From bombs to boilers: Seven decades of nuclear failure
The history of nuclear power is a tale of economic miscalculation, technological hubris, wishful thinking, political expediency, and corporate malfeasance that resulted in the largest managerial disaster in industrial history
The nuclear mirage: why small modular reactors won’t save nuclear power
Everywhere you look, the nuclear industry’s hype machine is in overdrive. Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy urges a “warp speed” nuclear revival. Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and the UK government all tout small modular reactors (SMRs) as the silver bullet for climate change and energy security. Tech billionaires are hiring nuclear veterans. Wall Street is whispering about “round-the-clock power” for AI data centers. The UK is betting billions on “mini nukes” to fill its looming energy gap.
State laws protect New Mexico despite SCOTUS nuclear storage ruling against Texas, experts say
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Wednesday in favor of a company seeking to store nuclear waste in Texas has implications for neighboring New Mexico’s fight to prevent a similar facility being built here. But the ruling does not mean New Mexicans should expect truckloads of radioactive material to arrive anytime soon, advocates and experts say.
Olympic Surfing Comes to America’s Largest Nuclear Waste Dump
Professional surfing fans are responding to the LA28 Olympics Organizing Committee’s announcement that the Los Angeles-based 2028 Summer Olympics’ surfing event will take place at Lower Trestles. Depending upon whom you ask, Lowers is either the most perfectly level playing field for the sport of surfing short of an artificial wave pool, or the most boring venue imaginable for a surf competition.
Palisades ASLB Rejects All Environmental, Safety, & Health Contentions; Watchdogs Vow Appeal
COVERT, MI and WASHINGTON, DC, APRIL 4, 2025–On March 31, 2025, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) refused to grant a hearing on the merits for seven contentions brought by oppponents of Holtec International’s scheme to restart the Palisades atomic reactor on the Lake Michigan shore in southwest Michigan.
Continued Propaganda About AI and Nuclear Power
Billionaires Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Oracle’s Larry Ellison—who had, just a few days back, been part of Donald Trump’s first news conference—lost a combined 48 billion dollars in paper money. As a good friend of mine, who shall go unnamed because of their use of an expletive, said “I hate all AI, but it’s hard to not feel joy that these asshats are losing a lot of money.”
Google, Amazon, Meta join back tripling of global nuclear power by 2050
A coalition of the world's biggest corporate energy users signed a pledge Wednesday in Houston to support a tripling of nuclear energy capacity by 2050.
Founding signatories include tech giants Google, Amazon and Meta as well as Occidental, Dow, Allseas and OSGE.
Christie Brinkley: Don’t let the US resume nuclear weapon tests that ended decades ago | Opinion
The United States and other nuclear powers are now moving closer to resuming nuclear weapons tests, decades after testing ended. This highly disturbing trend must be halted. Since the atomic age, 2,056 nuclear weapons have been detonated, 528 of them above the ground. The United States and Soviet Union accounted for about 85% of these tests. The explosive power of atmospheric tests equaled 29,000 Hiroshima bombs. Airborne radioactive fallout circled the globe, re-entered the environment through precipitation, and entered human bodies through food and water.