Author: Fission Today

I realized I haven’t updated things here for a long while, and that it would be worth consolidating a few overdue news updates. First and foremost, if you want to read things from me on a more regular basis, you should be reading Doomsday Machines, which is another blog of mine, and is much more frequently updated that this one. While it is not exactly the same content or approach, you’ll find a lot of things from this blog replicated on there. Because the same person writes both of them. (I still intend to update this blog occasionally, but one…

Four years ago, on 24 February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For Ukrainians, this week marks the start of a fifth year of war – of loss, displacement and destruction that words can barely describe. Take this opportunity to support nuclear disarmament as part of any peace plan for Ukraine. The answer to the war in Ukraine cannot be to double down on nuclear weapons, but to take action to rule them out. Nuclear danger in the Ukraine war From the start, the war has been fought under explicit nuclear threats from Moscow. With very limited success,…

This week’s NOT the corporate nuclear-related news Some bits of good news – Planting Billions of Trees Turned Barren Desert into a Carbon Sink That Lowers CO2.    Town Enthusiastically Switches to Restorative Justice and Reoffending Almost Vanishes.   Dramatic recovery of various fish species after California’s ban on trawling TOP STORIES  Israel used weapons in Gaza that made thousands of Palestinians evaporate.  What if Nuclear Deterrence was an Obsolete Concept?  Why can’t western leaders accept that they have failed in Ukraine?  Murica: US throws pennies at massive UN debt. Climate. The Apocalyptic President.  Donald Trump has revoked the official doctrine that carbon dioxide is a danger to human health. Brace for Trump’s brave new world…

Credits: Martin Bergsma | Shutterstock, All rights reserved. The International Energy Agency calls heat pumps the ‘central technology’ for low-carbon heating. While geopolitical shocks and national decisions shape adoption patterns, for most consumers the decisive factor is the electricity to gas price ratio, a study by the German state-owned promotional bank KfW shows.  Heat pumps efficiently electrify heating, working like reverse refrigerators. A refrigerant absorbs ambient or geothermal energy, which is compressed and transferred indoors via a heat exchanger. Because they salvage thermal energy from the environment, modern heat pumps deliver three to four times more energy than the electric energy they…

The Trump administration is touting a proposed 9.2‑GW natural gas power complex near Portsmouth, Ohio, as the centerpiece of a new U.S.–Japan trade deal that officials say could steer up to $550 billion of Japanese capital into American energy and industrial projects. According to a Feb. 17 Commerce Department fact sheet and a statement by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the “Portsmouth Powered Land Project” would be a 9.2‑GW, $33 billion natural gas plant in the vicinity of Portsmouth, operated by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank’s U.S. affiliate, SB Energy. Billed as one of the “largest natural gas generation projects in the world,”…

Nevada gas utility Southwest Gas (SWG) has not provided sufficient information or analysis in its inaugural long-term resource plan to ensure the utility is proposing the most cost-effective options for its customers, Nevada advocates and state officials are saying. Intervenors who are critical of the resource plan include Nevada’s Bureau of Consumer Protection (BCP) and three organizations – Western Resource Advocates (WRA), Advanced Energy United (AEU), and Southwest Energy Efficiency Project (SWEEP) – collectively the “Clean Energy Advocates” (CEA).  SWG filed its inaugural Triennial Resource Plan application and testimony at the PUCN in September 2025. Commonly referred to as an…

On 24 February 2026, the world marks the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While global headlines are filled with news about negotiations and attempts to inspire hope for peace, the Greenpeace Ukraine office is experiencing Russia’s so-called “peaceful intentions” firsthand. For several months now, staff members have had only a few hours of electricity and heating per day, often without hot water, without the ability to use elevators, or to cook meals for themselves and their children. Greenpeace activists from Poland painted the slogan “PEACE NOT OIL” on the side of the Andromeda – tanker transporting oil…

DOE-EM Restarts Uranium Recovery at SRS DOE Awards $19M for Spent Fuel R&D DOE Recycles Hanford Building for Uranium Fuel Production Six Things You Should Know About Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Natura, NGL Collaboration for Nuclear Powered Water Treatment in Texas NextEra Pitches Investors to Fund New Nuclear Capacity Newcleo Closes Funding Round Of $85 Million for Lead Cooled SMR Avalanche Energy Raises $29 Million for Fusion Work DOE-EM Restarts Uranium Recovery at SRS Decision leverages Savannah River Site to produce fuel for advanced nuclear reactors. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) announced that it is restarting…

Peoples Gas, the Chicago-based gas utility, has settled a discrimination lawsuit alleging that it engaged in systemic race discrimination against Black employees and customers through fostering a hostile work environment, discriminatory job and territory assignment, discriminatory overtime and pay, discriminatory performance and discipline practices, and retaliation. Eleven former and current employees of the gas utility filed the suit, Towns et al. v. Peoples Gas, in 2023. The plaintiffs and the utility had been in settlement discussions since May; they settled in December with a confidentiality agreement before the case could go to trial. Peoples Gas did not admit liability. The…

Understanding how much fissile material — enriched uranium and separated plutonium — was produced, and at what time, by the Manhattan Project is one of those seemingly-obscure technical questions that comes with a lot of important historical implications. It is what determined the scheduling of the bombings, for one thing. For another, it is how you might answer questions about what would happen if the war had carried on. And for yet another, it is a way to debunk the various conspiracy theories that periodically emerge about either the United States having atomic bombs before July-August 1945, or being dependent on German…