https://iceberg-research.com/2026/09/24/deep-fission-fisn-a-money-pit/

Deep Fission ($FISN): a Money Pit

September 24, 2026

Please refer to our disclaimer at the bottom of the report.

Main findings

• Nasdaq-listed Deep Fission (FISN) is developing a small modular reactor (SMR) with a capacity of 5MWe-15MWe. The company plans to bury a miniature version of the widely used pressurized water reactor (PWR) one mile deep, inside a 40-60-inch water-filled borehole drilled into hard rock. 

• Like other SMR developers, FISN pitches itself as an AI data-center power solution. But data centers have turned to natural gas to accelerate deployment. Almost all of the roughly 75GW of booked data center on-site generation is natural gas-based. FISN has no regulatory approval and remains years away from commercialization.

• Before its June 2026 IPO, FISN guided to a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of just $50-70/MWh. Then the company dropped the reference. Using figures disclosed in its June 2026 prospectus, we calculate an LCOE of $289/MWh for the first-of-a-kind (FOAK) reactor and $148/MWh for the nth-of-a-kind (NOAK) reactor, about 200% above prior guidance. This is not competitive with behind-the-meter gas solutions.

• Even this NOAK estimate is too optimistic, as capital cost is understated. Using figures from independent third parties, we estimate NOAK capital cost to be $112mn, 34% above FISN’s estimate, raising our estimated NOAK LCOE to $170/MWh. 

• FISN claims it can secure Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval in less than a year. Yet it has already struggled with the less demanding Department of Energy (DOE) process, missing the program deadline while at least four peers have already completed it. Even if NRC approved, commercialization is far from assured: NuScale, which has a much more conventional design, has yet to sell a reactor three years after receiving its NRC license.

• FISN targets deploying its reactor in just six months versus 3-4 years for other advanced SMRs, citing fewer safety-related systems. Yet its own filing states a two-year development timeline. Peers pursue the same simplification strategy, but FISN adds a major step: drilling a one-mile borehole.

• FISN touts the industry’s largest customer pipeline. Most counterparties are undisclosed. Of those identified, one is an undeveloped industrial park with doubtful demand for a nuclear reactor. The other two (Endeavour Energy and Blue Owl) have signed only non-binding agreements. 

• FISN has less than twelve months of cash runway and faces ~$350mn of unfunded capital needs, potentially implying ~43% dilution to its existing shareholders. At the same time, the competition for SMR funding is intensifying: publicly traded SMR names have risen from three before October 2025 to nine today, with three more coming to the market, including a far more established player, Westinghouse.

• FISN is largely a repackaging of the founders’ prior venture, Deep Isolation, a deep-borehole nuclear waste disposal company that has failed to commercialize its concept after a decade.

Background and bull case

Deep Fission (NASDAQ: FISN) is a California-headquartered company founded in 2023. The company is developing a nuclear reactor called Gravity. The reactor is intended to be a miniature version of the conventional pressurized water reactor (PWR), using low-enriched uranium (LEU) as fuel. The company’s key innovation is that its reactor would be buried in a 40-60-inch water-filled borehole one mile (~1.6 km) underground. The reactor is designed with a power generation capacity of 5–15MWe.

Source: Deep Fission

Management claims that its reactor is cheaper to build because its innovative borehole design eliminates certain components required in above-ground PWR reactors. For example, the depth and surrounding geology provide natural containment, potentially eliminating the need for the reinforced concrete and steel containment structures typical of above-ground reactors.

FISN was founded by Richard Muller, a UC Berkeley physics professor, and his daughter Elizabeth, who serve as CTO and CEO of the company, respectively. The company became an unquoted public company in September 2025 through a reverse merger with shell company Surfside Acquisition, before listing on Nasdaq in June 2026.

FISN is participating in the Department of Energy’s (DOE) pilot reactor program. The company is seeking DOE authorization to build a pilot reactor at a site in Parsons, Kansas, by 1H 2027. Then, FISN plans to submit license applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to convert the pilot reactor into a commercial facility by the end of 2027, with high-volume deployment targeted to begin in 2028. Because its reactor is based on well-established PWR technology, its licensing pathway would be simpler than for novel advanced reactor designs. 

The company claims that its reactor can then be commercially deployed in as little as six months, compared with three to four years for other small modular reactors (SMR). 

FISN expects the surge in power demand from AI data centers will drive demand for its reactors and claims the largest pipeline of potential customers, representing 18.5GW of prospective capacity.

It’s time for small modular reactor supporters to admit it: natural gas, not SMRs, is the undisputed winner of the AI data center build-out

In early 2024, the market realized that AI would consume enormous amounts of energy. This kicked off a trading frenzy from conventional nuclear, to gas-turbine manufacturers, to the speculative (and often sketchy) SMR companies. Every player, including the most exotic concept, was supposed to win.

Fast forward two years, and the verdict is in. Gas-fired generation is the clear preferred solution for powering AI infrastructure. Data centers have booked 75GW of onsite generation capacity so far. Almost all of them will rely on natural gas.

Source: Semianalysis

While the largest and most efficient combined-cycle gas turbines face multi-year lead times, data centers have turned to smaller engines or aeroderivatives with lead times as short as twelve months. Gas generation is a proven technology and can meet AI power demand quickly, with the added advantage of cheap natural gas in the US. SMRs, on the other hand, sit at exactly the opposite end of the spectrum: they remain unproven, with commercialization not expected before the 2030s. 

The political environment has also become more favorable to fossil-fuel-based generation, removing one of the key roadblocks to new gas development.

Read more

Google invests in Vogtle - oy vey - Sklar

 

Google is investing $900M to boost Georgia Power’s nuclear capacity.

• The goal: To fund upgrades that will raise the max power output of plants Vogtle and Hatch, adding 96 MW to Georgia's grid. The enhancements will also extend the life of the units and “help Georgia Power customers receive even more value from the existing nuclear fleet,” Joshua Peacock, communications lead at Georgia Power, told us. 

• A new structure: Google would make monthly payments under a proposed Georgia Power tariff and receive zero-emission credits in return. The value of those credits would be defined in a contract between the utility and data center customers. 

• The impact on bills: Georgia Power froze its base rates through 2028, and intends to ask the PSC to lower the base rates again in the future, according to Peacock. The utility has been able to keep its rates steady “because of all of the growth and revenue coming in from large energy users like Google,” he said. 

 

Dear Decommissioning Working Group,

“Massachusetts blocks Holtec from discharging Pilgrim water”

https://www.ans.org/news/2026-09-17/article-8397/massachusetts-blocks-holtec-from-discharging-pilgrim-water/

Massachusetts blocks Holtec from discharging Pilgrim water

Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 10:28PM

Pilgrim, shown here in 2021. (Photo: Holtec)

In 2024, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) denied Holtec International’s application to release treated water into Cape Cod Bay from the Pilgrim nuclear power plant site as decommissioning work continues.

Holtec appealed that decision, and on Tuesday, MassDEP announced that it has dismissed the appeal, leaving Holtec—for now—with fewer options for how to deal with the up to 1.1 million gallons of water it seeks to discharge.

The context: Pilgrim sits on Cape Cod Bay in Plymouth, Mass. It was shut down in May 2019, and ownership transferred from Entergy to Holtec for decontamination and decommissioning a few months later. At the time, Holtec planned to complete its work at the site within eight years.

In 2021, the company announced that it had placed the last of the plant’s fuel in dry storage. By 2022, all high-level waste was in storage. The ongoing decommissioning progress hit a significant roadblock in February 2024, however, when MassDEP denied Holtec’s request to discharge the plant’s treated wastewater into Cape Code Bay. MassDEP’s decision was made against the backdrop of significant public outcry regarding Holtec’s proposal.

The appeal: Holtec appealed MassDEP’s decision on the grounds of jurisdictional authority and technical veracity. To the former point, the company argued that the Atomic Energy Act bars MassDEP from entirely blocking the discharge of treated water from a nuclear power plant.

To the latter point, Holtec essentially rejected MassDEP’s presupposition that the water at issue is “waste,” as defined by the relevant law—in this case, the state’s Ocean Sanctuaries Act, which defines Cape Cod Bay as an ocean sanctuary subject to special environmental protections. One of those protections is a prohibition on “dumping or discharge of commercial, municipal, domestic or industrial wastes.”

The act defines wastes as “any unwanted, discarded, or environmentally harmful solid, liquid, or gaseous materials resulting from commercial, municipal, domestic, or industrial activities.”

Holtec argued that Pilgrim’s water does not fit into this definition, in that “the treated water to be discharged is not environmentally harmful,” the company said. The appeal further emphasized that the concentrations of the detectable pollutants in the released water would be both well within federal standards and actually “well below the concentrations detectable in the receiving waters.”

Nonetheless, on Tuesday, MassDEP announced that it has dismissed Holtec’s appeal and upheld its 2024 determination denying the company’s request to discharge the water at Pilgrim.

Next steps: The future of Pilgrim’s decommissioning is now somewhat uncertain. As Patrick O’Brien, director of government affairs and communications for Holtec, told Boston NPR station WBUR, the yearslong permitting process has already delayed the cleanup schedule, and the new decision may impose a further delay.

O’Brien added that the company is “reviewing the finalized denial and looking at what options may remain available.” MassDEP said its final decision can be appealed to the state’s Superior Court. Another solution advocated for by some in the state is shipping the water to an out-of-state facility.

Depending on the next steps Holtec takes, this regulatory back-and-forth ultimately may become moot. As deliberations continue, the water at the site is slowly evaporating. However, the rate of evaporation at the site has been variable and difficult to calculate thus far, and it is currently unclear how many years it would take for the remaining water at the site to evaporate.

Low Dose Radiation Exposure Study - Ian Farlie

https://www.ianfairlie.org/news/us-million-person-study-on-low-dose-rate-exposures-to-radiation-preliminary-findings/

Dr Ian Fairlie
An independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment.

US Million Person Study on low dose rate exposures to radiation: Preliminary Findings

September 16, 2026

This article requires an extensive introduction, so bear with me.

Current risk estimates for radiation are based by the ICRP principally on the Japanese survivors of the US bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  This is the Life Span Study (LSS). However it has several shortcomings including that it is based on instantaneous exposures (lasting less than a second) to high blasts of gamma radiation and neutrons.  Other shortcomings were that the studies did not commence until 5 years after the explosions and many unrecorded deaths occurred during the interval. Also the translation of the estimated risks in the acutely-exposed Japanese population to people in different countries exposed to lower doses over lengthier time periods introduces large uncertainties in the LSS risk estimates.

Finally the LSS only covered ~80,000 people. A better, larger study covering ~300,000 workers – was the INWORKS study of nuclear industry workers in the US, UK and France which found radiation risks higher than the risks observed by the Life Span Study but broadly similar to it. (It is explained that the phrase “broadly similar to” means that the uncertainty ranges of the two studies overlapped.) The INWORKS study has been examined and discussed by me previously  -see https://www.ianfairlie.org/news/important-new-bmj-article-increases-our-perception-of-radiation-risks/

A third, even larger, study – the US Million Person Study- has been underway in the US for several years. For its history, see – Boice Jr JD., André Bouville, Lawrence T. Dauer, Ashley P. Golden, Richard Wakeford (2022) Introduction to the special issue on the US Million Person Study of health effects from low-level exposure to radiation. International Journal of Radiation Biology, Volume 98, 2022 – Issue 4.

The quantitative results of this US study have not yet been published formally, it seems, in any academic scientific article. However, rather strangely,  an article containing its preliminary findings has been  just published in the UK magazine of the UK Society for Radiological Protection.  See https://srp-uk.org/professional-resources/radiation-protection-today

I say “rather strangely”,  but perhaps it’s unsurprising for a US study to first release in the UK controversial findings on radiation risks, given the US President’s recent attacks on internationally-accepted cornerstones of radiation protection, such as the linear no threshold model of radiation risks and ALARA.

The US Million Person Study of Low-Dose-Rate Health Effects (https://www.millionpersonstudy.org/) is the largest radiation occupational epidemiologic study that I’m aware of. It eventually will cover about a million US nuclear workers and military veterans etc. It is examining cancer and non-cancer morbidity (cases) and mortality (deaths) after exposures to low rates of radiation. It includes nuclear industry workers who predominately received about 300 mGy over their working lives. In other words, it is not a low level study but a low rate study. It includes workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Mound Nuclear Facility, Rocky Flats plant, civilian nuclear utilities, industrial radiographers, medical radiation radiographers, and workers at military nuclear weapons test sites.

Early findings based on ~ 600,000 US workers and US military veterans include the following

• an association between occupational radiation exposures and Parkinson’s disease
• a low risk of lung cancer
• a risk of leukemia (excluding chronic lymphocytic leukemia)
• some evidence of increases in all solid cancers and
• evidence that chromosomal damage could be detected 65 years after veteran exposure to fallout from nuclear weapons testing.

These findings are unsurprising and fit in with evidence elsewhere , especially the INWORKS studies.  What is significant is that the study runs directly contrary to the views of the US President and can be viewed as a direct riposte to them. So far, no collective quantitative risk estimates from this study have been published in the US.

The Million Person Study continues at large US DoE facilities including Hanford and Oak Ridge, and US Navy personnel, including nuclear submarine sailors and naval shipyard workers. interestingly, is also re-examining the US radium dial workers from the 1920s and 1930s. The ongoing Million Person Study also covers

• safe and secure cleanup of historically contaminated US nuclear sites
• protection from radiation exposures during space travel
• the development of new forms of nuclear power designs and
• resilience preparation for response to emergency radiological incidents.

The SRPS article was written by two US academics, Dr Nicole Martinez and Dr Laurence Dauer. They conclude– somewhat courageously given the US President’s outspoken views –

“A better understanding of potential impacts of radiological exposure enables more informed decisions which in turn can support a more sustainable and prosperous future. See www.millionpersonstudy.org”

Uranium mines pose first test for cultural landscape designation | AP News

https://apnews.com/article/uranium-mining-mount-taylor-traditional-cultural-property-8bf3cc46117a507cd0a966a3041e0e39

Uranium mines pose first test for state-recognized Mount Taylor cultural landscape in New Mexico

The western slope of Mount Taylor is capped with snow on Nov. 25, 2025, in Cibola County, N.M. (Bella Davis/New Mexico In Depth via AP) License this photo

By  BELLA DAVIS/New Mexico In Depth
Updated 2:31 AM GMT+8, September 16, 2026

For Native communities in northwest New Mexico’s Grants mineral belt, one of the central concerns with the idea of resumed uranium mining is the potential harm to Mount Taylor. That concern led the state to designate Mount Taylor as a traditional cultural property nearly two decades ago. But as uranium mining companies hoping to operate within the area move through the state permitting process, state regulators still can’t say what role the designation will play in their decisions.

Mount Taylor is sacred to the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, and the pueblos of Laguna, Acoma and Zuni.

“We have, and other peoples have, a really millennia-long relationship with the mountain,” June Lorenzo (Laguna/Diné) told the Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee during a meeting in the Laguna Pueblo village of Paguate on Friday. “It’s part of our vocabulary. It features largely in our creation stories.”

It’s not only the mountain that’s important, but also the surrounding landscape, said Lorenzo, a former tribal court judge who’s done academic research and advocacy work on legacy uranium issues.

The five tribes undertook a legal fight in the late 2000s in an effort to protect Mount Taylor from extraction, resulting in the state designation of 400,000 acres as a traditional cultural property. At the time, Lorenzo said, the tribes were accused of using the process to try to acquire the land, but that’s a misunderstanding of their relationships with Mount Taylor. Besides, the designation didn’t actually transfer ownership to them.

“None of us want to own—we will never own the mountain,” she said. “It’s like a relative.”

The designation is meant to give tribes a stronger voice in decisions about mining and other development, but because New Mexico hasn’t permitted a uranium mine since the designation took effect, it’s never been tested.

Two proposed underground uranium mines — Roca Honda and La Jara Mesa — would fall within the state-designated acreage.

Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, asked state regulators whether they can deny a permit based on concerns about cultural sites.

“I don’t have an answer to that question. We have yet to get to that stage of how impacts to the (traditional cultural property) will be mitigated,” said David “D.J.” Ennis, program manager of the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department’s Mining Act Reclamation Program.

Ennis said the department is partnering with the U.S. Forest Service to evaluate the issue.

Energy Fuels, the top producer of uranium in the U.S., proposes having dewatering well pads used to remove groundwater from the mine and ventilation shafts on about 30 acres of the designated land.

In response to tribal input, the company revised previous iterations of its plan to remove “significant disturbance” from the area, including a mine shaft, said Nick Martin, environmental manager at Energy Fuels.

Steinborn seemed to be unconvinced.

“We have tremendous concern for cultural sites, not to mention the environmental issues and the worker safety issues,” he told Martin and two other Energy Fuels representatives.

How do they plan to mitigate impacts to the area, the state senator asked.

Martin mentioned independent engagement with tribes and a review under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires federal agencies to consider how projects they carry out or permit will affect historic properties.

Sen. Angel Charley (Laguna/Zuni/Diné), a Democrat who grew up in Laguna Pueblo and lives in nearby Acoma Pueblo, pushed back on that, noting the Trump administration is trying to weaken Section 106.

That includes a proposal to make tribal consultation no longer required.

As Friday’s meeting wrapped up, New Mexico In Depth asked Misael Cabrera, senior vice president of regulatory affairs at Energy Fuels, to respond to the concern Charley — who has called for a moratorium on uranium mining — raised about Section 106.

“Sometimes politicians deregulate, other times politicians re-regulate,” Cabrera said. “Irrespective of what those folks do, we want to make sure that we’re being good neighbors for the communities that we’re in. Why? Because it makes business sense. If the people around you are always fighting you, it makes things harder.”

He pointed to an agreement Energy Fuels and the Navajo Nation signed in January 2025 that allows the company to transport uranium ore through Navajo lands. In exchange, the company agreed to more protections than what’s legally required and to haul away up to 10,000 tons of waste from abandoned uranium mines spread across the Navajo Nation, according to a press release.

The agreement came after the Navajo Nation and the Havasupai Tribe condemned Energy Fuels in 2024 for moving ore across their lands without their permission.

“One of the things that folks don’t understand when I say middle ground, some might ask, ‘Well, why can’t you just leave? Why can’t you just leave that place alone?’ It’s because these projects, they actually don’t start making money until like year five, after you’ve started producing,” Cabrera said. “And until then, we actually work on borrowed money. We borrow money from shareholders. … So we’ve got to analyze all of that in our decisions.”

___

This story was originally published by New Mexico In Depth and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

Front page piece LATimes this morning, beach erosion at SANO danger to nuke waste, mentions the Scripps Symposium

Front page headline piece in LATimes this morning about San Onofre nuclear waste.  https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-09-12/as-coast-begins-to-crumble-clock-ticks-on-moving-san-onofres-radioactive-waste

If lots of you (I already did) send in LTE, they may publish one or two.   letters@LATimes.com

They mention the Lawrence Foundation symposium at Scripps, quote James Day, Greg Jaczko

As the coast begins to crumble, the clock ticks on moving San Onofre’s radioactive waste

A view of decommissioning work around San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station reactor containment domes in San Clemente on Aug. 21. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

By Blanca Begert
Staff Writer 
Photography by Allen J. Schaben

Sept. 12, 2026 3 AM PT

See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred 

• Storm-driven erosion exposes vulnerability of California coast, reviving questions about keeping 3.6 million pounds of radioactive waste just 100 feet from the Pacific at decommissioned San Onofre nuclear power plant.
• Utility officials say seawalls and a steel canister storage system can withstand tsunamis, quakes and rising seas for decades, even as scientists warn of hazards of storing nuclear waste indefinitely in a seismically active area next to the ocean.
• With Yucca Mountain effectively canceled, federal officials promote new ‘campus’ storage sites in Utah and other states, promising jobs and consent-based siting while communities debate becoming America’s long-term nuclear waste repository.

As parts of the Southern California coastline crumbled into the sea, slammed by intense waves and flooding in recent days, oceanographer Kim McCoy had one thing on his mind: the nuclear waste set in concrete on the beach near San Clemente at the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant.

“Rising sea levels, storm waves, El Niño which increases wave height ... these could wash away a section of the walkway that protects the San Onofre seawall, and the waste canisters are just 100 feet away from that,” the former wave dynamics researcher and longtime advocate against beach storage of nuclear waste said.

Most experts agree the risk of erosion damaging the nuclear waste storage system is extremely low in the near term. The plant’s owner, Southern California Edison, has promised the California Coastal Commission to move the waste to higher elevation on-site if modeling shows sea level rise and erosion will start to pose a challenge.

But the recent waves, fueled by Hurricane Marie far away in the Pacific, resurfaced the issue of the ultimate fate of the highly radioactive spent fuel that used to power the reactors.

“At the moment, it is under control, I think it’s essential to say that,” said James Day, a geology professor at UC San Diego. “But geologically we must be thinking long term. The waste lasts for hundreds, if not thousands of generations.”

1

2

3
1. Rows of round concrete vaults, each holding a canister of used nuclear fuel, sit underground at the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation at the former San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. 2. Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) where dry cask storage of used nuclear fuel is stored horizontally at the decommissioning San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. 3. A photograph above the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station hangs on the wall of a conference room at the facility.

Seen from Interstate 5, the twin domes of San Onofre look like they’re part of an operating facility. Red lights flash at the top of each sphere, visible from afar, among the chaparral and military buildings of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.

But go behind the security checkpoint and you see a demolition site. Trailers and tents now sit where acres of office buildings, steam turbines, diesel generators, control rooms, cooling pools and water treatment plants have been knocked down and hauled away, since a scandal involving faulty steam generators shut down the plant in 2013.

Most of the rubble, which is only mildly radioactive or not at all, has already been sent to sites in Utah, Texas and Arizona.

The distinctive twin domes that once housed the reactor cores will start coming down early next year. But the 3.6 million pounds of high-level waste will stay in the coastal community indefinitely.

How much of a safety hazard that is depends on whom you ask.

“San Onofre is sitting on some fairly young rocks in a seismically active region,” Day said at a recent symposium at the Scripps Seaside Forum in La Jolla, hosted by the Samuel Lawrence Foundation. “This is not the sort of place you would leave nuclear waste.”

Others noted that collapse of beach slopes could make the site more vulnerable to tsunamis. They spoke of the corrosive effects of the ocean air on the steel canisters that hold the waste.


Manuel Camargo, principal manager, strategic planning, San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, talks about nuclear waste storage with a model of a nuclear fuel assembly in the background on Aug. 21 in San Clemente. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“They could be doing more monitoring,” Greg Jaczko, former head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said of Edison. The utility tracks air temperature and radioactivity, checks canisters for cracks on the outside and inspects test canisters that mimic the active waste ones for signs of degradation.

Edison says its system will be safe for decades to come.

“The maximum credible tsunami here would not even overtake the seawall,” said Manuel Camargo, principal manager of decommissioning for Edison, standing on the concrete pad that holds the steel waste storage canisters. “The maximum credible earthquake, somewhere around a 7.0 magnitude, would produce something about half of what this system is designed to withstand.”

As he spoke, just in front of the plant, surfers were catching waves. He pointed out where Edison is bolstering a path below the seawall. Based on state data from the California Ocean Protection Council, the seawall would not be inundated before 2050, Camargo said. “It’s an extremely robust system.”

Rows of round concrete vaults, each holding a canister of used nuclear fuel. The system, built into the bluff above the Pacific Ocean, holds dozens of canisters of radioactive waste and is designed to withstand fire, flood and tsunami.

Yet despite confidence in its protective measures, even the utility wants the waste out of there as soon as possible. Because this status quo is expensive.

From 1982 through 2014, Edison customers, like many ratepayers around the country, paid into a federal fund for a promised permanent nuclear waste storage site. But plans for a deep geological repository beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada crumbled in the face of local opposition in 2011.

Utilities around the U.S. now sue the federal government every year to recoup their storage expenses because the Department of Energy has not come through on its promise. The lawsuits cost taxpayers $2 million a day, according to Camargo.

“It’s so safe that it’s almost a problem,” Camargo said. “It’s not a priority to a lot of folks to move it.”

2

3
1. A caution: radioactive material sign is posted as Kevin Sheek, senior advisor for Emergency Planning, San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, gives a tour of the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) . 2. An estimated 5,000 rail cars wait to be loaded to haul away dismantled plant materials. 3. The plant is located on an 84-acre site on the Pacific coast within the boundaries of the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County.

Camargo, like so many in the nuclear power industry, is hanging his hopes on a new idea. The Trump administration’s Department of Energy wants to create “campuses” in several states to store waste and, in exchange, give local jurisdictions funding to develop different aspects of the nuclear cycle — such as fuel creation, power generation and potentially fuel recycling.

The administration wants to address the fact that waste is sitting at 80 reactor sites around the country. It also needs places for waste from new reactors it wants to build. Several states including California have bans on new nuclear power until there is permanent federal storage. Some state leaders are trying to make an exception for small modular reactors such as the one the Port of Long Beach wants to build on a floating barge offshore.

rjohnson

Save The Date: TMI Forum Sept. 9, 2026

Save The Date:

-

Wed. September 9, 2026, 7-8:30 PM ET

&

THREE MILE ISLAND:
LEGACY & RESISTANCE TO REOPENING 

A PUBLIC FORUM

Wednesday September 9, 2026, 7-8:30 PM Eastern time

Three Mile Island was the site of the most serious nuclear accident in U.S. history. Unit 2 suffered a partial meltdown in 1979 and has been shuttered ever since. People in central Pennsylvania still face lingering health effects from the reactor meltdown, and are now organizing to stop the re-0pening of Unit 1.

The announced restart of Three Mile Island Unit-1 is aimed to serve just one client: Microsoft, and has been met with unabashed enthusiasm by Governor Shapiro and the PA legislature. This deal was cooked up in dark in board rooms and political parlors with the backing of Microsoft founder, Bill Gates.

SPEAKERS

Eric Epstein is the spokesperson and Chairman of Three Mile Island Alert, founded in 1977. He first joined the Lancaster-based Susquehanna Valley Alliance (SVA) in 1982, working to prevent the illegal dumping of 700,000 gallons of radioactive water into the Susquehanna River. Eric has litigated at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other regulatory bodies, written numerous professional papers, and provided testimony regarding utility rates, electric power competition and radioactive waste isolation.

Patricia Longenecker is a retired teacher and healthcare professional who has lived on a family homestead near TMI since 1974.  She has been an active member of Three Mile Island Alert for over four decades. She will discuss the powerful contributions of women and mothers who have tirelessly exposed the risks to children and other vulnerable groups following the massive TMI radiation release.

Aaron Datesman is a researcher and inventor based in Washington, DC, who led a recent biomedical study of residents exposed to radiation from the TMI meltdown who are still at risk. He has held technical positions at Argonne National Laboratory, the US Department of Energy, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and the University of Virginia. His recent book, with Doug Brugge, Dirty Secrets of Nuclear Power in an Era of Climate Change challenges the claim that low-level ionizing radiation released by nuclear power reactors is not dangerous, and demonstrates that there is no such thing as low-risk exposure. 

Moderator: Joseph M Hunt is an activist with the Clamshell Alliance  and Massachusetts Peace Action, a development economist with 30 years’ experience in Asia and Africa working on public health and food security programs, and a retired instructor in Harvard's graduate sustainability degree program.

REGISTRATION LINK WILL AVAILABLE BY AUGUST 11th

ACCESSIBILITY: Live captioning will be available.
​​​​​​​If you have accessibility questions, reply to your registration email to confirm your requirements or request more information.

QUESTIONS?
Contact us at info@clamshellalliance.com