Beyond Nuclear International

US taxpayers are about to get golden fleeced, again, writes Linda Pentz Gunter

Last week we reported on the White House executive orders that would lay waste to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and put an end to any meaningful safety oversight of the US commercial nuclear sector.

Not that there was a whole lot to begin with. None of us will be standing outside the agency’s Rockville Maryland headquarters any time soon holding “Save the NRC” signs.

I mentioned last week that there were five orders affecting the nuclear sector. Technically, the fifth – Restoring Gold Standard Science — didn’t mention nuclear, but its overarching mission— to do the opposite of what its title says — will most certainly negatively affect the integrity of any evaluation of new reactor designs, with the stamp of approval given to the Department of Energy and even the Department of Defense, rather than the NRC.

The Gold Standard order served to remind us of Trump’s perennial obsession with everything gold and golden, also reflected, as it were, in his cheap bordello-style aesthetic on display at Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago.

The wannabe king boasted during his January 20 inaugural address that “The Golden Age of America begins right now,” then reminded us six weeks later, during his March 4 Joint Address to Congress, that his Golden Age truly was coming. “Get ready for an incredible future,” he said. “The Golden Age of America has only just begun. It will be like nothing that has ever been seen before.”

That last part was certainly true.

Trump’s reckless and accelerated nuclear orders would destroy safety oversight and endanger the public, writes Linda Pentz Gunter

On May 23rd, with several strokes of his pen, President Trump issued orders that would roll back US energy policy about 50 years.

On that day, Trump signed five Executive Orders (EOs): Restoring Gold Standard Science; Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base; Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy; and Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security. (This page keeps a running tally of all the White House executive orders.)

All of this madness was announced in a press release headlined “President Trump Signs Executive Orders to Usher in a Nuclear Renaissance, Restore Gold Standard Science.” Just in case there was any confusion about what this meant, the press release included an explanation that read: “Gold Standard Science is just that—science that meets the Gold Standard.” 

Collectively, the four orders that focused on the nuclear sector would: reduce and undermine the already inadequate safety oversight authority of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC); fast-track unproven new reactor projects without regard for safety, health or environmental impacts; curtail or possibly even end public intervention; weaken already insufficient radiation exposure standards; and reopen the pathway between the civil and military sectors, all while “unleashing” (Trump’s favorite verb) nuclear power expansion on a dangerous and utterly unrealistic accelerated timeline.

The precursive warning shot to all this had been fired on February 5th with Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s own Executive Order:  Unleashing the Golden Era of American Energy Dominance, ‘dominance’ being another of Trump’s favorite big beautiful words, along with ‘big’ and ‘beautiful’ (—see his One Big Beautiful Bill Act.) “It’s time for nuclear, and we’re going to do it very big,” Trump told industry executives when he signed the orders.

Perhaps it’s no surprise to find that ‘dominance’ appears 35 times in the Heritage Foundation’s 2023 handbook, Authoritarianism for Dummies, officially known as Project 2025. Variations on the word ‘unleash’ appear 19 times. ‘Tremendous’ shows up 11 times. So does ‘gold standard’.

Lab should explore credible alternatives say Nuclear Watch New Mexico and Tewa Women United

The Los Alamos National Laboratory plans to begin large releases of radioactive tritium gas any time after June 2, 2025. The only roadblock to the Lab’s plans is that it needs a “Temporary Authorization” from the New Mexico Environment Department to do so.

Reasons why the New Mexico Environment Department should deny LANL’s request are:

1. The state Environment Department has a duty to protect the New Mexican public. As it states, “Our mission is to protect and restore the environment and to foster a healthy and prosperous New Mexico for present and future generations.” 

2. Why the rush? LANL explicitly admits there is no urgency. According to the Lab’s publicly-released “Questions and Answers” in response to “What is the urgency for this project?” “There is no urgency for this project beyond the broader mission goals to reduce onsite waste liabilities.” 

3. In addition, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) admits that the end time frame for action is 2028, not 2025. Therefore, there is time for deliberate consideration.

4. Contrary to NMED’s Resource Conservation and Recovery Act permit for LANL, the Lab has not fulfilled its duty to inform the public via NMED of possible alternatives to its planned tritium releases. According to Tewa Women United, “LANL has told EPA there are 53 alternatives; that list of alternatives, initially requested in 2022, has not yet been disclosed. Tewa Women United has repeatedly asked LANL to provide the public with that list.” 

Why would the US, Ukraine and Russia contemplate this when renewables could answer energy needs faster and more safely, writes Linda Pentz Gunter

The Trump administration has been dangling all sorts of offers before the embattled (literally) Ukrainian government lately. These include a US grab for Ukraine’s minerals in exchange for continued support of its war with Russia, and asking Ukraine to serve as an overseas prison for those residents of the US deemed “illegals” and “criminals” by Trump’s (in)justice department. 

Now, the White House is apparently suggesting that the US should first rebuild and then operate the damaged six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in the southeast of Ukraine, the area of some of the most intense fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces.

This bizarre proposal is detailed in a new column by the director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, Henry Sokolski, in the May 6, 2025 edition of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Along with the question of whose nuclear plant Zaporizhzhia actually is, or who damaged it, Sokolski also asks just how complex and expensive restoring the plant would be and whether it is even needed?

In reading through the list of challenges to a restart that Sokolski outlines, the answer to that last question becomes increasingly more obvious: No. It is glaringly evident that nuclear power is the wrong choice for Ukraine at this point (and, we would argue, always has been).

Renewable energy can take a couple of years — and in some cases just a few months — to build and bring into operation. Given Ukraine’s previous reliance on nuclear energy for around 55% of the country’s electricity (before the war interrupted the flow), developing an energy supplier that can come on fast and doesn’t present a safety risk (under war conditions or at any other time) is, as they say here, a “no brainer”.

Like the ghost of Armageddon Future, former Senator Jon Kyl keeps reappearing in nuclear debates, writes William Hartung

A primary responsibility of the government is, of course, to keep us safe. Given that obligation, you might think that the Washington establishment would be hard at work trying to prevent the ultimate catastrophe—a nuclear war. But you would be wrong.

A small, hardworking contingent of elected officials is indeed trying to roll back the nuclear arms race and make it harder for such world-ending weaponry ever to be used again, including stalwarts like Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), and other members of the Congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group. But they face ever stiffer headwinds from a resurgent network of nuclear hawks who want to build more kinds of nuclear weapons and ever more of them. And mind you, that would all be in addition to the Pentagon’s current plans for spending up to $2 trillion over the next three decades to create a whole new generation of nuclear weapons, stoking a dangerous new nuclear arms race.

There are many drivers of this push for a larger, more dangerous arsenal—from the misguided notion that more nuclear weapons will make us safer to an entrenched network of companies, governmental institutions, members of Congress, and policy pundits who will profit (directly or indirectly) from an accelerated nuclear arms race. One indicator of the current state of affairs is the resurgence of former Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, who spent 18 years in Congress opposing even the most modest efforts to control nuclear weapons before he went on to work as a lobbyist and policy advocate for the nuclear weapons complex.