Beyond Nuclear International

An overlooked Supreme Court case could decide the future of nuclear power, writes Miles Mogulescu

Although barely mentioned in the mainstream media, in granting cert to Interim Storage Partners, LLC v. Texas, a case about the storage of spent radioactive fuel from nuclear power plants, the U.S. Supreme Court may have taken on potentially the most consequential case of its new term.

SCOTUS will decide whether or not to uphold a Fifth Circuit decision that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) does not have the legal power to license a private corporation to construct an off-site storage facility to hold deadly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.

Depending on the legal rationale for SCOTUS’ decision, it could further enhance the power of courts to overturn decisions of regulatory agencies.

The case could determine whether artificial intelligence companies like Microsoft and Google can build a new generation of nuclear power plants to service the voracious hunger of artificial intelligence for electricity. Depending on its rationale, it could also impact the ability of regulatory agencies to function efficiently without being second guessed by courts.

The issues in the case have brought together an unlikely coalition of environmentalists, Texas Republicans, New Mexico Democrats, and the oil and gas industry against an equally unlikely grouping of the Biden administration, the nuclear power industry, and AI tech companies like Microsoft and Google.

The Legal Substance Issues

The environmental and legal issues in the case have a long history. The nuclear power industry has accumulated nearly 100,000 metric tons of radioactive waste that need to be deposited in a place that could be safe for millions of years. Most of the waste is now stored in temporary facilities adjacent to the power plants that create them, but such sites are running out of space and may not be safe long-term. During the 1980s Congress passed and amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act providing for a permanent waste site and then designating Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the sole site. But plans for the site were abandoned due to environmental and political opposition, leaving no permanent site for disposable nuclear waste.

In response, for the first time the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began to grant licenses for “interim” storage facilities which were off-site (and often hundreds of miles away) from the power plants which generated the waste, claiming authority under the Atomic Energy Act. One such license was for an off-site storage facility in the Permian Basin, Texas. Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and a private oil and gas company sued, claiming that the federal government lacked the statutory authority to issue a license for interim off-site storage.

Tritium dumped into Cape Cod Bay will wash back onto community shores, says a new report

Linda Pentz Gunter

Holtec, the company that has purchased a number of permanently closed nuclear reactors in order to decommission them, has encountered yet another obstacle to its “dilution is the solution to pollution” plans.

One of the reactor sites Holtec has taken over is Pilgrim in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the Cape Cod Bay, which closed permanently in 2019. Holtec’s not-so-little problem there is what do with what started out as at least 1.1 million gallons of radioactively contaminated wastewater stored at the site. 

The company first suggested it would simply release the wastewater into Cape Cod Bay, assuring residents and the immediately alarmed fishing community not to worry because (a) the wastewater isn’t dangerous anyway (b) everyone does this all the time at reactor sites and no one has gotten sick so far and (c) it would quickly disperse into the wider ocean. Holtec chose this disposal method for one reason alone: it is the cheapest.

The proposal was vigorously fought by citizens, the state, and powerful Massachusetts Democrat, Senator Ed Markey. The state of Massachusetts effectively banned the discharge option, a decision Holtec is contesting. 

That Final Determination to Deny Application to Modify a Massachusetts Permit to Discharge Pollutants to Surface Waters was issued by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Division of Watershed Management on July 18, 2024. A month later, Holtec launched its appeal to reverse the decision, something that could take months or longer to find its way to court.

A new report from ICAN looks at the reality and implications of Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal

Introduction

Israel is one of nine countries that possesses nuclear weapons, with an estimated arsenal of 90 nuclear weapons, which it can launch by missiles and aircraft, and possibly by sea-based missiles. 

Despite widespread acknowledgement by experts and former government officials of their existence, Israel and many Western governments maintain a policy of ambiguity about Israeli nuclear weapons. This pretense cannot continue. Nuclear disarmament is an essential component of a lasting peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, and in the region more broadly. 

This is because of the risk of use of nuclear weapons and the catastrophic consequences of such use, as well as the proliferation risks posed by Israel’s continued possession of a nuclear arsenal. Despite efforts, states have not yet succeeded in negotiating a weapons of mass destruction free zone in the Middle East. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted in 2017, offers a clear pathway to nuclear disarmament, and Israel and all states should immediately join.

Historical Context

Israel’s nuclear weapons programme dates back to the 1950s, when it started to construct the Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona in 1958, following its purchase of necessary equipment to develop nuclear weapons, including a research reactor from France and heavy water from Norway. 

Although unclear, it may have assembled its first nuclear weapons in the 1960s. Since then, Israel has adhered to a policy of deliberate ambiguity, refusing to confirm or deny its possession of nuclear weapons. 

Current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials use variations of the phrase “We won’t be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East” in response to questions about Israel’s nuclear arsenal. The United States and other Western governments have adopted Israel’s policy of ambiguity, despite widespread acknowledgement by nuclear experts and even former government officials of the existence of an Israeli nuclear arsenal. 

The United States has adopted a policy not to pressure Israel to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and all U.S. presidents since President Bill Clinton have even reportedly signed a letter indicating that arms control efforts would not target Israel. 

Former German officials have likewise acknowledged that they were aware that submarines that they sold to Israel would be equipped with nuclear missiles. This tacit endorsement of a clear case of nuclear proliferation undermines broader nonproliferation and disarmament efforts in the Middle East.

We must quickly realign priorities before nuclear weapons are used, writes M.V. Ramana

The relationship between nuclear weapons and human security is similar to that of the relationship between economic inequalities and social justice: if you have the first, the second is very difficult to obtain. Jacqueline Cabassso and Ray Acheson.

For the vast majority of the world’s people, the most important impact of the possession of nuclear arsenals by some of the most powerful countries has been the danger of instant and painful death. In the words of psychologist Robert Jay Lifton: “The central existential fact of the nuclear age is vulnerability.”

This vulnerability has become more apparent in recent years. In the last 16 months, the world has witnessed government officials from Russia (Dmitry Medvedev) and Israel (Amihai Eliyahu) threatening to use, or calling for the use of, nuclear weapons against the people of Ukraine and Gaza respectively. The rulers of these countries have already shown the willingness to kill tens of thousands of civilians. 

The ‘uses’ of nuclear weapons

What these recent invocations of nuclear threats illustrate is that nuclear weapons are most ‘useful’ to nuclear-armed aggressors to intimidate those they attack and all who might aid them. All countries possessing nuclear weapons make plans for using nuclear weapons under some contingency or the other. As British historian E. P. Thompson once noted, “It has never been true that nuclear war is ‘unthinkable’. It has been thought and the thought has been put into effect.”

There are other uses for nuclear weapons. In his book, The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg, best known for sharing the secret study of the U.S. Department of Defense on the Vietnam War – the Pentagon Papers – with the media, documents twenty-five instances when U.S. presidents have repeatedly used their nuclear weapons to coerce other governments into acting in ways they do not want to. This, Ellsberg argued, was also use of nuclear weapons in the same way “that a gun is used when you point it at someone’s head … whether or not the trigger is pulled.” 

Despite countries trying to justify their nuclear weapons by claiming that they are for deterrence, the beneficiaries of any such property are not the people. When the World Court was deliberating on the question of the legality of nuclear weapons in the 1990s, India – before it declared itself to be a nuclear weapon state in 1998 – described the practice of nuclear deterrence as being “abhorrent to human sentiment since it implies that a state if required to defend its own existence will act with pitiless disregard for the consequences to its own and adversary’s people.” 

This statement, besides stating how India once upon a time viewed nuclear deterrence, also points to a deeper reality: It is not threats to the people of a country that may result in the use of nuclear weapons; it is threats to the State. And the statement makes it clear that the interests of the State are not the same as that of the people; people can be sacrificed for the State.

Obscene amounts are spent on US nuclear weapons, but hardly anything to help the people they harmed, writes Linda Pentz Gunter

It’s pie season in America with Thanksgiving fast approaching and pumpkins ready to be pureed into pulp and baked into a delicious confection topped with whipped cream.

But there are other kinds of pies, ones we savor far less happily and that leave a bitter taste in taxpayers’ mouths.

Let’s start with the military pie. Each year, the National Priorities Project (NPP) publishes a US discretionary budget pie for us to sample — sourced from the Office of Management and Budget — and it’s not a pretty sight.

Its most recent version — entitled Militarization of the federal budget in FY 2023 — delivers us a pie guaranteed to cause heartburn if not heartache. A hefty 62% of the pie is sliced off before we even begin to digest the rest, all of it going to militarism to the tune of $1.14 trillion. 

You might need a magnifying glass to scrutinize the remaining slices, more accurately described as slivers. If your grandma served you up this meager portion at the Thanksgiving table you would have something to say about it. And yet, the majority of Americans swallow this disproportionate deprivation of essential services with nary a murmur.

Some of the tiniest wedges are allocated to the services we need the most — food and agriculture, unemployment and labor, and transportation. Education, energy and environment, and health and housing are handled slightly more generously, but it’s all relative. The biggest non-military slice — for housing and community — comprises just 7% of the entire budget and totaling $133 billion, a pittance relative to the funding of weaponry and war.

At the bottom end of the spending spectrum is food and agriculture, with $18 billion allocated in 2023, just 1% of the total budget.