When President Trump and Keir Starmer, prime minister of the United Kingdom, signed a deal to rapidly expand nuclear power in the U.K., nuclear stock prices soared to record highs. But the boom ignores the overwhelming evidence that nuclear is a bad risk.
The only U.S. reactors built in the last 30 years, Vogtle Units 3 and 4, cost over $35 billion, resulting in the world’s most expensive electricity. Prohibitive cost overruns also sank NuScale, the only U.S. attempt to commercialize small modular reactors.
Notwithstanding, irrational nuclear exuberance is reaching a pitch. Spiking electricity demand, cratering nuclear regulation, reckless nuclear boosterism and federal attacks on renewables have produced a perfect storm fueling nuclear expansionism. Former regulators warn that with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission now compromised, the storm may blow us onto the rocks.
Nuclear hubris is so extreme that NASA says it will put a reactor on the moon by 2030. But with regulatory guardrails down, we ought to worry more about preventing a nuclear moonscape on earth.
One neon danger sign is the rise of “zombie nukes” — restarting old, disused reactors, including those previously shut down for safety reasons. It’s happening at Michigan’s Palisades nuclear plant, Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island 1 and Iowa’s Duane Arnold.
Another red flag is so-called “advanced” reactors, including small modular reactors. Contrary to the name, small modular reactors are not new, not always small and probably not modular, comprising 127 different designs that are mostly speculative and haven’t been built yet.
Small modular reactors aren’t “walk away safe” or carbon-free. Their lower output precludes economies of scale and their construction costs aren’t proportionately smaller than conventional nuclear, so their electricity is costlier. They also produce up to 30 times the waste and leak more neutrons. They emit greenhouse gases and thermal pollution. Subsidizing them and other nuclear undermines renewables and makes climate change worse.
Holtec, a privately held firm facing ethical questions and known for hawking (though not yet building) small modular reactors and pioneering zombie nuke restart, was tapped in the U.S.-U.K. deal to develop nuclear-powered data centers in northeast England worth $15 billion. It gained notoriety by buying moribund U.S. nuclear plants cheaply under pretense of dismantling them and then pivoting to convert them back to operations, though it has no experience as a nuclear operator. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission obliged, granting regulatory relief and safety exemptions enabling Palisades to transition from decommissioning to “operations” status.
Holtec also plans to install small modular reactors there, next to a large cache of radioactive waste. It has similar plans for decommissioned nuclear sites it owns in New Jersey, Massachusetts and New York, and it intends to go public in the next few months with an IPO potentially valued at $10 billion.
What could possibly go wrong?
A nuclear engineer recently warned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards that once Palisades is restarted, it could fail within six months, with “unimaginable impacts to the general public,” due to mishandled steam generator tubes or its cracked primary cooling system.
Watchdog groups in Massachusetts, where Holtec wants to install small modular reactors on the closed Pilgrim nuclear site, are decrying a pending energy bill repealing a 1982 state law requiring a permanent repository for radioactive waste, as well as voting up a referendum before any new nuclear can be built. Neither condition is met, but Gov. Maura Healy (D) is bent on small nuclear reactors and nuclear-powered AI data centers anyway.
At New York’s Indian Point, Holtec proposes to install small modular reactors and restart old, partially dismantled reactors, despite signing an agreement that prohibits even proposing renuclearizing the site without local, county and state support, which it doesn’t have.
Last year, Holtec sued to block a state law prohibiting it from dumping radioactive water into the Hudson River, which Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed. Then nuclear lobbyists went into high gear in Albany, including hiring former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, prompting an ethics complaint. Hochul then flipped, directing the New York Power Authority to build at least 1 gigawatt of new nuclear in the state.
This about-face toward nuclear buildout is happening as the regulatory regime, never robust, is in free fall. Four former Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairs (three in this article), have sounded the alarm. Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioners testified before Congress that they expect to be fired if they question unsafe reactor designs and fail to rubberstamp them. Former Department of Energy Assistant Secretary Katy Huff and colleagues wrote that making nuclear regulatory decisions “for political reasons” is “setting the U.S. on the fastest path to a nuclear accident. … This is neither hypothetical nor hyperbole.”
From their mouths to market handicappers’ ears. Amory Lovins wrote recently that nuclear-powered AI centers “may be a trillion-dollar bubble, but it’s sellable until market realities intervene.” The same is true of the harsh realities of nuclear’s inherent dangers. Let’s hope radiological disaster doesn’t intervene before nuclear’s unacceptable risks and costs get priced back in.
Kevin Kamps is the Radioactive Waste Watchdog at Beyond Nuclear.