“No Nukes” greets NE Governors “Go Nukes”
Republished with permission from Beyond Nuclear, find original article here.
On September 30, 2026 at the invitation of Massachusetts Democrat Governor Maura Healey representatives and researchers from all six New England Governors (MA, NH, VT, ME, CT, RI) convened at the University of Massachusetts Lowell for the “New England Regional Nuclear Policy Summit”. All of the New England Governors representative speakers appear to be in lock step for yet another misadventure in reopening the Atomic Pandora’s Box. In fact, the summit attendees would have been enlightened by an opinion piece that appeared the same morning in the CT Mirror by Stanley Heller, Promoting Enduring Peace, “CT’s reckless drive for more nuclear power(opens in new tab)” and well worth all of us to be advised by.
However, there was a hint of caution in extending any further blind faith(opens in new tab) in this current round of nuclear industry hype and lobby funded political champions. There is no rational reason to believe that anything is going to be different from the previous two decades of technological and financial failures of a “nuclear renaissance” that has repeatedly relapsed since it introduction in 2005 with Congress’ passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Of the 34+ “advanced” reactors that industry offered up and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) generously approved Combined Operating License Applications (combining construction permits and operating licensing in a one stop shop), on four units broke ground in 2013 while all of the other awarded applicants stepped back to watch.
The two South Carolina units at V.C. Summer Unit 2 and 3 cancelled their construction project midway with a sunk cost of over $9 billion passed onto the state’s captured and irate ratepayers and not a watt of electricity. The SCANA utility responsible for the energy boondoggle collapsed with the company CEO and senior manager federally convicted of wire and mail fraud to serve prison time. The responsible Westinghouse Electric Senior President of the AP1000 project was also convicted of conspiracy to commit fraud and served time in federal prison. The Georgia AP1000 Westinghouse project for Vogtle Units 3 and 4 was eventually completed seven years behind schedule at tremendous construction cost overruns. The original estimated cost of completion for Vogtle 3 and 4 was $14 billion turned out to be at least $36 billion to start up.
Nothing has really changed except for the rebranding of the nuclear power technology that small modular reactors (SMR) and micro reactors will be easier, faster and cheaper to build. In fact, quite the opposite is likely given a lot of small reactors will by all accounts cost more with the loss of the concept of “economies of scale.” Putting nuclear reactors on an assembly line is already decades behind the original energy generating SMR (Small Modular Renewables).
Addressing the gathered governors summit “Nuclear is already part of this region’s ecosystem,” said Sukesh Aghara, UMass Lowell Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Associate Dean of Research . Which Beyond Nuclear agrees is true but not as Prof. Aghara intended it. Every state that ever constructed and operated nuclear power stations, still has all of the high-level radioactive waste in the form of irradiated fuel that remain as virulent pocks on the land with no scientifically proven and socially accepted long-term management plan for the tens of thousands of years that the waste will need to be isolated.
Outside of the Governors Nuclear Summit, a well attended protest sponsored and organized regionwide had responded to a “Call To Action(opens in new tab)” by the Clamshell Alliance, Citizen Awareness Network and the Commonwealth Coalition for Democracy and Safe Energy (CCDSE). The Governors were reminded of the true legacy of nuclear power in their states of unmanaged nuclear waste, the cost of electricity from nuclear power plants ever spirally upwards and the clinical evidence that invisible radioactivity is carcinogenic (causing cancers), teratogenic (causing genetic damage) and mutagenic (causing birth defects).
Photos courtesy of Shel Horowitz and Susanae Glovaki, Clamshell Alliance and the Commonwealth Coalition for Democracy and Safe Energy (CCDSE)
