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OPPOSITION MOUNTING
Holes in Deep Fission plan
Beyond Nuclear is quoted in a July 28, 2026 Wall Street Journal article “An Underground Nuclear Reactor Is Coming to This Kansas Town—and Dividing Locals”, describing California nuclear start-up company Deep Fission’s plans for a 15 megawatt electric micro-reactor modular design to be operated at the bottom of a mile-deep borehole drilled into bedrock. Parsons, KS was selected as one of 11 US Department of Energy (DOE) reactor pilot sites for projects expedited by a Trump administration Executive Order, but opposition is growing in Parsons from the newly-formed Prairie Dog Alliance. The White House has empowered the DOE to issue the design approval for new commercial nuclear power reactors, superseding the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s longstanding exclusive role for commercial reactor licensing.
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BEHIND THE SAUDI NUKE DEAL?
Trump’s personal profiteering!
Last week we noted that Trump’s nuclear deal with the Saudis was a covert means to hand that country the materials, technology and know-how to develop the nuclear bomb. Since then, an even more predictable rationale behind the scheme has emerged.
First, Trump retroactively tried to shoehorn in a condition that the Saudis would also have to sign onto the Abraham Accords in support of Israel, at which they have already balked. Then, in an exposé in theNew York Times, it emerged that Trump was doing not only Israel’s bidding but — of course — his own. The paper revealed that the deal would profit the president, his family members and “others in his orbit,” whether or not it completes on time or even at all.
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NUCLEAR TROJAN HORSE
“Innovation” campuses just waste dumps?
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced the selection of five initial contenders for building Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses. The states that could serve as potential hosts are Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Idaho. But is this proposal a Trojan horse meant to force these states to store existing radioactive waste that no one will currently take?
A leaked document revealed by Politico, calls for scrapping Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the nation’s sole site for storing high-level nuclear waste while the White House wants legal changes to allow DOE to choose one or more sites “in willing states” to host so-called nuclear life-cycle innovation campuses for nuclear activities to include fuel production, recycling and waste disposition.
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ALEKSEY NESTERENKO
Chornobyl health protector dies at 52
Aleksey Nesterenko, director of the Belrad Independent Institute for Radiation Protection, has passed away at the age of of 52 of cancer. His daughter Darya stated “[t]hroughout his life, he successfully combined science with humanism, putting his brilliant mind to work for the most disadvantaged and striving to make the world a better and safer place.” After his father, Vasily Nesterenko, member of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Belarus and Doctor of technical sciences, passed away, Aleksey became director of the Institute. BELRAD was established in 1990 as an independent non-governmental organization committed to protecting the Belarusian population living in areas heavily contaminated by radioactive fallout from the ongoing Chornobyl catastrophe.
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