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Beyond
Nuclear Bulletin
July
16, 2025
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DOGE
to NRC
Rubber
stamp nukes
July 14, 2025,
E&ENews/Politico ran
a story headlined “DOGE
told regulator to ‘rubber
stamp’
nuclear.” The article
explains that President
Trump has implanted a
representative from the
White House Department
of Government Efficiency
(DOGE) into the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission
(NRC) to execute White
House Executive Orders
to "reform" the NRC.
Three anonymous NRC
staffers participated in
the meeting at NRC
headquarters between the
DOGE representative and
NRC Chairman David
Wright. One staffer
said, “A DOGE
representative told the
chair and top staff of
the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission that the
agency will be expected
to give ‘rubber stamp’
approval to new reactors
tested by the
departments of Energy or
Defense, according to
three people with
knowledge of a May
meeting…”
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TRINITY, 80 YEARS ON
Nuclear perils remain, resistance persists
On July 16, 1945, the
U.S. Army's Manhattan
Project secretly tested
a plutonium bomb,
code-named "Trinity," in
southern New Mexico
(pictured). As they do
annually, New Mexicans commemorated
the fallout, both
literal and figurative,
this week. (Incredibly enough, New Mexico has
two nuclear
catastrophes, both dated
July 16th, to
commemorate; the second
happened in 1979, the
massive uranium
tailings spill at the
Diné Red Water Pond
Road Community, at
Church Rock.) Just three weeks after Trinity, the
U.S. atom bombed
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
in Japan. Despite the lessons that should
have been learned,
nuclear perils persist,
including the
risk of nuclear war.
But resistance
continues. This week,
groups like Nuclear
Watch NM pushed back
against expanded nuclear
weapons plutonium pit
production.
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ZOMBIE NUKE?!
Our legal resistance mounts
On July 15, our
environmental
coalition appealed
to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commissioners
regarding the NRC Atomic
Safety (sic) and
Licensing Board's (ASLB)
ruling against our
new
and amended
environmental
contentions in the
Palisades atomic reactor
restart licensing
proceeding. We similarly
previously appealed to
the Commissioners
regarding the ASLB's
ruling against our
challenges to multiple
Holtec LIcense Amendment
Requests, and an
Exemption Request,
seeking to reverse
Palisades' permanent
shutdown status. If the
Commissioners rule
against our appeals, we
will then appeal to the
federal courts.
Meanwhile, we also face
a July 18 deadline to
Reply to NRC Staff and
Holtec Answers on our
Petition to Intervene
against the scheme to
merely "band-aid"
dangerous,
self-inflicted
degradation of
Palisades' steam
generator tubes.
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BOB ALVAREZ, PRESENTE!
Remembrance by a U.S. Senate colleague
Michael Slater, a
former co-worker of Bob
Alvarez on the staff of
U.S. Senator John Glenn,
has published an
appreciation in the
Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, after Bob's death on July 1st.
Slater included a link
to Bob's prolific Bulletin contributions, including an
article he
co-authored with his
wife, Kitty Tucker,
documenting the spike in
infant deaths that
occurred in the
immediate aftermath of
the Trinity explosion in
New Mexico on July 16,
1945.
The video
recording of Bob's
Lifetime Achievement
Award, presented in
March 2022 by Alliance
for Nuclear
Accountability and NIRS,
includes similar
appreciations by
colleagues from the
anti-nuclear weapons and
power movements, as well
as a former co-worker at
the Department of
Energy.
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