• NUCLEAR SAFETYHow Hollywood-Style “Break in” Rooms Are Securing the Future of Nuclear

    By Sarah Lusk

    Security is paramount for the nation’s current fleet of light water reactors, but the stakes for small modular reactors are especially high. Small modular reactors promise quicker build timelines and lower operating costs than light water reactors. They achieve these enhancements through better designs, higher levels of automation and smaller operating crews. But those same design choices could expand the opportunity for cyber and insider threats.

  • NUCLEAR RISKSSmall Modular Reactors and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

    By Abhishek Verma

    Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are widely heralded as the next major leap in civilian nuclear energy. Beneath this optimism, however, lies a growing unease within the nuclear policy community relating to the nuclear weapons proliferation and safeguards challenges that SMRs pose to the existing global nuclear governance system.

  • NUCLEAR SAFETYProtecting Next-Gen Reactors

    By Sarah Lusk

    As the United States accelerates deployment of advanced and small modular reactors (A/SMRs), the nuclear energy sector is embracing a digital future. While digital systems provide operators with big benefits, they can also create vulnerabilities that enable criminals to access critical infrastructure.

  • NUCLEAR WASTELANL Waste Containers Successfully Depressurized

    Technicians successfully completed the depressurization of four flanged tritium waste containers and moved them to a waste staging location on site. The containers were placed in temporary storage in 2007. Over the years, pressure gradually built in the containers. Alleviating that pressure was necessary to safely prepare them for eventual shipment offsite.

  • NUCLEAR WASTEModel Predicts Long-Term Effects of Nuclear Waste on Underground Disposal Systems

    By Zach Winn

    The simulations matched results from an underground lab experiment in Switzerland, suggesting modeling could be used to validate the safety of nuclear disposal sites.

  • NUCLEAR POWER Keeping the Lights on with Nuclear Waste: Radiochemistry Transforms Nuclear Waste into Strategic Materials

    By John Domol

    How UNLV radiochemistry is pioneering the future of energy in the Southwest by salvaging strategic materials from nuclear dumps –and making it safe.

  • NUCLEAR WARPotential Environmental Effects of Nuclear War

    In the 1980s, in response to the buildup of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals during the Cold War, scientists issued warnings about the potential for a “nuclear winter” scenario which would follow a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Since then, military, political, and technological changes have reshaped the nuclear weapons landscape, while scientific advances have deepened the understanding of and ability to model Earth system processes.

  • IRAN’S NUKESPost-Attack Assessment of the First 12 Days of Israeli and U.S. Strikes on Iranian Nuclear Facilities

    By David Albright and Spencer Faragasso, with the Good ISIS Team

    Israel’s historic Operation Rising Lion and the United States Operation Midnight Hammer have targeted many Iranian nuclear sites, causing massive damage to its nuclear program and setting it back significantly. 

  • NUCLEAR WASTE Technology to Reduce the Impact of Used Nuclear Fuel

    By Marguerite Huber

    Transmutation technologies can significantly reduce the mass, volume, activity and lifespan of commercial used nuclear fuel (UNF) by converting long-living hazardous isotopes into materials that decay more quickly.

  • NUCLEAR SURVIVALWhat We’ve Learned from Survivors of the Atomic Bombs

    By Nancy Huddleston

    Q&A with Dr. Preetha Rajaraman, New Vice Chair for the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

  • NUCLEAR WASTEHow and Where Is Nuclear waste stored in the U.S.?

    By Gerald Frankel

    Around the U.S., about 90,000 tons of nuclear waste is stored at over 100 sites in 39 states, in a range of different structures and containers. For decades, the nation has been trying to send it all to one secure location. Perhaps there will be a temporary site whose location passes muster with the Supreme Court. But in the meantime, the waste will stay where it is.

  • NUCLEAR WASTEU.S. Supreme Court Takes Up Texas Nuclear Waste Disposal Case

    By Dylan Baddour, Inside Climate News

    The case could establish the nation’s first independent repository for spent nuclear fuel in West Texas, despite the objections of state leaders.

  • RADIATION PROTECTIONVolcanic Ash Can Be Used for Radiation Shielding

    Radiation shielding is essential for hospitals, industrial sites, and nuclear facilities. Researchers have found a surprising new use for the copious amounts of volcanic ash scattered across the Philippines: it can be used to shield against harmful radiation.

  • NUCLEAR WASTEThe History of WIPP

    By Kim Vallez Quintana

    In 1975, the nation asked Sandia to investigate the possibility of building a repository in New Mexico for the disposal of radioactive transuranic defense waste. Little did those assigned to the project know that the task would absorb most of their careers and become one of the most controversial and important projects in U.S. history.

  • NUCLEAR PLANTSWar Risks from Nuclear Power Plants? Just Look at Zaporizhzhia

    By Henry Campbell

    As evidenced in an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report released in September, Russia’s occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine continues to create high risk of a nuclear disaster. In considering future conflicts, no one can safely assume that an enemy will avoid targeting nuclear power stations.