26-028.pdf

https://www.brooklynstorylab.net/blog/olympic-torch-meet-nuclear-waste

Olympic Torch, Meet Nuclear Waste

In two years, that flame will be lit in Los Angeles.

The 2028 Summer Olympics promise spectacle and pageantry, with representatives from nearly every nation on earth (at least the ones whose governments have yet to be toppled to distract us from the Epstein Files).

Unlike the 2024 Paris Games, which sent surfers halfway across the globe to Tahiti, Los Angeles will keep its surfing competition closer to home: San Onofre Beach, one of Southern California’s most iconic breaks.

San Onofre is also home to the retired San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).

Buried there are 3.6 million pounds of radioactive waste. Stored in aging casks. On a beach vulnerable to destructive king tides. In a region so seismically active it has earned the nickname “Earthquake Bay.”

Roughly nine million people live within a 50-mile radius.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Study We Shouldn’t Ignore

The juxtaposition of Olympic flame and retired nuclear reactors would be jarring even if nuclear power were as “clean” and “harmless” as its advocates insist. But new research suggests the story is far more complicated.

A recent Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health study, “Proximity to Nuclear Power Plants Associated with Increased Cancer Mortality,” found a link between living near nuclear facilities and elevated cancer death rates.

For decades, the dominant narrative around U.S. nuclear energy has been that it is tightly regulated and poses no meaningful health risk to surrounding communities. This study raises serious questions about that reassurance.

Nuclear plants are not emission-free. Routine operations release small amounts of radioactive materials into air and water. The exposure may be low-dose, but it is often chronic. Over time, small exposures accumulate.

Epidemiology detects patterns across populations — and this study suggests that proximity matters.

The research was conducted with assistance from the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP), a long-time partner of Brooklyn Story Lab. This is public health science examining measurable outcomes at the very moment nuclear energy is being promoted as “carbon-free” and essential to climate goals.

And the concerns extend beyond routine operations.

Every nuclear reactor produces high-level radioactive waste — spent fuel that remains dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years.

More than 100,000 tons of that spent fuel are currently stored at 76 sites across the United States. Yet the country still has no permanent, operational repository for that dangerous waste. Storage systems designed as temporary have quietly become indefinite.

San Onofre is not unique. It is emblematic.

The casks there were never intended to sit indefinitely on an eroding beach.

Yet in 2028, Olympic surfers will paddle out in the Pacific within just three miles of those millions of pounds of toxic, radioactive waste.

Even if a permanent repository were built somewhere in the American West, the problem would not disappear — it would simply move.

As Dr. Marvin Resnikoff noted during a recent webinar hosted by Forums for a Nuclear-Free New York — alongside environmental attorney Susan Shapiro and moderated by Brooklyn Story Lab — the Department of Energy’s plan for transporting nuclear fuel relies primarily on rail.

That would mean widespread shipment of high-level radioactive material across cities, rivers, and communities.

Do hazardous material derailments happen?

Uhhh, yes.

Rail infrastructure in the United States is aging. We have seen how difficult toxic spill cleanups can be. A radiological release would not dissipate like smoke or degrade like oil. And if it happened in an area as populated as Southern California, the consequences could be catastrophic.

A Simple Question

Nuclear power is often defended in abstract terms: grid stability, baseload generation, carbon intensity.

So make it personal. If you had the choice, would you live within 20 miles of a nuclear reactor? Would you feel comfortable raising a family there?

If the answer is hesitation, that hesitation deserves scrutiny.

We plan the Olympics years in advance. Nuclear waste demands planning for centuries.

That toxic waste will remain — long after the athletes go home and the Olympic flame is extinguished.

Detroit Free Press: Michigan's risky Palisades reactor restart is behind schedule — Roger D Rapoport: writer, activist, filmmaker rogerrapoport.com

Detroit Free Press: Michigan's risky Palisades reactor restart is behind schedule 

Roger Rapoport

Op-ed contributor

March 2, 2026

Just six months after receiving its first operating license for a nuclear reactor, Holtec International’s “unprecedented milestone in U.S. nuclear energy” may be turning into a millstone. 

Holtec is attempting the first-ever reopening of a nuclear plant permanently closed for decommissioning – the Palisades reactor, near Lake Michigan in Van Buren County, which was shut down in 2022.

Restarting this reactor has always been a risky bet. Twenty-one months into the project, Holtec has announced delay after delay while continuing to draw vast public subsidies to restart a plant that a far more experienced operator shut down. As management fails to submit required documentation, costly nuclear fuel sits idle at Palisades, and Holtec seeks exceptions from Nuclear Regulatory Commission for work on a reactor so noncompliant that no government agency would even consider approving its construction today.

As the project stutters, it's becoming clear that Washington and Lansing lawmakers are gambling Michigan’s reputation on the dangerous restart of the wrong reactor.

Delays and exceptions

After multiple delays, stretching back to June 2024, Holtec, a New Jersey company with zero nuclear reactor operating experience, is back in line at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission seeking forgiveness for unpermitted welding on the 55-year-old Palisades reactor pressure vessel containment head.  

This ask, likely to take many months to review, comes after a late 2025 NRC amendment to the Palisades fire safety plan to comply with current government reactor standards. It also follows a controversial NRC exemption related to resleeving approximately 1,400 cracked tubes at the plant’s ancient steam generators, as well as a unique October 2025 accident in which a worker fell into the reactor vessel and had to be fished out.

A day after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer boasted in her state of the state address that Michigan has become the “first state to ever restart a nuclear power plant at Palisades” the Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a transcript of a Feb. 12 letter to Holtec announcing yet another “change in the reactor’s estimated review schedule.”

Citing “the need to request additional information from Holtec,” the agency said it “expects to complete its review by April 8.” 

The agency cautioned that “these estimates could change due to several factors such as subsequent requests for additional information and an unanticipated addition of scope to the review.” 

To the surprise of the financial community and the nuclear industry at large, Holtec is betting the farm on an NRC “relief request” unprecedented in the 68-year history of American atomic power.

In an 84-page filing released by the NRC in late January, Holtec concedes this unauthorized welding does not comply with American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) standards.

This is a humiliating blow to the bipartisan coalition in Congress and the Michigan Legislature backing this unprecedented reactor restart, with billions in grants, subsidies and loans.

These new safety challenges at Palisades could threaten financing of the entire atomic energy industry. Continued Holtec startup delays could also crush the Trump and Whitmer administrations’ plans to subsidize two more Holtec nuclear plants at the Palisades site with a startup $400 million grant. Michigan previously approved two $150 million grants for the project, and the U.S. Department of Energy authorized a separate $1.5 billion loan. Anticipating a green light, Holtec has already clearcut vast acreage to make room for these first-of-their-kind reactors.

Kevin Kamps at the advocacy group Beyond Nuclear estimates the tab for state and corporate welfare at this Covert Township reactor, as well as the Big Rock Point reactor site near Charlevoix, could top $16 billion. This underscores why Holtec is in a hurry to launch an initial public offering aimed at netting up to $10 billion.

Windfall profits for an inexperienced nuclear operator

A windfall of this kind would be a remarkable achievement for the rookie New Jersey-based reactor operator. It bought Palisades in 2022 for decommissioning after it was shut down ahead of schedule by nuclear fleet operator Entergy Nuclear. After drawing down many millions from the Palisades decommissioning trust fund the Holtec team did a series of repairs on the 55-year-old reactor. Last summer the NRC granted Holtec an operating license. The restart schedule has been delayed for agency review of Holtec’s welds involving the Reactor Pressure Vessel Closure Head, Control Rod Drive Mechanism and InCore Instrumentation Penetrations.

Central to this work are nozzles sealing off control rods held in long tubes atop the 150-ton reactor pressure vessel head. The control rods are inserted to turn the reactor off and removed to start it up. Part of the primary coolant system, these nozzles contain a radioactive boric acid solution.

After a 2002 boric acid spill ate a frightening hole in the reactor pressure vessel head at Ohio’s Davis-Bessie reactor, nuclear reactor owners nationwide repaired or replaced their vessel pressure heads at the urging of the NRC. 

Consumers and its successor, Entergy Nuclear, skipped these overdue upgrades. They saved time and money by submitting to two decades of stepped up NRC reactor inspections. That special treatment led to additional shutdowns that cost millions per day. This expense and other safety related challenges persuaded Entergy to give up and sell the obsolete plant to Holtec for government-subsidized decommissioning.

Today, a Palisades restart requires NRC approval of unauthorized and noncompliant welds at the plant.

Too dangerous to get wrong

Critical to the NRC’s review is analyzing the possibility that Holtec’s unauthorized welds could contribute to a dangerous leak. If that happened, highly radioactive boric acid could be dumped on the reactor head, similar to the Davis-Bessie disaster.

This would lead to an immediate safety-related shutdown causing reputational damage to the nuclear power industry. It could also erode investor confidence in the viability of other startups seeking federal and state funding. Among those are the Google/Meta backed restarts of reactors at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island and Iowa’s Duane Arnold Energy Center.

Alan Blind, Palisades director of engineering for six years and former vice president for nuclear at New York’s Consolidated Edison says: “Holtec’s new relief request makes it clear they did not follow the NRC-required ASME standards on this unapproved welding work. No nuclear reactor company in the world that would have gone ahead on this work without advance regulatory approval. I don’t know of any company that has done nozzle welding this way.”

The questionable work focuses on nozzle welds at the bottom of the control rod tubes. As required by NRC regulations, reactor operators submit their welding code relief requests for review and approval prior to starting this critical work. Because it previously ran the plant on a decommissioning license, Holtec proceeded on the legal theory of “implied consent.”

Blind says Holtec’s new exemption request under an operation license “makes it clear the plant is completely out of compliance. There is no easy way to fix what they have apparently done wrong on the latest welds. If the NRC turns down Holtec’s unique proposal, restart of the plant could require replacement of the reactor pressure vessel containment head at a cost of up to $750 million. This could slow the restart by years.

"This solution, plus the plant’s long overdue need to upgrade its obsolete steam generators, could cost $1.5 billion or more and take up to five years. That doesn’t take into account other potential safety problems.”

Missing paperwork

Another potential challenge is that plant operators are required to submit quality assurance paperwork documenting that welds to the reactor head control rod pressure spray nozzles follow ASME code.

At a Feb. 9 NRC meeting on a related matter, Holtec conceded it does not have required quality assurance paperwork proving metal in the original construction is compatible with new Holtec welds proposed for the Palisades reactor pressurizer. Failure to provide this kind of critically important quality documentation central to safe operation could cripple a restart plan.

Don’t Waste Michigan Director Michael Keegan says: "In this meeting, Holtec admitted it has not been able to retrieve these quality assurance documents proving it can meet required ASME code and has no idea when they will be available. In effect Holtec is telling the NRC ‘the dog ate my homework.’”

https://www.sightlineclimate.com/research/data-center-outlook?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Today%20%40%20RTO%20Insider&utm_campaign=Daily%20News%20for%20Paid%20%26%20Trial%20Subscribers%3A%20xxx%20%28Copy%29

Data center outlook: half of 2026 pipeline may not materialize

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/26/nx-s1-5727510/secret-rules-experimental-nuclear-reactors-now-public

Secretly rewritten nuclear safety rules are made public

February 26, 20261:32 PM ET

Geoff Brumfiel 

The Department of Energy has made public a set of new rules that slash environmental and security requirements for experimental nuclear reactors.

Last month, NPR reported on the existence of the rules, which were quietly rewritten to accelerate development of a new generation of nuclear reactor designs.

The rule changes came about after President Trump signed an executive order calling for three or more of the experimental reactors to come online by July 4 of this year — an incredibly tight deadline in the world of nuclear power. The order led to the creation of a new Reactor Pilot Program at the Department of Energy.

Commercial nuclear reactors have historically been regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is known for its public process. The Energy Department rules had applied to a small number of experimental reactors on government property. The pilot program extends that authority to a larger set of experimental commercial designs. It also expands where those reactors can be built: several are under construction outside of the department's national laboratories.

To help facilitate Trump's deadline, Energy Department officials rewrote the internal rules. It shared the rules with ten companies who were part of the pilot program, but the rewritten rules, and even their existence, was not known to the public until NPR obtained copies of them.

The rules are now public on a website at Idaho National Laboratory, which is running the Reactor Pilot Program for the department. The website also contains standards and policy documents that were revised for the program.

The laboratory notified NPR of their publication in response to a Freedom of Information Act request calling for their release.

"DOE has recently completed the process of making these Nuclear Energy Orders and Standards publicly available to ensure broad public access," the Department of Energy wrote to NPR in a letter on Wednesday.

"The U.S. Department of Energy posted the [Nuclear Energy] Orders earlier this year," an Energy Department spokesperson wrote to NPR in a statement. "They collectively demonstrate the tremendous strides the Department has made under President Trump's leadership to modernize the DOE authorization process while maintaining safety and security standards."

"This is long overdue," said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The public has the right to understand what the directives are that DOE is using to authorize these experimental reactors."

The rules, known as orders, define requirements for almost every aspect of the reactors' operations — including safety systems, environmental protections and site security.

NPR's review of the rules found substantial changes that experts warned had the potential to undermine safety, security and environmental protections at the new reactors. The orders slashed hundreds of pages of requirements for training guards and securing nuclear material. They also loosened protections for things like groundwater.

Groundwater rules loosened

Protection of groundwater is no longer a “must.” Rather, companies must give “consideration” to “avoiding or minimizing” radioactive contamination. Requirements for monitoring and documentation are also softened.

In total, the new orders cut 750 pages from the earlier versions of the rules, according to NPR's analysis. That means roughly two-thirds of the original pages were eliminated.

In a statement responding to NPR's story in January, the Department of Energy said that early copies of the rules were shared with the companies as part of an "iterative effort" to develop a framework to "expedite our review process while maintaining safety and security standards."

Trigger for accident investigation raised

The new order raises the bar for an official accident investigation from incidents that expose workers to two times the legal dose, to those at four times.

(The orders seen by NPR in January were not marked as drafts and had the word "Approved" clearly displayed on their cover pages.)

In the month since NPR's original story, companies involved with the reactor program have rushed ahead with construction of their experimental designs. Two companies, Antares Nuclear and Radiant Industries, have announced they had completed a crucial step known as a Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis with the Energy Department regulators. Both companies say they are on track to start up their reactors this summer. A third called Aalo says it has completed its Final Design Review and hopes to finalize construction this summer.

Meanwhile, California-based Valar Atomics flew their reactor prototype on a military C-17 transport to Utah earlier this month. The Pentagon is looking to deploy small reactors to military bases as part of a separate program known as project Janus.

Lyman says he continues to be concerned that the new rules and tight deadlines threaten safety.

"My concern is that, in the rush to fulfill President Trump's order, they are slashing the procedures that would normally be used to ensure the safety and security case for these reactors," he said.

But administration officials like Secretary of Energy Chris Wright remain bullish that the program can safely spark nuclear innovation.

"Before July fourth of this year, we will have multiple nuclear reactors critical," Wright said at a press conference on February 15 at Hill Air Force Base in Utah. "That's speed. That's innovation. That's the start of a nuclear renaissance."

The follow-up national study by the T.H. School of Public Health at Harvard University has been published. It finds that U.S. counties located closer to operational nuclear power plants (NPPs) have higher rates of cancer mortality than those located farther away, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It notes "that the findings are not enough to establish causality but do highlight the need for further research into nuclear power’s health impacts."

https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/proximity-to-nuclear-power-plants-associated-with-increased-cancer-mortality/

... The study found that U.S. counties located closer to nuclear power plants experienced higher cancer mortality rates, even after accounting for socioeconomic, environmental, and health care factors. The researchers estimated that over the course of the study period, roughly 115,000 cancer deaths across the U.S. (or about 6,400 deaths per year) were attributable to proximity to NPPs. The association was strongest among older adults.

“Our study suggests that living near a NPP may carry a measurable cancer risk—one that lessens with distance,” said senior author Petros Koutrakis, Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation. “We recommend that more studies be done that address the issue of NPPs and health impacts, particularly at a time when nuclear power is being promoted as a clean solution to climate change.”

... They also noted some limitations to the study, including that it did not incorporate direct radiation measurements and instead assumed equal impact by all NPPs.

CONTACT: Scott Burnell, 301-415-8200
NRC to Hold Public Meeting to Discuss Progress on
Potential Restart of Crane Clean Energy Center
 https://www.nrc.gov/cdn/doc-collection-news/2025/25-043.pdf 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a hybrid public meeting Feb. 19 to discuss the agency’s activities related to the Crane Clean Energy Center Restart Panel. The meeting will be held from 6-8:15 p.m. at the Student Enrichment Center, Kulkarni Theatre, on the Penn State Harrisburg campus, 777 West Harrisburg Pike, in Middletown, Pennsylvania. The meeting notice includes the agenda and a link to register for the Microsoft Teams version of the meeting, for those unable to attend in person. The meeting will include an update from Constellation, NRC presentations and a question-and-comment session for attendees to engage with the NRC’s panel members.

The CCEC reactor (formerly Three Mile Island Unit 1) permanently ceased operations in September 2019. In late 2024, Constellation Energy Generation, LLC, the reactor license holder, notified the NRC of its interest in returning the plant to an operational status. The NRC created the CCEC Restart Panel to guide staff efforts to review, inspect, and determine if the plant can be safely returned to operation.

Additional information on a potential Crane Clean Energy Center restart can be found on the NRC's website: https://www.nrc.gov/sites/default/files/cdn/doc-collection-news/2026/26-009.pdf