nuclear weapons, or—as Russia describes them—“non-strategic” nuclear weapons. Although these drills constitute a new kind of nuclear threat, they have been dismissed as not credible by a growing number of European countries. But the fine line between skepticism and complacency could pose significant risks for crisis stability in Europe.
Threat or bluff? Russia’s ordering of drills on May 6 mark the first public announcement of military exercises involving tactical nuclear weapons since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The exercises—first conducted on May 7-9 and later expanded to include nuclear bombers on May 27-31—also included Belarus, who agreed to host Russian tactical nuclear weapons in June 2022. By overtly training with tactical nuclear weapons which are specifically designed for battlefield nuclear use and incorporating Belarus into the exercises, Russia has stepped closer to the nuclear threshold and opened new pathways for nuclear escalation.
Despite the new and explicit attention to operational exercises involving tactical nuclear weapons, however, leaders in countries ranging from Lithuania to Ukraine have joined a group of skeptical observers that dismiss the most recent round of Russian threats as a bluff.
The outright dismissal of Russia’s nuclear threats has an intuitive appeal. Nuclear saber-rattling has endured as a persistent but seemingly trivial feature of Russian policy, as evidenced by the lack of nuclear weapons use despite continued and expanding Western support for Ukraine. But whether or not Russia will use nuclear weapons is the wrong way to frame the question; it mischaracterizes the nature and purpose of Russian threats.
The promise to commit national suicide by using nuclear weapons against one or several nuclear-armed states certainly lacks credibility: Russia is not likely to attempt a nuclear first-strike against France, the United Kingdom, or any other NATO member in Europe. The fundamental purpose of Russia’s nuclear behavior, however, is not to aimlessly bluster and hope for deterrent effects but to generate uncertainty and increase the risk that a range of Western actions might trigger nuclear escalation, whether intentionally or inadvertently.
Russia’s current behavior is best described as nuclear shielding, in which a state hides behind the protection of its nuclear arsenal to conduct other forms of aggression. Such behavior lays the groundwork for a crisis to spiral out of control and potentially cross the nuclear threshold. In doing so, Russia is forcing its Western adversaries to choose whether such risks are worth taking in support of Ukraine.
Russian nuclear policy is not built on a series of bluffs. Rather, it captures a fundamental pillar of deterrence theory dating back to the heyday of the Cold War: Threats that leave something to chance and force the adversary to face potentially uncontrollable risks that entail unacceptable costs.
Contrary to the perspective that Russian nuclear threats are empty and ineffective, nuclear weapons have played an essential role in enabling Russia’s war against Ukraine. To the extent that such threats have deterred or slowed Western support—an effect acknowledged by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan—Russia has successfully leveraged its nuclear arsenal to conduct its conventional invasion of Ukraine.
Understanding the role that Russia’s nuclear weapons have had in the war in Ukraine is therefore essential for crafting policy that enables Western support for Ukraine. It is equally essential for also identifying and mitigating the risks of such support.
Nuclear weapons in Russia’s invasion. The first way in which nuclear weapons have shaped the war in Ukraine is by enabling Russian leaders to invade Ukraine in the first place. With a nuclear shield behind which to hide, Russia could plan on attacking Ukraine without a significant likelihood of Western powers directly intervening to repel a Russian invasion. Such a projection dramatically reduces the potential costs of conflict and, in effect, likely facilitated Russia’s offensive plans and emboldened its aggressive behavior.
In late 2021, Russian leaders began referencing fears of eastward NATO expansion and called for robust security assurances from Western countries. Such requests ring hollow from the country that had already violated the 1994 Budapest Memorandum—in which Russia pledged to recognize Ukraine’s territorial integrity—by annexing the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. In practice, however, Russia used these statements to shroud its revisionist aims and begin signaling resolve over the conflict in Ukraine to Western audiences by forcing security issues into the conversation.
Shortly thereafter, Russian President Vladimir Putin built upon the narrative of potential NATO expansion to issue overt nuclear threats. In a news conference, Putin warned that NATO countries would face a greater risk of being drawn into a conflict with Russia “against [their] will” if Ukraine joined NATO. Putin acknowledged that the combined might of NATO’s conventional forces and Russia’s conventional forces are “incomparable,” but then proceeded to note that “Russia is one of the world’s leading nuclear powers” and there would be “no winners” in a NATO-Russia conflict. These comments, which came only two weeks before Russia launched its full-scale conventional invasion, had the clear goal of deterring external involvement in Russia’s forthcoming war.
Zapad-2021—the military exercise Russia used to disguise its military buildup before attacking Ukraine—also provided a chance for Russia to strengthen the credibility of its threats with military actions, rather than just words. Before the invasion of Ukraine, several analysts noted that Zapad-2021 intentionally sought to illustrate to Western audiences the severe costs and escalation risks of a war with Russia, with an emphasis on the nuclear risks of such a conflict. By pairing Russia’s destabilizing rhetoric with the largest iteration of the Zapad series of exercises to date, Moscow was able to increase the perceived risks of escalation that would follow if external actors challenged Russia’s subsequent invasion of Ukraine.
Through these measures, Russia used nuclear threats to initiate its invasion of Ukraine. By clearly associating the political crisis over Ukraine with nuclear threats and conducting major military exercises with potential implications for strategic stability, Russia created sufficient uncertainty and risk of escalation to bolster its deterrent threats and reduce the likelihood of a major Western response. From behind its nuclear shield, Russia was enabled to attack Ukraine.
Leveraging its nuclear posture. The second effect of Russia’s nuclear threats has been the prevention of decisive Western support for Ukraine. Although Ukraine’s partners have provided significant assistance since 2022, concerns of nuclear escalation have resulted in a cautious, incremental approach to Western support. Even to this day, nuclear weapons continue to slow down the Western response to the Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Since 2022, Russia’s declaratory threats have become increasingly paired with changes in operational military behavior on the battlefield. In practice, Russia has slowly but steadily altered its nuclear posture to create greater risks for Western powers in considering a greater involvement in the war in Ukraine. This stands in stark contrast with NATO’s nuclear posture, which has remained unchanged since the war began.
Three days after Russia’s 2022 attack, Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear forces to assume a “special combat readiness” and increase the arsenal’s alert status. Only two months later, Russia successfully tested the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, which possesses a short boost phase that complicates tracking and increases its chances of defeating ballistic missile defenses. Alongside this demonstration of improved nuclear capability, Yury Borisov, the director general of the Roscosmos State Corporation, announced that the Sarmat had been placed on combat duty, while Putin warned that Western powers should “think twice” about threatening Russia.
Since these initial displays of greater operational nuclear preparedness, Russia has only rattled its nuclear saber more loudly.
The most notable example of Russia leveraging its nuclear posture to intentionally create greater escalation risks has been the increasing salience of tactical nuclear weapons in Russia’s threats. In March 2023, Putin announced that Russia would develop a “special storage facility for tactical weapons on Belarusian territory,” where Russia would station some of its tactical nuclear weapons assigned specifically to battlefield missions.
The recent drills involving Russia and Belarus exercising their roles in a nuclear mission capitalize on their new nuclear sharing agreement. They mark a notable step up the escalatory ladder to serve as a renewed deterrent signal to Western countries. Through these exercises, Russia is showing a greater commitment to taking risks in the nuclear arena and challenging its adversaries to accept such risks if they plan to oppose Russia in Ukraine more directly.
In the background, other trends in Russia’s nuclear posture exacerbate the dangers posed by tactical nuclear weapons activities.
Russia is currently engaged in a decades-long modernization effort that implies a greater focus on regional warfighting strategies. Putin’s rhetoric in October 2022 revealed a meaningful shift in this regard, as his speech broadened the conditions under which Russia would use nuclear weapons from when “the very existence of the state is under threat” to anytime “the territorial integrity… independence and freedom” of Russia are at stake. A February 2024 report purporting to have obtained leaked Russian military files further suggests that tactical nuclear first-use is a serious option for Russia, and the thresholds for nuclear use might be lower than previously thought.
The greater emphasis on tactical nuclear weapons in military planning and an apparent reduction of barriers to nuclear use have created significant escalation risks in the war in Ukraine. In effect, these actions are precisely the concerns expressed by US President Joe Biden when he stated in October 2022 that the “prospect of Armageddon” was the highest it had been since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, largely due to the possibility of Russia deploying tactical nuclear weapons.
Countering Russia’s nuclear shadowing. Russia has not used nuclear weapons in its war in Ukraine, but that does not mean its nuclear threats are merely bluffs. To the contrary, evolutions in the rhetoric, capabilities, and posture underpinning Russian nuclear threats indicate that Moscow is slowly—but surely—working to undermine strategic stability and increase the credibility of its threats.
Recent research shows that frequent nuclear threats—even if extreme and seemingly excessive—are indicative of issues about which the threatening state deeply cares, and such threats are often associated with aggressive action. Russia’s statements and behaviors related to nuclear weapons in Ukraine suggest that even if the likelihood of nuclear escalation is low, it cannot be dismissed outright.
The overriding policy implication of this analysis is not that Western allies should abandon their efforts to support Ukraine. Rather, they should purposefully calibrate responses to mitigate the risks of nuclear escalation.
Deterrence can be framed as a competition in risk-taking, in which conflicting parties attempt to coerce their opponent into backing down. Therefore, to compete with Russia, Western countries must accept at least some level of risk and force Russia to consider how to respond to Western actions. The challenge is to determine which competitive risk-taking measures can stymie Russian advances without triggering a massive escalatory response.
For example, Putin almost certainly has thresholds that—if crossed or simply approached—could prompt the use of nuclear weapons. At the same time, Western allies have provided significant aid to Ukraine without trigging a Russian nuclear response. The level of support provided to Ukraine undoubtedly crossed the threshold of what Russia would have deemed acceptable. However, in the same way the West has been reluctant to decisively intervene, Russia has not strongly reacted against Ukraine’s external partners.
The West’s incremental approach to provide support shows that Russian aggression can be meaningfully countered without incurring unacceptable levels of risk. Notably, even the recent approval for Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons against Russian territory has been met with a limited Russian response.
Western countries should not be immobilized by fear of Russian threats, but they should nevertheless take the risks of conflict seriously. Despite an emerging narrative that Russian nuclear threats are not credible, these threats continue to pose tangible risks for crisis stability. As Putin recently stated, the West would be wrong to completely ignore Russia’s doctrine and threats to use nuclear weapons first in a conflict.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, many Western states were skeptical of US warnings regarding an imminent Russian attack. This skepticism was clearly misplaced, however, and Western leaders should avoid repeating such complacency in response to Russia’s nuclear threats. The outright rejection of Russian threats could lead the West to stumble into a nuclear crisis and force decisions in the face of massive risk and significant uncertainty.
Russia can be opposed, but Western policymakers must be prudent in their actions to manage the potentially low—yet very real—risks of nuclear escalation.
Editor’s note: The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the US Air Force, the US Defense Department, or the US government.
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Bill Gates shakes the hand of Wyoming governor Mark Gordon (in the cowboy outfit) at the TerraPower groundbreaking ceremony a few miles south of Kemmerer, Wyoming. /image courtesy of WyoFile.com
Here is the latest on TerraPower’s intent to build this 1st of its kind plant and hopefully “mass produce” future ones by employing a new kind of state-of-the-art small nuclear reactor power plants (SMRs) that will cool the plant with, Natrium (the plants name), a sodium-based cooling system along with a molten salt waste storage system.
But there are plenty of pros and even more cons, including ensuring the kind of nuclear fuel it will use, which is refined uranium to near nuclear bomb standards. Russia (and perhaps a few military facilities) is the only market for this rare uranium fuel, and Russia may well refuse to sell the fuel to TerraPower — in fact Russia has already delayed TerraPower’s plans for two years by withholding the sale of this fuel to operate the planned 1st demonstration of the new power plant. And so it goes, but TerraPower says they are beginning construction now regardless of fuel availability and regulatory approval of the plant design, partly because the cooling system has never been used before.
But no matter how we frame, color, or present nuclear poser plants, nuclear bombs, and all other things nuclear, the unredeemable element is that they all use nuclear fuel (refined uranium), which I believe is the most dangerous product ever created by mankind, and if we continue to use it (in any form), it will eventually destroy humanity and other life on a global scale, and we are right now, this very day, staring it in the face. We ought to know better. We were put on notice in August of 1945. ~llaw
(My comments above are a refresher for those of you who may have read one or more of my Posts on this very subject in previous evenings of my “All Things Nuclear” blog. But there are also numerous related links, as well as two other same subject news stories in the “Nuclear Power” nuclear news section of today’s news below, to this and other stories, of course, at the end of this article.)
Bill Gates is breaking ground on a nuclear power plant in Wyoming
Bill Gates and his energy company are starting construction at their Wyoming site for a next-generation nuclear power plant he believes will “revolutionize” how power is generated.
Gates was in the tiny community of Kemmerer Monday to break ground on the project. The co-founder of Microsoft is chairman of TerraPower. The company applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March for a construction permit for an advanced nuclear reactor that uses sodium, not water, for cooling. If approved, it would operate as a commercial nuclear power plant.
The site is adjacent to PacifiCorp’s Naughton Power Plant, which will stop burning coal in 2026 and natural gas a decade later, the utility said. Nuclear reactors operate without emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases. PacifiCorp plans to get carbon-free power from the reactor and says it is weighing how much nuclear to include in its long-range planning.
The work begun Monday is aimed at having the site ready so TerraPower can build the reactor as quickly as possible if its permit is approved. Russia is at the forefront for developing sodium-cooled reactors.
Gates told the audience at the groundbreaking that they were “standing on what will soon be the bedrock of America’s energy future.”
“This is a big step toward safe, abundant, zero-carbon energy,” Gates said. “And it’s important for the future of this country that projects like this succeed.”
Advanced reactors typically use a coolant other than water and operate at lower pressures and higher temperatures. Such technology has been around for decades, but the United States has continued to build large, conventional water-cooled reactors as commercial power plants. The Wyoming project is the first time in about four decades that a company has tried to get an advanced reactor up and running as a commercial power plant in the United States, according to the NRC.
It’s time to move to advanced nuclear technology that uses the latest computer modeling and physics for a simpler plant design that’s cheaper, even safer and more efficient, said Chris Levesque, the company’s president and chief executive officer.
TerraPower’s Natrium reactor demonstration project is a sodium-cooled fast reactor design with a molten salt energy storage system.
“The industry’s character hasn’t been to innovate. It’s kind of been to repeat past performance, you know, not to move forward with new technology. And that was good for reliability,” Levesque said in an interview. “But the electricity demands we’re seeing in the coming decades, and also to correct the cost issues with today’s nuclear and nuclear energy, we at TerraPower and our founders really felt it’s time to innovate.”
A Georgia utility just finished the first two scratch-built American reactors in a generation at a cost of nearly $35 billion. The price tag for the expansion of Plant Vogtle from two of the traditional large reactors to four includes $11 billion in cost overruns.
The TerraPower project is expected to cost up to $4 billion, half of it from the U.S. Department of Energy. Levesque said that figure includes first-of-its-kind costs for designing and licensing the reactor, so future ones would cost significantly less.
Most advanced nuclear reactors under development in the U.S. rely on a type of fuel — known as high-assay low-enriched uranium — that’s enriched to a higher percentage of the isotope uranium-235 than the fuel used by conventional reactors. TerraPower delayed its launch date in Wyoming by two years to 2030 because Russia is the only commercial supplier of the fuel, and it’s working with other companies to develop alternate supplies. The U.S. Energy Department is working on developing it domestically.
Edwin Lyman co-authored an article in Science on Thursday that raises concerns that this fuel could be used for nuclear weapons. Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the risk posed by HALEU today is small because there isn’t that much of it around the world. But that will change if advanced reactor projects, which require much larger quantities, move forward, he added. Lyman said he wants to raise awareness of the danger in the hope that the international community will strengthen security around the fuel.
NRC spokesperson Scott Burnell said the agency is confident its current requirements will maintain both security and public safety of any reactors that are built and their fuel.
Gates co-founded TerraPower in 2008 as a way for the private sector to propel advanced nuclear energy forward to provide safe, abundant, carbon-free energy.
The company’s 345-megawatt reactor could generate up to 500 megawatts at its peak, enough for up to 400,000 homes. TerraPower said its first few reactors will focus on supplying electricity. But it envisions future reactors could be built near industrial plants to supply high heat.
Nearly all industrial processes requiring high heat currently get it from burning fossil fuels. Heat from advanced reactors could be used to produce hydrogen, petrochemicals, ammonia and fertilizer, said John Kotek at the Nuclear Energy Institute.
It’s significant that Gates, a technological innovator and climate champion, is betting on nuclear power to help address the climate crisis, added Kotek, the industry group’s senior vice president for policy.
“I think this has helped open people’s eyes to the role that nuclear power does play today and can play in the future in addressing carbon emissions,” he said. “There’s tremendous momentum building for new nuclear in the U.S. and the potential use of a far wider range of nuclear energy technology than we’ve seen in decades.”
Left: File photo by Ritzau Scanpix/Mads Claus Rasmussen via Reuters
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