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nuclear power
After Months of Ranting About Taking Iran's Uranium, Trump Asks, 'Why Bother?'
Trump's comments served as an admission, said one observer, that "the uranium was a false justification for war."
Jun 16, 2026
President Donald Trump and his top advisers have spent months insisting that extracting and confiscating highly enriched uranium from Iran was the top objective of the unprovoked war he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began in February—but on Tuesday at the Group of Seven summit in France, he shrugged off the need to rapidly obtain the nuclear reactor component.
There is "no rush" to retrieve uranium from nuclear sites the US bombed in June 2025, Trump said, adding that taking the highly enriched uranium is something the US wants "psychologically," but not enough to prioritize extracting it right away.
One could make the argument, he said, that it wasn't worth the effort to take the material at all.
"Frankly, to go get it—we're going to go get it—but to go get it is a big deal, because they say only China and us have the equipment," said the president. "You could make the case, 'Why do you even bother?' because it's not very valuable, you know. It's probably half a million dollars worth, it's not very valuable stuff."
Trump is backing away from getting Iran's enriched material: "You could make the case, why even bother? It's not very valuable stuff." pic.twitter.com/CgNgnZCaMQ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 16, 2026
Trump's comments came a day after he and the Iranian government announced they had reached a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to end the war. The president told The New York Times that the agreement includes a requirement that Iran will be limited to enriching uranium only to levels that "could never be used by the military."
White House officials, though, told The Washington Post that details of Iran's nuclear program will be subject to negotiations over the next two months. The question of whether talks on the nuclear program could be held separately, after a deal to end the war was reached, had been a major sticking point for the US leading up to the MOU.
Trump brushed off suggestions that the deal to end the war, in which Iran demonstrated its economic might by effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz and sending energy prices skyrocketing—obtained no guarantees on Iran's nuclear program that hadn't already been secured in 2015 in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was brokered by the Obama administration and which limited Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump exited the JCPOA during his first term.
Iran will only be able to enrich uranium “for nonmilitary purposes. Forever," said Trump on Monday.
On Fox News on Monday, former National Security Council chief of staff Alex Gray insisted the president had secured a deal that, for the first time, would stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Before the US and Israel began attacking Iran in February, the Middle Eastern country maintained that its nuclear power program was not for military purposes.
While Trump's supporters insisted the war and the MOU had made clear Trump had drawn a hard line on Iran's nuclear capacity, his comments on Tuesday were taken by foreign policy analyst Logan McMillen as an admission that "the uranium was a false justification for war."
"The real purpose was to punish Iran for the crime of being an independent economic power that refused to participate in America’s petro economy," said McMillen.
At CNN, Aaron Blake noted that Trump has spent weeks sending inconsistent messages about his demand that Iran end its nuclear program.
Late last month, the president said on social media that Iran's uranium "will be unearthed by the United States... in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED.”
But in April, Trump told Reuters that US strikes last year had left Iran's uranium "so far underground, I don’t care about that."
Two weeks later, he again said that the US had "to take that nuclear dust," before telling Fox News last month that destroying the uranium was not "necessary except from a public relations standpoint."
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Markey Demands Trump Cancel Plan to Give Private Companies Enough Plutonium to Build 2,000 Nuclear Bombs
"Only Trump’s get-rich-quick bros would come up with this corrupt and moronic scheme," wrote Democratic Sen. Ed Markey.
Jun 02, 2026
A prominent US senator on Tuesday implored President Donald Trump to cancel his administration's plan to give private companies enough plutonium to build around 2,000 nuclear bombs, warning the move raises "serious weapons proliferation concerns" along with potentially massive safety issues and conflicts of interest.
"If implemented, this would be the first time the US government has made weapons-grade plutonium available to private companies," Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wrote in a letter to Trump. "I urge you to cancel this misguided scheme."
The New York Times reported last week that the US Department of Energy currently has "more than 50 tons of surplus plutonium left over from nuclear weapons programs, and the agency had previously been planning to dilute much of that material and bury it."
But last May, Trump signed an executive order halting the dilution program and instructing his energy secretary to "establish a program to dispose of surplus plutonium by processing and making it available to industry in a form that can be utilized for the fabrication of fuel for advanced nuclear technologies."
Last Tuesday, the Energy Department said it has entered into "advanced negotiations" with five nuclear energy companies—Oklo, Flibe Energy, Exodys Energy, Shine Technologies, and Standard Nuclear—to potentially distribute the Cold War-era plutonium.
Markey noted in his letter that Energy Secretary Chris Wright previously served on the board of Oklo, a California-based nuclear technology company whose stock price jumped in response to the department's announcement.
"I am concerned that your administration is moving forward with plans to give plutonium to Oklo not because this makes
sense for the United States, but because Oklo stands to benefit financially and Secretary Wright is acting in his former company's interest. Secretary Wright's close ties to the company present an appearance of impropriety."
The senator also expressed opposition to the plan on its merits, warning that "the transfer of weapons-usable plutonium to private industry would increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, including to rogue states or terrorists."
"Your plan—which would provide US companies with plutonium from US military stocks and subsidize them both to reprocess plutonium domestically and export reprocessing technology—would reverse our successful nonproliferation policy," Markey wrote. "The United States cannot effectively discourage other countries from using plutonium for civil purposes if we use it ourselves."
Trump wants to give 2,000 nuclear bombs worth of weapons-ready plutonium to private companies including Oklo, where Energy Secretary Wright served on the board. This is a clear conflict of interest and dangerous for our security. Trump must cancel this plan now. pic.twitter.com/rIZnLSpZJe
— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) June 2, 2026
Nuclear experts have raised similar concerns about the Trump administration's plan to transfer weapons-grade plutonium into the hands of private, for-profit corporations.
"Plutonium-based fuels and reprocessing have a poor track record when introduced in civilian nuclear energy programs," Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist who headed the Energy Department during the Obama administration, wrote last year, warning that transfer schemes such as the one put forth by Trump would "produce new radioactive waste streams that must be managed" and "elevate the risk of a safety or security incident at a nuclear facility."
In a social media post last week, Markey condemned the Trump administration's plan in scathing terms, writing that "using plutonium for nuclear power is stupid and dangerous."
"This material is used in nukes, and it’s too unsafe for widespread commercial use. Do we want Iran using plutonium in its reactor? No," Markey wrote. "Only Trump’s get-rich-quick bros would come up with this corrupt and moronic scheme."
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Why Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Are a Dead End
The big question is, can SMRs deliver on their promises to overcome the historic drawbacks of conventional nuclear power? The answer is no.
May 19, 2026
The nuclear power industry is currently promoting designs for small modular reactors, or SMRs, that will supposedly be cheaper, safer, and faster to build than older nuclear power plants. Bill Gates and Amazon are investing in the technology. Moreover, some environmentalists, including Mark Lynas and Bill McKibben, support SMRs in the hope that they can lower carbon emissions. And, according to polls, far more Americans now approve of the development of nuclear energy than was the case just a decade or two ago.
This year, the world has been plunged into a global energy crisis: With the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, nearly a fifth of world oil shipments have been held up, with economic impacts likely to reverberate for months or years. World leaders are suddenly desperate for energy alternatives, and are turning to solar, coal, and nuclear. At the same time, electricity demand for data centers is exploding, and builders of those centers hope to use SMRs to power artificial intelligence (AI).
In short, it looks like a great moment for the nuclear industry.
Yet Indigenous peoples, technology critics, and old-school environmentalists still oppose nukes—even in new, highly touted forms. I agree with their critiques. In this article, we’ll look at the current nuclear revival and see why it may end up being a zombie attack.
Nuclear Renaissance?
Before looking at SMRs specifically, it’s helpful to understand the status of the nuclear industry in more general terms. The industry’s potential resurgence comes after three decades in the doldrums following the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986. Today, roughly 440 nuclear power plants, spread across 30 countries and with a combined net capacity of around 400 gigawatts (GW), provide about 10% of the world’s electricity.
If you think, as I do, that the global polycrisis is an inevitable outgrowth of industrialism and its consequences (resource depletion, pollution, and overpopulation), then you’re likely to view SMRs as a pointless and dangerous waste of resources.
The US, which has the largest number of plants of any country (96), is seeing a slow phaseout of old reactors (average age 44 years), but has commissioned three new ones during the last decade. China is now operating 60 reactors, with up to 40 others under construction. India is likewise hoping to grow its nuclear industry rapidly and is experimenting with fast breeder reactors. Globally, the International Energy Agency forecasts total nuclear power capacity to grow to over 700 GW by 2050, and small modular reactors are expected to make up a significant share of this growth. A year ago, the Trump administration unveiled an ambitious nuclear strategy that includes a goal to quadruple the United States’ nuclear capacity by 2050, with SMRs playing a key role.
The principal drivers of renewed interest in nuclear power are climate change (globally), the Trump administration (in the US), tech companies’ voracious demand for electricity, and Asian nations’ hunger for more industrial power. Most nations want to limit their carbon emissions, and the main low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels are solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear. Solar and wind are intermittent (“variable”) sources, requiring energy storage to align electricity supply with demand. Hydro has limited potential for growth. That leaves nuclear power, which has the advantage of being reliable and steady, and has possibilities for expansion.
If it’s helpful to understand why the industry is growing again, it’s just as important to know the reasons for its long period of dormancy:
- Cost: Nuclear power plants are complex and expensive, employing technology that’s internationally regulated due to concerns about proliferation of nuclear weapons. Despite over 80 years of the industry’s development, nuclear plants still take a long time to build and are often plagued with cost overruns.
- Fuel: Uranium, the fuel for nearly all existing nuclear power plants, is a depleting nonrenewable resource, and supplies are running short. Uranium mining is a dirty, expensive process, and mine closures, mostly due to resource depletion, are expected to lead to fuel shortfalls by 2035. While geologists have identified more uranium resources, opening new mines will entail further environmental destruction and harm to human communities, of which the uranium mining industry already has a grim history.
- Waste: Despite decades of research, the global nuclear industry still has found no good place to put the 300,000 tons of nuclear waste—as well as 480,000 tons of depleted uranium in the US alone—that it has produced in the last 80+ years.
- Safety: While nuclear accidents are relatively rare, they can be devastating and expensive when they occur. The Fukushima disaster of 2011 resulted in direct cleanup costs of up to $180 billion as of 2016, but the damage still has not been completely contained, and indirect costs to human health have been estimated at half a trillion dollars. Further, nuclear power technology is still tied to the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation.
- Water Issues: Nearly all nuclear power plants use water as a coolant and are highly vulnerable to droughts and floods. Droughts reduce the availability of water for cooling, while floods (nuclear plants are generally built next to rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water) damage safety infrastructure and risk contaminating water sources.
If the nuclear industry can overcome its historic obstacles, a door is open. According to the industry, small modular reactors are the main way forward.
SMRs: Promise or Hype?
The main arguments for SMRs are that they would be cheaper and faster to build than conventional power plants; that they would be safer; and, being smaller, that they could be installed to power remote towns or data centers. The idea is to build components in a centralized factory and then assemble those components at power generation sites.
“Small” is defined as 300 megawatts of electrical power or less. While most existing nuclear plants are in the one-gigawatt (1,000 MW) range, some proposed SMRs are 20 megawatts or less; these are called “micro” reactors.
For the most part, SMRs are still at the design stage. China has one SMR under construction. In the United States, TerraPower, founded by Microsoft’s Bill Gates, has received a permit to build a 345-megawatt (not exactly “small,” but close) sodium-cooled reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
Clearly it is possible to get funding and approval for these new-generation power plants. The big question is, can SMRs deliver on their promises to overcome the historic drawbacks of conventional nuclear power?
- Cost: SMRs will only be cheaper to build if large numbers are ordered; the first prototypes may be even more costly than conventional plants. Meanwhile, construction costs per MW of capacity will likely be higher, and operating costs are largely unknown until real-world data can be collected. The cost of electricity from SMRs is therefore also yet-to-be-determined, but preliminary estimates put it much higher than solar or wind.
- Fuel: Most proposed SMRs use uranium, but some designs on the drawing boards would use depleted uranium or thorium as fuels (see below). For now, however, the uranium fuel constraint looming over the nuclear industry remains in place. SMRs also won’t use their fuel more efficiently than conventional reactors, despite some claims to the contrary.
- Uranium From Seawater: The supply limits of uranium could be greatly expanded by harvesting it from seawater, where the potential resource is enormous—albeit at a concentration of about 3.3 parts per billion. The total oceanic uranium resource is estimated at 4.5 billion tons, over 500 times all identified land-based uranium resources. However, extracting the uranium will take a lot of energy: The best existing technology using absorbent materials will offer an energy return on energy invested (ERoEI) of about 4:1, which is lower than the ERoEI for solar, wind, hydro, fossil fuels, or conventional uranium mining.
- Waste: Some proposed SMR designs would be breeder reactors that could get rid of depleted uranium or even nuclear waste by using them as fuels—but this technology has faced significant challenges (see below). Otherwise, SMRs will do nothing to solve, and may actually worsen, the nuclear waste dilemma.
- Safety: SMRs are designed to be safer than conventional nuclear plants, using passive, gravity-driven cooling systems that don’t require electricity or human intervention to shut down. However, their overall safety is controversial. There is still no real-world data to support the industry’s promises. And having lots of smaller nuclear plants dotted across the landscape could make it easier for nuclear materials to end up in the hands of bad actors. The resilience of SMRs in the face of more frequent and more severe natural disasters is also controversial; a 2021 study concluded that storms, droughts, and higher ambient temperatures linked to climate change are likely to pose operational risks to all nuclear power plants.
The biggest remaining advantages of SMRs are the speed with which they could be deployed once the manufacturing infrastructure is in place, and the prospect of providing non-grid-tied dedicated power sources for data centers.
What About Further Technological Advances?
When confronted with the limits of one technology, nuclear advocates often shift the conversation to another. However, close examination usually shows that each technological “solution” has its own problems:
- Fast-Breeder Reactors: If nuclear fuel is scarce, why not develop fast breeders, which produce more nuclear fuel than they consume? Currently, Russia operates two fast breeders and India’s first one reached criticality in late April. China has a fast-breeder reactor for research. The US, France, and Japan operated breeders in the past but have shut down research along these lines due to high capital and operational costs, safety risks related to sodium coolant, and nuclear proliferation concerns.
- Alternative Cooling Systems: Water-cooled reactors (a category that includes nearly all existing commercial nuclear plants) pose risks of loss-of-coolant accidents due to pipe breaks, high-pressure operation failures, age-related component deterioration, and earthquakes or other natural disasters. The industry’s solution: Use sodium or helium as a coolant. Unfortunately, sodium is highly chemically reactive and ignites upon contact with air and reacts explosively with water, while helium is a depleting non-renewable resource that is becoming economically scarce at a rapid rate.
- Thorium Reactors: If uranium is scarce and might lead to weapons proliferation, why not use more abundant thorium? China already has an experimental two-megawatt thorium reactor in the Gobi Desert. However, thorium reactors have steep development costs and produce a highly radioactive byproduct, uranium-232, which decays into isotopes that emit penetrating gamma rays, making fuel handling and maintenance more hazardous and costly. Also, thorium reactors require a “driver” fuel: Thorium-232 is fertile, not fissile, meaning it needs a different radioactive fuel (like uranium or plutonium) to initiate the chain reaction. Therefore, proliferation concerns remain.
Currently, there is little real-world data regarding these “new” nuclear technologies, even though all have been discussed or experimented with for decades. The nuclear industry hasn’t actually solved its many dilemmas, and the current nuclear renaissance isn’t being driven by novel solutions so much as by the rapid worsening of society’s energy-related problems, primarily climate change: World leaders are now so desperate for reliable low-carbon energy sources that they are willing to overlook substantial risks, if only the nuclear industry will put a shiny gloss on its latest iteration of products. And leaders of the tech industry, keenly aware of the soaring electricity demand from AI, are even more desperate for ways to power the exponential growth of their companies without risking a backlash from the rest of society, which may suffer from higher electricity prices or shortages.
If Not SMRs, Then What?
Nuclear power is a product of high-tech modern industrialism. The proponents of nuclear power assume—and nuclear reactors rely on—global supply chains, uninterrupted grid power, reliable water resources, and functioning political systems. The future that’s unfolding around us is a polycrisis in which supply chains, grid power, water, weather, and politics-as-usual are all threatened. In these unfolding circumstances, the only solutions that make sense are ones that are small-scale, local, low-risk, and nature based.
What to do about carbon emissions? Yes, we need to replace fossil fuels with low-carbon energy sources—but these should be as low-tech as possible, and we should aim to reduce overall energy usage.
What to do about AI data centers? That’s easy: Don’t build them. We are rushing headlong into an AI-managed future without an adequate understanding of what AI is, does, or is likely to do in the future. Besides, AI appears to be perhaps the biggest investment bubble in history.
Most political and economic leaders have taken the attitude that we must go to any possible lengths to save industrial modernity. But industrial modernity is the essence of our problem: It is a crisis-generating machine—and one that, prior to its inevitable self-destruction, is creating enormous wealth for a small minority of people, while entrapping everyone else in dreary systems of employment, payment, debt, dependency, and distraction that leave little time for reflection on the futility of it all.
Moreover, SMRs will do nothing to solve our immediate global energy crisis. The oil shortages that are already sweeping over the world in the wake of the US-Iran war cannot, in most cases, be offset with electricity—at least not right away. While electrification is a good interim energy strategy for gradually winding down modernity with minimal casualties, it’s one that will take time, and some things will be hard or impossible to meaningfully electrify—including heavy manufacturing and air travel. Meanwhile, the world needs gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel now; SMRs will take decades to deploy.
The opinion you hold about SMRs will have a lot to do with your general attitude toward technology. If you think humanity’s fate and future rest with high tech (including AI and advanced rockets to enable colonization of other planets), then you’re almost guaranteed to believe that SMRs will help us get there. But if you think, as I do, that the global polycrisis is an inevitable outgrowth of industrialism and its consequences (resource depletion, pollution, and overpopulation), then you’re likely to view SMRs as a pointless and dangerous waste of resources.
Once we see why industrial modernity is unsustainable, the most important question becomes: What is a viable exit strategy? On our way out the door of modernity and back toward simplicity, we need to minimize the creation of new problems and relearn nature’s elegant solutions. When our priorities are thus reoriented, nuclear power makes no sense.
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Coalition Rips Trump Plan to 'Rubber-Stamp' Nuclear Reactors as Dangerous and Illegal
"In its eagerness to short-circuit reactor safeguards, the Trump administration is once again doing what it does best—demonstrating a complete disregard for the law," said the head of Beyond Nuclear.
May 11, 2026
A coalition of advocacy groups on Monday took aim at President Donald Trump's nuclear power plans, including a recently proposed rule that would allow developers using federally approved reactor designs to bypass required safety reviews, which the organizations called "ill-advised and contrary to law."
"In its eagerness to short-circuit reactor safeguards, the Trump administration is once again doing what it does best—demonstrating a complete disregard for the law," said Linda Pentz Gunter, executive director of Beyond Nuclear, in a statement.
"But nuclear technology is too inherently dangerous to operate as an outlaw," she stressed. "Ignoring those dangers will put millions of Americans at risk of another catastrophic nuclear accident."
Beyond Nuclear and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) have submitted multiple formal comments to the administration, on behalf of overlapping coalitions, blasting its ongoing nuclear policymaking, which has been guided by a series of executive orders signed by the president last May.
The first coalition comments focus on the US Department of Energy allowing firms that build experimental nuclear reactors to seek exemptions from legally required environmental reviews. That filing was submitted in early March, a month after DOE announced the "categorical exclusion for authorization, siting, construction, operation, reauthorization, and decommissioning of advanced nuclear reactors for inclusion in its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) implementing procedures."
Then, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last month unveiled a proposed rule to expedite NRC reviews of commercial nuclear power plant applications involving reactor designs already approved by DOE or the Department of Defense (DOD)—which Trump has dubbed the Department of War. That prompted more comments from Beyond Nuclear, NIRS, and allied groups last week.
"Along with the DOE's environmental 'free pass' policy, the whole 'expedited licensing' regime the administration is attempting to set up appears to be illegal," NIRS executive director Tim Judson, who co-authored the recent comments to the NRC, said Monday.
"The White House is trying to create a 'regulatory tunnel' around NRC's safety regulations," he warned. "That would mean DOE's biases and obviously false assumptions about the safety of nuclear power plants become the new normal, exposing the public to unacceptable dangers to our health and safety."
"And while the law allows the DOD to build its own nuclear reactors," Judson added, "it does not allow the NRC to skip safety reviews for civilian nuclear plants just because they use the same designs. The military routinely exposes its personnel to dangers that civilians are supposed to be protected from."
The coalition's latest filing details how the administration's actions are "inconsistent" with the Administrative Procedure Act, Atomic Energy Act, Energy Reorganization Act, and NEPA, "as well as the constitutional requirement for due process in a democratic society." It also emphasizes that nothing in Trump's orders "can excuse" the alleged legal violations.
"Fifty years ago, the Atomic Energy Commission was abolished because they became too much of a promoter and lost the confidence of Congress and the public over safety," Paul Gunter, director of the reactor oversight project at Beyond Nuclear, explained Monday.
"The NRC was established to provide a regulator that prioritizes safety and is obligated not to take shortcuts for a production agenda," he continued. "Instead, half a century later, we are on the same dangerous collision course, casting aside the NRC in favor of the DOE, which doesn't have the experience or the staff to get the industry in line with safety and security. This capitulation to the Trump agenda could lead to the NRC being abolished altogether, because nobody will have confidence in them."
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Nuclear Disaster Threat Posed by War in Sharp Relief 40 Years After Chernobyl
"Nuclear power stations have inherent risks," said an official at Greenpeace Ukraine. "In a world at war, with massive geopolitical tension and climate extremes, those risks are increasing."
Apr 27, 2026
The continuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine is once again raising concerns about a nucelar disaster in the region on the 40th anniversary of the catastrophic accident at the Chernobyl power plant.
Reuters reported on Monday that a Ukrainian drone the struck a transport department at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which has been under Russian control since March 2022, shortly after its armed forces invaded Ukraine.
The Russian government said that an employee at the Zaporizhzhia plant was killed in the attack, and International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi reiterated in a social media post that "strikes on or near [nuclear power plants] can endanger nuclear safety and must not take place."
Russia has also engaged in dangerous attacks around nuclear power infrastructure over the last four years, and a report released this month by Greenpeace Ukraine found that the New Safe Confinement (NSC) at Chernobyl, which contains the ruins of the plant's reactor unit 4, was significantly compromised after being struck by a high-explosive warhead from a Russian drone last year.
"The Russian drone strike... destroyed the main functions of the [NSC]," the report states. "The impact of the drone on the northwest side of the NSC caused an opening... which penetrated both the outside and inside arch shells. Critical structural elements of the NSC have been deformed and damaged including the Main Crane System, making their load-bearing capability impossible to assess."
The drone strike also burned the membrane layer inside the NSC, which has taken out the ability to control humidity at the site and could lead to accelerated corrosion of the NSC's steel components.
"The NSC was designed to last 100 years on the basis that its low humidity control was maintained," notes the report. "Accelerated corrosion may reduce the 100-year design life of the structure if humidity control is not restored by 2030."
Greenpeace Ukraine nuclear expert Shaun Burnie described the damage done to the NSC as "a Russian-made war crime," and lamented it will mean "years of repairs and further delays before the sarcophagus can be safely dismantled."
Polina Kolodiazhna, senior campaigner from Greenpeace Ukraine, said on Sunday that Russia's invasion of Ukraine had added new urgency for her country to end its dependence on nuclear power given the massive environmental and human risks.
"Nuclear power stations have inherent risks, and those risks are escalating," Kolodiazhna said. "Russia, for the first time in the history of warfare, has systematically attacked and occupied nuclear plants, showing how they can be used as military and political tools. In a world at war, with massive geopolitical tension and climate extremes, those risks are increasing."
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AI Job Cuts, Plastic Pollution, and Experimental Nuclear: Why I Oppose Dow
We are building a new and sustainable economy on our terms. This is what Dow wants to take away from us; I refuse.
Apr 19, 2026
I’m a 77-year-old shrimper from the Texas Gulf Coast, and the AI revolution has reached my town. Early this year, Dow Chemical announced global cuts to 4,500 jobs as it moves toward artificial intelligence. News of the layoffs tore through our rural community of Seadrift–where some of the thousand people work at the local Dow facility–with the devastation of a hurricane. Replacing workers with robots might be Dow’s latest blow, but this toxic industry has wronged my hometown of Seadrift for 70 years.
I recently completed a 30-day hunger strike on the public property (ditch) outside of Dow Chemical, during which time the sheriff actually arrested me while I was attempting to deliver my letter of demands to a company representative here in my hometown.
For decades, Dow has illegally dumped plastic and chemical waste into the local bays and waterways, which have sustained this fishing community for more than 170 years. Now, the company wants government approval for a new permit that would legalize plastic pollution at the Seadrift plant, and allow the construction of experimental nuclear reactors to power it.
As a native Seadrifter, I say: No.
Industry promised us prosperity, but we lost our economy and our heritage.
Dow is planning massive job cuts right now, despite collecting $177 million in bank finance since 2019—which is more funding than any other petrochemical company currently expanding in the US, according to a new report, "Toxic Finance."
What lasting good have these toxic pollution factories ever done for this community?
My family made a living on the water for four generations, and I’ve been a shrimper all my life. I remember when Union Carbide (now Dow) and Formosa Plastics came to our communities with glossy pamphlets and slick presentations. Our elected officials made a devil’s bargain, and “a little pollution” turned into billions of plastic pellets and tons of chemicals in our water.
When the local bays got sick, the communities started dying with it. First, as in Formosa Plastic’s case, industry bought out the ranchers; then an elementary school; and finally, through a class action suit, bought out citizens and now own their homes. Local businesses have been boarded up throughout the county. As a young woman, I worked at Froggy’s fish house; now, it’s a concrete slab. Four more were bulldozed. A hundred boats used to launch from our docks at the start of shrimp season; today, we’re lucky if we have five. Industry promised us prosperity, but we lost our economy and our heritage. As the old saying goes, our downtown died by a thousand cuts.
I always knew it was a raw deal, but at least some of us got steady jobs… at least for a little while. Now, Dow can’t even deliver on that meager promise. Instead, Dow joins the likes of Amazon, UPS, and dozens of other multinational corporations looking to replace American workers with artificial intelligence.
Nobody from Dow has even responded to me after 30 days of fasting and living in a tent outside of their facility, despite acknowledging receipt of my demand letter to Dow's CEO. To be clear, I will not rest until this company:
- Commits to zero discharge of plastic pellets, powder, and flakes from its Seadrift facility and incorporates that commitment into its operating permit; and
- Cancels all plans to build nuclear reactors at the site and withdraws its construction permit application from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
On a bright note, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has confirmed that a public meeting about Dow’s proposed changes to the water discharge permit will be held at some unspecified time in the future… and so, the fight continues!
Believe me, dear folks, people still have power. I sued Formosa Plastics and won the largest citizen lawsuit settlement under the Clean Water Act in US history—$50 million plus additional fines because the company can’t stop polluting the bay—all of which has gone into a public trust designed to restore the fishing communities, the bays, and the local environment.
Our trust funded a cooperative of 250 fisherfolk working together to revitalize our seafood industry, which now has its own office, a processing plant, and a 60-acre oyster farm that will grow to become the largest in the Gulf. We are building a new and sustainable economy on our terms.
This is what Dow wants to take away from us. I refuse.
Will you join me in fighting back against corporate greed?
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Watchdog Warns Trump Threat Against Iran Could Unleash 'Fatal Nuclear Disaster'
“To set up the possibility of another Chernobyl or Fukushima in the Middle East is criminally irresponsible,” said the head of Beyond Nuclear.
Apr 07, 2026
Sustainable energy watchdog Beyond Nuclear on Tuesday issued a dire warning about President Donald Trump potentially creating a "fatal nuclear disaster" by ordering military strikes on Iran's nuclear power plant in the port city of Bushehr.
The group noted that the 1,000-megawatt Russian-built water-water energetic reactor (VVER) at the Bushehr facility is the same design as nuclear reactors in Ukraine that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has warned could spark a humanitarian catastrophe if struck by Russian missiles.
Beyond Nuclear commented that there hasn't been nearly as much attention paid by the international community to the risks posed by a US or Israeli strike on the Bushehr plant, which it cautioned has "highly radioactive uranium fuel inside the reactor" that is "stored in cooling pools and on-site casks."
"Any extended loss of power caused by an attack or a direct hit could see the fuel overheat and ignite, potentially leading to explosions," the group explained. "The resulting radiological releases would result in long-lasting radioactive fallout affecting vast areas in Iran, neighboring countries, and beyond, contaminating agricultural land as well as sea water, an essential drinking water source for a region that relies on desalination."
Beyond Nuclear's warning came days after the IAEA issued an assessment of military strikes that took place near the Bushehr reactor. Although the agency found that the facility itself so far has suffered no damage from US-Israeli strikes, it warned that any attack that even comes close to striking the nuclear reactor risks calamity.
Trump for the last several days has been threatening to attack Iran's energy infrastructure, which Linda Pentz Gunter, executive director of Beyond Nuclear, said "would be a war crime."
“The Geneva Convention specifically defines a war crime to include hitting facilities that, if damaged or destroyed, would result in extensive loss of noncombatant life,” Pentz Gunter said. “A commercial nuclear power plant certainly falls into this category.”
On Tuesday morning, the president delivered his most bloodthirsty threat to Iran yet, declaring that "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” unless Iran met his demands to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which has been closed to most ship traffic for the last several weeks after Trump and Israel launched an unprovoked war.
Ryan Goodman, professor at New York University School of Law, noted in a social media post that Trump's mere threat violates the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit "acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population."
Pentz Gunter also took a shot at Trump's brazen threats against Iran's energy infrastructure.
"To set up the possibility of another Chernobyl or Fukushima in the Middle East is criminally irresponsible,” she said. “And even though we know Iran’s nuclear facilities were merely the pretext for the US-Israeli attack, we must remember that it was President Trump during his first term who effectively tore up a perfectly effective nuclear inspection and verification agreement—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—that ensured Iran stayed within the boundaries of a civil nuclear program."
Three physicians organizations on Tuesday—Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Human Rights, and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War—issued a joint declaration condemning Trump's threats to bomb Iranian power plants, highlighting the particular dangers of any attack on nuclear facilities.
"The bombings of nuclear power plants are illegal under international law and risk harmful radioactive contamination of the environment, posing long-term danger to the health of surrounding communities and ecosystems," the groups said. "We unequivocally condemn this pattern of strikes near and on nuclear facilities, including attacks by Israel and Iran in late March and another deadly attack near Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant this weekend."
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Nuclear Plants 'Must Never Be Attacked,' Says Watchdog as Iran Reports US-Israeli Strike at Bushehr Facility
The International Atomic Energy Agency warned of "the paramount importance of adhering to the seven pillars for ensuring nuclear safety and security during a conflict."
Apr 04, 2026
The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Saturday demanded "maximum military restraint" from the US and Israel as it confirmed reports that strikes had targeted a location close to Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, killing at least one person.
In a statement released via social media, the IAEA relayed a message from Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, who expressed "deep concern about the reported incident."
Grossi warned that nuclear power plants or nearby areas "must never be attacked, noting that auxiliary site buildings may contain vital safety equipment" and stressed "the paramount importance of adhering to the seven pillars for ensuring nuclear safety and security during a conflict."
The IAEA said the attack near the Bushehr plant, Iran's only operational nuclear power facility, was the fourth such attack since Israel and the US began its invasion of Iran on February 28. The plant lies in a city inhabited by about 250,000 people.
A security staff member was killed by a projectile fragment and a building on the Bushehr site was impacted by shockwaves and fragments. Grossi said that no increase in radiation levels was reported.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also condemned the Bushehr strike and issued a reminder of the "Western outrage about hostilities near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine" when Russia attacked the site.
"Israel-US have bombed our Bushehr plant four times now. Radioactive fallout will end life in [Gulf Cooperation Council] capitals, not Tehran. Attacks on our petrochemicals also convey real objectives," said Araghchi.
Al Jazeera reported that at least two petrochemical facilities had been hit by the US and Israel in southern Iran’s Khuzestan province, an energy hub in the country. At least five people were injured in those attacks,
Iranian news agency Mehr reported that the state-run Bandar Imam petrochemical complex, which produces liquefied petroleum gas and chemicals as well as other products, sustained damage.
President Donald Trump said late last month that he would delay any attacks on Iran's energy infrastructure until April 6 and said the delay was "subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions.”
He has threatened to destroy Iran's power plants and other civilian infrastructure if Iranian leaders don't end the blockade on the oil export waterway the Strait of Hormuz, which they began in retaliation for the US-Israeli strikes that started more than a month ago and which has fueled skyrocketing global energy prices.
The threat amounted to Trump warning that he could soon commit a war crime, said international law experts.
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Remembering Fukushima... and the Other Road to Nuclear Nightmare
With nine nuclear-armed nations and roughly 12,000 nuclear warheads on this planet, worries about nuclear war are unavoidable. However, the danger of a nuclear disaster at a seemingly “peaceful” nuclear facility is often ignored.
Mar 23, 2026
Nine countries now possess nuclear weapons and we have just seen the start of a new war in the Middle East over one more nation supposedly trying to acquire them. While we consider the dangers of such weapons and their capacity to cause massive destruction, we often overlook the risks associated with what still passes for “peaceful” nuclear power. With that in mind, let me revisit a moment when that reality should have become far clearer.
I had crawled into bed on March 10, 2011, opened my phone, and scrolled through my Instagram feed. The app was still fairly new then, and I was only following a dozen or so accounts, several from Japan. One amateur photographer there had posted photos minutes earlier of a fractured sidewalk and a toppled bookshelf. A massive earthquake had just rattled Tokyo.
A news article confirmed that a magnitude 7.9 quake had indeed struck 80 miles off the coast of Japan. Later, it was upgraded to 9.0, 1,000 times more powerful in terms of energy released. Holy shit, I thought. That’s huge! Worried, I emailed my old college friend Ichiro, who lived in Tokyo, to make sure his family was safe. A short while later, he replied that they were fine, but that a massive tsunami had indeed flooded the Tohoku region north of Tokyo. Many were dead.
“It’s horrible. It’s chaos,” he wrote me.
The nuclear industry has a reasonably polite name for a disaster like the one that was rocking Fukushima. They refer to it as a “beyond design-basis accident” because no single nuclear plant design can account for every possible problem it might encounter in its lifetime.
By the time Ichiro’s message arrived, distressing images of the tsunami were already circulating online and the death toll was rising fast, though the floodwaters were by then receding. As I watched heartbreaking videos of screaming onlookers, capsized boats, floating debris, and cars submerged like toys in a bathtub, another tragedy was unfolding that few, even inside the Japanese government, were aware of. A nuclear plant in Fukushima, operated by TEPCO (the Tokyo Electric Power Company), had been swamped by the tremendous flooding and lost all power.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, built by General Electric (GE) in the mid-1960s, was designed to withstand natural disasters, but its creators never foresaw an earthquake like that. When the plant’s sensors detected the quake, its reactors automatically shut down. That emergency shutdown (or scram) halted its fission process, triggering backup power to keep cold seawater flowing through the reactors and spent-fuel containers to prevent overheating. Things at Fukushima were going according to plan until that massive tsunami battered the plant, washing away transmission towers and damaging electrical systems. There were backup generators in the basement, but those, too, had been inundated by waves of seawater, and an already bad situation was about to get far worse.
A power outage at a nuclear power plant is known as a “station blackout.” As you might imagine, it’s one of the worst scenarios any nuclear facility could possibly experience. If all electricity is lost, that means water is no longer being pumped into the reactor’s scalding-hot core to cool it down. And if that core isn’t constantly being cooled, one thing is certain: Disaster will ensue. The fission process itself may be complicated, but that’s basic physics. To make matters worse, there were three operating reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. Luckily, three others had already been shut down for maintenance. If power wasn’t restored in short order, that would mean that all three of Fukushima’s reactors were in very big trouble.
We would later learn that no one—not at TEPCO, GE, or among Japanese regulators—had ever considered the possibility that all the reactors might lose electricity at once. They had only drawn up plans for one reactor to go down, in which case the others could keep the plant running. But all of them offline, and every generator out of commission? There was no precedent or playbook for that.
The nuclear industry has a reasonably polite name for a disaster like the one that was rocking Fukushima. They refer to it as a “beyond design-basis accident” because no single nuclear plant design can account for every possible problem it might encounter in its lifetime. The fact that there’s a term for this should make you anxious.
Meltdowns and Fallout
Over the next several days, the emergency at Fukushima Daiichi only worsened. Every effort to restore power to its reactors hit a dead end. On-site radiation-detection equipment, which would have triggered warnings and guided evacuation efforts for those in danger, was no longer functioning. Plans to pump water into the reactors to cool them had faltered. Their cores kept overheating, and the boiling pools of spent fuel were at risk of drying out, potentially triggering a massive fire that would release extreme amounts of radiation.
Within three days, following a series of fires, hydrogen explosions, and panic among those aware of what was happening, Fukushima’s Units 1, 2, and 3 experienced full-scale core meltdowns. Over 150,000 people within an 18-mile radius had already been forced to evacuate, and radiation plumes would take two weeks to spread across the northern hemisphere, although the Japanese government wouldn’t admit publicly that any meltdown had occurred until June 2011, three months later.
The only good news for the 13 million people living 150 miles south in Tokyo was that, during and immediately after the meltdowns, prevailing winds carried much of Fukushima’s radioactive material away from the smoldering reactors and out to sea. It’s estimated that 80% of the fallout from Fukushima ended up in the ocean, meaning most of it headed east rather than toward population centers to the south and west. The other fortunate news was that the spent fuel containers had somehow survived it all. If their water levels in the pools had been drained, far more radiation would have been released.
But Tokyo wasn’t completely spared. After years of research, scientists discovered that cesium-rich microparticles had blanketed the greater Tokyo area, an unpopular discovery that drew backlash and threats of academic censorship. Areas around the Fukushima exclusion zones recorded the highest radiation levels. Japanese government officials continually downplayed the dangers of the accident and were reluctant to even classify the event as a Level 7 nuclear disaster, the highest rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale, which would have placed it on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Japanese officials have also failed to conduct long-term epidemiological studies that would include baseline measurements of cancer rates, which has cast doubt on thyroid screenings that found troubling incidents of cancer far higher than researchers expected.
Radioactive Fish
Prior to the earthquake, the ocean’s cesium-137 levels near Fukushima were 2 Becquerels (a unit of radioactivity) per cubic meter, well below the recommended drinking water threshold of 10,000 Becquerels. Just after March 11, 2011, cesium-137 levels there spiked to 50 million before decreasing as sea currents dispersed the radioactive particles away from the coast. The ocean, however, had been poisoned.
In the years that followed the Fukushima nuclear disaster, researchers documented a frightening, yet predictable trend. Radioactive isotopes in seawater were taken up by marine plants (phytoplankton), which then moved up the food chain into tiny marine animals (zooplankton) and, eventually, to fish. Cesium-137 consumed by fish can reside in their bodies for months, while Strontium-90 remains in their bones for years. If humans then eat such fish, they will also be exposed to those radioactive particles. The more contaminated fish they eat, the greater the radioactive buildup will be.
In 2023, over a decade after the incident, radiation levels remained sky-high in black rockfish caught off the Fukushima coast. Other bottom-dwelling species have been found to be laden with radioactivity, too, including eel and rock trout. Further concerns have been raised about the treated radioactive water that TEPCO continued to release into the ocean, prompting China to suspend seafood imports from Japan. Aside from those findings, there have been very few studies examining the effects of Fukushima’s radiation on ecosystems or on the people of Japan.
The world is unpredictable, and even the safest nuclear power plant can’t guarantee that it will hold up against whatever tragedy is coming next.
“Japan has clamped down on scientific efforts to study the nuclear catastrophe,” claims pediatrician Alex Rosen of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. “There is hardly any literature, any publicized research, on the health effects on humans, and those that are published come from a small group of researchers at Fukushima Medical University.”
Recognizing such levels of radiation, even if confined to the waters near Fukushima, would cast the country’s nuclear industry as a significant threat—not only to Japan but globally. Any admission that Fukushima’s radiation is linked to increased cancer rates would raise broader concerns about nuclear power’s future viability. Radiation exposure is cumulative and, although Fukushima didn’t immediately cause mass casualties, it wasn’t a benign accident either. It took decades before it was accepted that Chernobyl had caused tens of thousands of excess cancer deaths. It may take even longer to completely understand Fukushima’s full effects. In the meantime, the still ongoing cleanup of the burned-out facilities may cost as much as 80 trillion yen ($500 billion).
It’s been 15 years since Fukushima’s reactors experienced those meltdowns, and we still don’t fully understand their long-term repercussions. Nuclear power advocates will argue that Fukushima wasn’t a serious incident and that nuclear technology is still safe. They’ll minimize radiation threats, remain optimistic that new reactor designs will never falter, dismiss the fact that there’s simply no permanent solution for radioactive waste, and overlook the inseparable connection between nuclear power and atomic weapons. After all, among other things, we’ll undoubtedly need nuclear energy to help power the artificial intelligence craze, right?
The operators and regulators at Fukushima were wholly unprepared for what unfolded on that fateful day in 2011. They never imagined that an earthquake of such magnitude could trigger a tsunami so immense that it would destroy the power grid, knock out water pumps, and disable backup generators. Likewise, no one can guarantee that nuclear plants or radioactive storage tanks are safe in war zones, or that the rivers and lakes needed to cool reactors globally won’t one day run dry or become too hot to do so—something that has already happened in Europe. Ultimately, we can’t anticipate every mishap, human error, or—especially in the age of climate chaos—every natural disaster that may come down the pike. The world is unpredictable, and even the safest nuclear power plant can’t guarantee that it will hold up against whatever tragedy is coming next.
Fifty miles south of where I live in Southern California, an old nuclear facility sits idle on the Pacific Coast in an earthquake-and-tsunami-hazard zone, not unlike the site where Fukushima was built. It’s not the only such plant in California, but it’s the one I often visit. When I’m there, I think about Fukushima and imagine what would happen if a similar, unexpected disaster reached California’s shores and how such an event would forever alter this land.
Searching for Solace at San Onofre
The morning light was peaking over the sandstone bluff, and the offshore breeze was soft and brisk. I’m barefoot in a wetsuit, trudging my surfboard down a dirt road at San Onofre, a state park in northern San Diego County, for a “dawn patrol” surf session. A series of high tides—likely made more extreme by rising sea levels—has eroded a large portion of the parking lot below, so the beach can only be reached on foot or by bike. I’m not complaining. It’s worth the short trek. The absence of vehicles down here also means fewer surfers in the water.
San O, as it’s lovingly referred to, has a rich surf history spanning 100 years. Duke Kahanamoku, the “father of modern surfing,” who popularized the ancient Hawaiian sport in Southern California and often visited San O in the 1940s, helped to solidify it as one of the region’s premier breaks and an early hub of SoCal surf culture. The waves are long and rolling thanks to an extensive cobblestone reef. It’s a magical place.
Things around here have changed quite a bit, however, since “The Duke” first paddled his heavy wooden board into the surf. Just down the beach, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station sits precariously perched 100 feet from the water. Its two large domes are an ominous sight. Constructed in the 1960s, the plant is no longer producing electricity, but the station’s 123 large concrete-and-steel storage vessels remain, housing 3.6 million pounds of highly radioactive waste. Since nobody wants the toxic stuff, it just sits there, looming, awaiting the next big earthquake like the one that shook Fukushima. San Onofre is designed to withstand a 7.0 shaker, but scientists believe the area is capable of producing one 10 times larger and 32 times stronger. With 8.4 million people living within a 50-mile radius, any geological upheaval at San O could make a hell of a mess. It’s a worrisome thought I’d rather not dwell on.
Although it is a state park, the ground that San Onofre sits upon is leased from the federal government because it lies within the 195-square-mile boundary of the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base. More than a base, Camp Pendleton is a testing ground, where heavy artillery often booms in the distance. An occasional mock raid can occupy the beaches; helicopters sometimes swarm, and Amphibious Combat Vehicles crawl ashore. There’s even a faux Afghan village that was built at Camp Pendleton, costing taxpayers $170 million, where Marines can imagine terrorizing towns from Iran to Gaza. So strange that amid all this madness, San Onofre is where I search for solace.
In 2013, a radioactive gas leak from one of the nuclear plant’s steam generators, which are also within the military reserve, led to its closure. Southern California Edison (SCE), which operates the facility, reassured the public that there was nothing to be concerned about. Few, however, would consider SCE a trustworthy source. Over the years, the company has been caught in a series of lies about the safety of San Onofre, including falsifying firewatch records and grossly mishandling waste. Not dissimilar to TEPCO’s Fukushima deceit.
Like all nuclear power plants, San Onofre needed a lot of water to cool its three reactors, sucking in an astonishing 2.4 billion gallons of seawater a day. As you can imagine, that thirst had a serious impact on ocean ecology, killing fish and wrecking kelp beds. It’s taken over a decade, but some of what was destroyed is finally coming back to life after years of restoration. Despite the progress, discharge pipes still release radioactive effluent laced with cesium-137, cobalt-60, and tritium—a mile offshore 170 times a year. But SCE says there’s nothing to worry about. They also insist they don’t have much of a choice. All that leftover waste needs to be kept from overheating, and using seawater is the only option available.
It’s better not to think too much about a future Armageddon or what might be swimming beneath me while I’m out there bobbing between sets of waves. Surfing is supposed to help relieve my anxiety, not exacerbate it. It’s a little like backpacking in the wilds of Montana, which I also love to do, without constantly worrying about being chomped by a grizzly bear while in my sleeping bag. There are hazards to living in this crazy world—the worst of which, I’ve come to believe, are of the man-made variety.
As I slide my surfboard into the back of my van and peel off my wetsuit, I glance at San Onofre’s domes, which will start to be dismantled this year, and ponder the horrors still affecting Japan, fearing that someday a destructive tsunami may batter this beach, too. Sadly, it’s almost inevitable.
With nine nuclear-armed nations and roughly 12,000 nuclear warheads on this planet, worries about nuclear war are unavoidable. However, the danger of a nuclear disaster at a seemingly “peaceful” nuclear facility is often ignored. The future of atomic energy remains uncertain, but it is our duty to eliminate this hazardous energy source before another Fukushima triggers a war-like catastrophe all its own.
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IAEA Chief Calls for 'Military Restraint' After Reported Strike on Iran's Natanz Nuclear Facility
After Israel's military suggested that the United States bombed the enrichment complex, Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on an Israeli city that's home to a nuclear research center.
Mar 21, 2026
The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog issued a fresh demand for restraint on Saturday after the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran announced that the Shahid Ahmadi-Roshan uranium enrichment complex in Natanz "was subjected to a renewed attack" as the United States and Israel continue to bomb the Middle Eastern country.
The Iranian agency said that "technical assessments indicate that no radioactive material leakage has occurred and there is no danger to residents of the surrounding areas," but the attack was a "violation of international laws and commitments," including the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The International Atomic Energy Agency "has been informed by Iran that the Natanz nuclear site was attacked today," the UN watchdog confirmed on social media. "No increase in off-site radiation levels reported. IAEA is looking into the report."
"IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi reiterates call for military restraint to avoid any risk of a nuclear accident," the agency added.
The Times of Israel reported that "in response to a query... the Israel Defense Forces said that it did not conduct any strikes in the area and that it could not comment on American activities."
The Israeli newspaper also noted that "Israel’s Kan news reported that the US had indeed struck the facility, using 'bunker buster' bombs to target the site. It cited unspecified sources."
Later Saturday, The Times of Israel reported that at least 20 people were wounded in an Iranian ballistic missile attack on the Israeli city of Dimona, home to Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center.
The United States previously bombed Iran's Natanz facility last June. The Associated Press highlighted Saturday that satellite images also suggest the site was damaged during the first week of the current war, which President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched on February 28.
Condemning the Saturday strike on Iran's complex, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that "this is a brazen violation of international law, the charters of the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency, as well as relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and the agency's General Conference."
Russia has notably also generated fears of a nuclear accident with its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022.
Trump has sent mixed messages about the US-Israeli war on Iran, both sending thousands more troops to the region this week while also saying on his Truth Social platform Friday that "we are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran."
According to the AP: "Iran's capital saw heavy airstrikes overnight and into the morning, residents said, as thousands of worshippers converged on Tehran's grand mosque for prayers marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said attacks would 'increase significantly' next week."
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