Meta has cut a trio of deals to power its artificial intelligence data centers, securing enough energy to light up the equivalent of about 5 million homes.
The parent company of Facebook on Friday announced agreements with TerraPower, Oklo and Vistra for nuclear power for its Prometheus AI data center that is being built in New Albany, Ohio. Meta announced Prometheus, which will be a 1-gigawatt cluster spanning across multiple data center buildings, in July. It’s anticipated to come online this year.
Financial terms of the deals with TerraPower, Oklo and Vistra were not disclosed.
The Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta said in a statement on Friday that the three deals will support up to 6.6 gigawatts of new and existing clean energy by 2035. A single gigawatt, according to a general industry standard for utilities, can power about 750,000 homes.
“These projects add reliable and firm power to the grid, reinforce America’s nuclear supply chain, and support new and existing jobs to build and operate American power plants,” the company said.
Meta said its agreement with TerraPower will provide funding that supports the development of two new Natrium units capable of generating up to 690 megawatts of firm power with delivery as early as 2032. The deal also provides Meta with rights for energy from up to six other Natrium units capable of producing 2.1 gigawatts and targeted for delivery by 2035.
Meta will also buy more than 2.1 gigawatts of energy from two operating Vistra nuclear power plants in Ohio, in addition to the energy from expansions at the two Ohio plants and a third Vistra plant, Beaver Valley, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The deal with Oklo, which counts OpenAI’s Sam Altman as one of its largest investors, will help to develop a 1.2 gigawatt power campus in Pike County, Ohio, to support Meta’s data centers in the region.
The nuclear power agreements come after Meta announced in June that it reached a 20-year deal with Constellation Energy to secure power from its nuclear plant in Clinton, Illinois.
Constellation’s Clinton Clean Energy Center single nuclear reactor power plant is shown on July 25, 2025 in Clinton, Illinois. Meta signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Constellation for the output from the plant.
By Kantaro Komiya, Yuka Obayashi and Katya Golubkova
NIIGATA, Japan, Dec 22 (Reuters) – The Japanese region of Niigata is expected to endorse a decision to restart the world’s largest nuclear power plant on Monday, a watershed moment in the country’s pivot back to nuclear since the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, located about 220 km (136 miles) northwest of Tokyo, was among 54 reactors shut after a massive earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Since then, Japan has restarted 14 of the 33 that remain operable, as it tries to wean itself off imported fossil fuels. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa will be the first operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which ran the doomed Fukushima plant.
“We remain firmly committed to never repeating such an accident and ensuring Niigata residents never experience anything similar,” said TEPCO spokesperson Masakatsu Takata.
If approved, TEPCO is considering reactivating the first of seven reactors at the plant on January 20, public broadcaster NHK reported. Takata declined to comment on timing.
RELUCTANT RESIDENTS WARY OF RESTART
TEPCO earlier this year pledged to inject 100 billion yen ($641 million) into the prefecture over the next 10 years as it sought to win the support of Niigata residents.
But many locals remain wary.
A survey published by the prefecture in October found 60% of residents did not think conditions for the restart had been met. Nearly 70% were worried about TEPCO operating the plant.
Ayako Oga, 52, settled in Niigata after fleeing the area around the Fukushima plant in 2011 with 160,000 other evacuees. Her old home was inside the 20 km irradiated exclusion zone.
The farmer and anti-nuclear activist has now joined protests against what she sees as a new threat on her doorstep.
“We know firsthand the risk of a nuclear accident and cannot dismiss it,” said Oga, adding that she still struggles with post-traumatic stress-like symptoms from what happened at Fukushima.
Even Niigata Governor Hideyo Hanazumi, who backed the restart last month, hopes that Japan will eventually be able to reduce its reliance on nuclear power. “I want to see an era where we don’t have to rely on energy sources that cause anxiety,” he said.
STRENGTHENING ENERGY SECURITY
On Monday, the prefecture’s assembly will cast a vote of confidence on Hanazumi, a de facto ballot on his support for the restart.
The vote is seen as the final hurdle before TEPCO restarts the first reactor, which alone could boost electricity supply to the Tokyo area by 2%, Japan’s trade ministry has estimated.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who took office two months ago, has backed nuclear restarts to strengthen energy security and to counter the cost of imported fossil fuels, which account for 60% to 70% of Japan’s electricity generation.
Japan spent 10.7 trillion yen ($68 billion) last year on imported liquefied natural gas and coal, a tenth of its total import costs.
Despite its shrinking population, Japan expects energy demand to rise over the coming decade due to a boom in power-hungry AI data centres.
To meet those needs, and its decarbonisation commitments, it has set a target of doubling the share of nuclear power in its electricity mix to 20% by 2040.
Joshua Ngu, vice chairman for Asia Pacific at consultancy Wood Mackenzie, said public acceptance of the restart of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, would represent “a critical milestone” towards reaching those goals.
In July, Kansai Electric Power, Japan’s top nuclear power operator, said it would begin conducting surveys for a reactor in western Japan, the first new unit since the Fukushima disaster.
But for Oga, who will join protests outside the Niigata assembly as lawmakers cast their vote on Monday, the nuclear revival is a terrifying reminder of the potential risks.
“Every news update about the restart — it’s like reliving the fear,” she said.
($1 = 155.9200 yen)
(Reporting by Kantaro Komiya and Issei Kato in Niigata and Yuka Obayashi and Katya Golubkova in Tokyo; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
Engineers at the Idaho National Laboratory have completed a successful test campaign of a coolant system for nuclear microreactors that have the potential to launch the world into the next energy age.
Carlo Parisi, one of the engineers, envisioned creating a next-gen cooling system for the Microreactor Applications Research Validation (Marvel) project. Five years later, it’s now a reality and marks “a milestone of innovation in the nuclear sector,” per a laboratory news release.
The Primary Coolant Apparatus Test, “a non-nuclear integrated test facility,” is an almost exact replica of Marvel’s primary cooling loop, but it uses electricity rather than nuclear power to produce heat. In nuclear reactors, the primary loop circulates coolant to remove excess heat and transfer it to another system, which is then used to generate heat or electricity.
The idea behind the PCAT is to test the cooling system’s performance and components of the test microreactor to ensure the actual reactor will run safely and efficiently. The team also wanted to check that the software for the thermal-hydraulic design of Marvel accurately models certain features of the system.
One problem Marvel faced in the beginning was the Stirling engine that regulates the system’s heat causing excessive vibrations that could damage the reactor, but the team was able to replace it with a “more stable radiator-like setup.”
“That was a pivotal moment for us,” Parisi said. “We had to rethink our approach to ensure the system’s effectiveness and reliability.”
The tests showed encouraging results for the Marvel reactor, confirming that “a stable natural circulation flow can be established to operate safely and allow Marvel to generate as much as 100 kilowatts of thermal power,” per the release.
It also revealed that the RELAP5-3D, the software used to perform safety analyses of Marvel, closely matched the data obtained from PCAT, meaning it will be able to predict safety issues with a high level of accuracy.
The path forward will involve preparing for the reactor’s construction at the Idaho National Laboratory’s Transient Reactor Test Facility and submitting the proper paperwork to the Department of Energy. Once the engineers analyze the data gathered from the PCAT tests, they will share the findings with scientists worldwide.
The advancement of microreactor technologies could lead to a revolution in nuclear energy production in the U.S. However, it’s worth noting that because microreactors operate on the principle of nuclear fission, they still produce some radioactive waste that must be managed carefully.
Nuclear plants can also be expensive and time-consuming to build, which may offset the benefits achieved by reduced carbon pollution. However, all things considered, they’re much healthier for the environment and humans than fossil fuels, and they are likely to be a major part of our energy mix for a considerable time.
“Marvel has a unique combination of fuel, coolant and geometrical configuration that has never been used by any other reactor,” Parisi said. “It was crucial to create this mock-up for testing because there was nothing similar anywhere in the world for comparison.”
“Knowing that we have accomplished something unique and groundbreaking is incredibly rewarding,” Parisi added. “We’ve created a system and a wealth of knowledge that will not only benefit our project but also potentially help the entire industry.”
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The owner of Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant, the site of the worst commercial nuclear disaster in U.S. history, announced this week that it plans to spend $1.6 billion to restart its remaining functional reactor as part of a 20-year deal to provide power to Microsoft data centers. Michael George has more.
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Sam Altman is now chairman of a public company. But it’s not OpenAI.
On Friday, advanced nuclear fission company Oklo started trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The company, which has yet to generate any revenue, went public through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) called AltC Acquisition Corp., founded and led by Altman.
Under the ticker symbol “OKLO,” shares plummeted 54% on Friday to $8.45, valuing the company at about $364 million. Oklo received roughly $306 million in gross proceeds in the transaction, according to a release.
Oklo’s business model is based on commercializing nuclear fission, the reaction that fuels all nuclear power plants. Instead of conventional reactors, the company aims to use mini nuclear reactors housed in A-frame structures. Its goal is to sell the energy to end users such as the U.S. Air Force and big tech companies.
Oklo is currently working to build its first small-scale reactor in Idaho, which could eventually power the types of data centers that OpenAI and other artificial intelligence companies need to run their AI models and services.
Altman is co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, which has been valued at over $80 billion by private investors. He’s said that he sees nuclear energy as one of the best ways to solve the problem of growing demand for AI, and the energy that powers the technology, without relying on fossil fuels. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have also invested in nuclear plants in recent years.
“I don’t see a way for us to get there without nuclear,” Altman told CNBC in 2023. “I mean, maybe we could get there just with solar and storage. But from my vantage point, I feel like this is the most likely and the best way to get there.”
In an interview with CNBC Thursday, Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte confirmed that the company has yet to generate revenue and has no nuclear plants deployed at the moment. He said the company is targeting 2027 for its first plant to come online.
Going the SPAC route is risky. So-called reverse mergers became popular in the low-interest rate days of 2020 and 2021 when tech valuations were soaring and investors were looking for growth over profit. But the SPAC market collapsed in 2022 alongside rising rates and hasn’t recovered.
AI-related companies, on the other hand, are the new darlings of Wall Street.
“SPACs haven’t exactly had the best performances in the past couple of years, so for us to have sort of the outcome that we’ve had here is obviously a function of the work we put in, but also what we’re building and also the fact that the market sees the opportunity sets here,” said DeWitte, who co-founded the company in 2013. “I think it’s very promising on multiple fronts for [the] nuclear, AI, data center push, as well as the energy transition piece.”
The company has seen its fair share of regulatory setbacks. In 2022, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied Oklo’s application for an Idaho reactor. The company has been working on a new application, which it isn’t aiming to submit to the NRC until early next year, DeWitte said, adding that it’s currently in the “pre-application engagement” stage with the commission.
Altman got involved with Oklo while president of the startup incubator Y Combinator. Oklo went into the program in 2014 after an earlier meeting between Altman and DeWitte. In 2015, Altman invested in the company and became chairman.
It’s not Altman’s only foray into nuclear energy or other infrastructure that could power large-scale AI growth.
In 2021, Altman led a $500 million funding round in clean energy firm Helion, which is working to develop and commercialize nuclear fusion. Helion said in a blog post at the time that the capital would go toward its electricity demonstration generator, Polaris, “which we expect to demonstrate net electricity from fusion in 2024.”
Altman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In recent years, Altman has also poured money into chip endeavors and investments that could help power the AI tools OpenAI builds.
Just before his brief ouster as OpenAI CEO in November, he was reportedly seeking billions of dollars for a chip venture codenamed “Tigris” to eventually compete with Nvidia.
Altman in 2018 invested in AI chip startup Rain Neuromorphics, based near OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters. The next year, OpenAI signed a letter of intent to spend $51 million on Rain’s chips. In December, the U.S. compelled a Saudi Aramco-backed venture capital firm to sell its shares in Rain.
DeWitte told CNBC that the data center represents “a pretty exciting opportunity.”
“What we’ve seen is there’s a lot of interest with AI, specifically,” he said. “AI compute needs are significant. It opens the door for a lot of different approaches in terms of how people think about designing and developing AI infrastructure.”
Tokyo — Images taken by miniature drones from deep inside a badly damaged reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant show displaced control equipment and misshapen materials but leave many questions unanswered, underscoring the daunting task of decommissioning the plant.
The 12 photos released by the plant’s operator are the first from inside the main structural support called the pedestal in the hardest-hit No. 1 reactor’s primary containment vessel, an area directly under the reactor’s core. Officials had long hoped to reach the area to examine the core and melted nuclear fuel which dripped there when the plant’s cooling systems were damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
Earlier attempts with robots were unable to reach the area. The two-day probe using tiny drones was completed last week by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO, which released the photos on Monday.
About 880 tons of highly radioactive melted nuclear fuel remain inside the three damaged reactors. TEPCO is attempting to learn more about its location and condition to facilitate its removal so the plant can be decommissioned.
This image taken by a drone and provided by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) shows a snake-shaped robot designed to assist a drone inside the No. 1 reactor, as a drone probes inside the worst-hit reactor at the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, northeast Japan, March 14, 2024.
TEPCO via AP
The high-definition color images captured by the drones show brown objects with various shapes and sizes dangling from various locations in the pedestal. Parts of the control-rod drive mechanism, which controls the nuclear chain reaction, and other equipment attached to the core were dislodged.
TEPCO officials said they were unable to tell from the images whether the dangling lumps were melted fuel or melted equipment without obtaining other data such as radiation levels. The drones did not carry dosimeters to measure radiation because they had to be lightweight and maneuverable.
The drone cameras could not see the bottom of the reactor core, in part because of the darkness of the containment vessel, officials said. Information from the probe could help future investigations of the melted debris which are key to developing technologies and robots for its removal, they said.
This image taken by a drone and provided by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) shows displaced equipment and misshapen materials inside the No. 1 reactor at the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, northeast Japan, March 14, 2024.
TEPCO via AP
But the large amount that remains unknown about the interior of the reactors suggests how difficult it will be. Critics say the 30-40 year target for the plant’s cleanup set by the government and TEPCO is overly optimistic.
The daunting decommissioning process has already been delayed for years by technical hurdles and the lack of data.
Firefighters extinguish a fire in Nanao, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, early on Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024.
Soichiro Koriyama | Bloomberg | Getty Images
At least 30 people were killed after a powerful earthquake hit Japan on New Year’s Day, with rescue teams on Tuesday struggling to reach isolated areas where buildings had been toppled, roads wrecked and power cut to tens of thousands of homes.
The quake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.6 struck in the middle of the afternoon on Monday, prompting residents in some coastal areas to flee to higher ground as tsunami waves hit Japan’s west coast, sweeping some cars and houses into the sea.
Thousands of army personnel, firefighters and police officers from across the country have been dispatched to the worst-hit area in the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa prefecture.
However, rescue efforts have been hindered by badly damaged and blocked roads and authorities say they are finding it difficult to assess the full extent of the fallout.
Many rail services, ferries and flights into the area have been suspended. Noto airport has closed due to damage to its runway, terminal and access roads, with 500 people stranded inside cars in its parking lot, according to public broadcaster NHK.
“The search and rescue of those impacted by the quake is a battle against time,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said during an emergency disaster meeting on Tuesday.
Kishida said rescuers were finding it very difficult to reach the northern tip of the Noto peninsula due to wrecked roads, and that helicopter surveys had discovered many fires and widespread damage to buildings and infrastructure.
Authorities in Ishikawa said they had confirmed 30 deaths from the earthquake so far, with half of those fatalities in hard-hit Wajima city near the quake’s epicentre.
Firefighters have been battling blazes in several cities and trying to free more people trapped in collapsed buildings, Japan’s fire and disaster management agency said.
More than 140 tremors have been detected since the quake first hit on Monday, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. The agency has warned more strong shocks could hit in the coming days.
Nobuko Sugimori, a 74-year-old resident of Nanao city in Ishikawa, told Reuters she had never experienced such a quake before.
“I tried to hold the TV set to keep it from toppling over, but I could not even keep myself from swaying violently from side to side,” Sugimori said from her home which had a large crack down its front wall and furniture scattered around the inside.
Across the street, a car was crushed under a collapsed building where residents had another close call.
Fujiko Ueno, 73, said nearly 20 people were in her house for a New Year celebration when the quake struck but miraculously all emerged uninjured.
“It all happened in the blink of an eye” she said, standing in the street among debris from the wreckage and mud that oozed out of the road’s cracked surface.
Several world leaders sent condolence messages with President Joe Biden saying in statement the United States was ready to provide any necessary help to Japan.
“Our thoughts are with the Japanese people during this difficult time,” he said.
The Japanese government ordered around 100,000 people to evacuate their homes on Monday night, sending them to sports halls and school gymnasiums, commonly used as evacuation centres in emergencies.
Many returned to their homes on Tuesday as authorities lifted tsunami warnings.
But around 33,000 households remained without power in Ishikawa prefecture early on Tuesday morning after a night where temperatures dropped below freezing, according to Hokuriku Electric Power’s 9505.T website. Most areas in the northern Noto peninsula also have no water supply, NHK reported.
The Imperial Household Agency said it would cancel Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako’s slated New Year appearance on Tuesday following the disaster. Kishida postponed his New Year visit to Ise Shrine scheduled for Thursday.
Japan’s defence minister told reporters on Tuesday that 1,000 army personnel are currently involved in rescue efforts and that 10,000 could eventually be deployed.
The quake comes at a sensitive time for Japan’s nuclear industry, which has faced fierce opposition from some locals since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that triggered nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima. Whole towns were devastated in that disaster.
Japan last week lifted an operational ban imposed on the world’s biggest nuclear plant, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, which has been offline since the 2011 tsunami.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority said no irregularities were found at nuclear plants along the Sea of Japan, including five active reactors at Kansai Electric Power’s Ohi and Takahama plants in Fukui Prefecture.
Hokuriku Electric’s Shika plant, the closest to the epicentre, has also been idled since 2011. The company said there had been some power outages and oil leaks following Monday’s jolt but no radiation leakage.
The company had previously said it hoped to restart the reactor in 2026.
Chip equipment maker Kokusai Electric said it is investigating further after finding some damage at its factory in Toyama ahead of the planned resumption of operations on Thursday.
Companies including Sharp, Komatsu and Toshiba have been checking whether their factories in the area have been damaged. damage at its factory in Toyama ahead of the planned resumption of operations on Thursday.
Cooling towers at a nuclear power plant in Slovakia. Nuclear power is likely to be discussed in great detail at the COP28 climate change summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Janos Kummer | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The role that nuclear power should play in creating a more sustainable future has long provoked strong feelings — among advocates and critics alike.
It’s set to be a hot topic at the COP28 summit in Dubai, which begins this week. There are reports that there will be a concerted effort to get behind a big increase in nuclear capacity from now to 2050.
Of particular interest to observers will be a ministerial event called “Atoms4NetZero” on Dec. 5. Co-hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the COP28 presidency, the event will “announce the IAEA Statement on Nuclear Power,” according to the COP28 website.
That, it adds, reflects the “critical role of nuclear in the net zero transition.”
Atoms4NetZero was namechecked by the World Nuclear Association in September when it announced the launch of an initiative called "Net Zero Nuclear," which aims to triple the planet's nuclear capacity by the middle of the century.
In a statement issued alongside that announcement, Rafael Mariano Grossi, the IAEA's director general, stressed the importance of the coming climate summit.
"Building on the efforts made during COP 26 and COP 27, nuclear energy will feature even more prominently at COP28," he said.
"As more nations understand the role nuclear can play in achieving energy security and decarbonisation targets, global support for nuclear energy is growing," he added.
The IAEA, for its part, will also have its own "Atoms4Climate" pavilion at COP28, where it says it will "showcase how nuclear technology and science are addressing the twin challenge of climate change mitigation and adaptation."
In a sign of how polarizing the debate around the subject can be, this month, the leader of Germany's center-right Christian Democratic Union lamented his country's move away from nuclear power after the closure of its last three plants in April 2023.
"The German government took a decision which was in our view absolutely wrong, a strategic mistake to get out of nuclear," Friedrich Merz told CNBC's Annette Weisbach.
Merz — whose party is not in the coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz — said rather than focusing only on wind and solar, "all energy sources" need to be utilized.
"The energy supply — for this country, for our industry — is decisive for our competitiveness," he went on to state.
High-profile figures in the German government do not share Merz's viewpoint.
"The phase-out of nuclear power makes our country safer; ultimately, the risks of nuclear power are uncontrollable," Steffi Lemke, Germany's federal minister for the environment and nuclear safety, said in April.
"We now face decades full of challenges before we can safely and responsibly dispose of our nuclear legacy," she later added.
"But switching off the final three nuclear power plants will usher in a new era in energy production."
This kind of analysis — that nuclear is not the answer — is shared by environmental organizations like Greenpeace.
"Nuclear power is touted as a solution to our energy problems, but in reality it's complex and hugely expensive to build," its website says. "It also creates huge amounts of hazardous waste."
"Renewable energy is cheaper and can be installed quickly," it added. "Together with battery storage, it can generate the power we need and slash our emissions."
While Germany — Europe's largest economy — has moved away from nuclear, other countries are looking to expand their capacity.
France, a major player in nuclear power, is also planning to increase its number of reactors.
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Energy markets are still affected by the shocks from Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and discussions about nuclear power are not going away anytime soon.
"Amid today's global energy crisis, reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels has become the top energy security priority," noted the International Energy Agency, viewed by many as a leading authority on the energy transition.
"No less important is the climate crisis: reaching net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by mid-century requires a rapid and complete decarbonisation of electricity generation and heat production," it added.
"Nuclear energy, with around 413 gigawatts (GW) of capacity operating in 32 countries, contributes to both goals by avoiding 1.5 gigatonnes (Gt) of global emissions and 180 billion cubic metres (bcm) of global gas demand a year."
Kemmerer is remote even by Wyoming standards — a 50-mile detour off Interstate 80.
Its elevation is actually higher than its population and it attracts tourists who stop in to hunt for local fossils. But the best jobs come from different kinds of fossils — fossil fuels. A coal mine and natural gas wells power three electricity plants and employ upwards of 450 people. But as fossil fuel use dies out across the U.S., Kemmerer sees good times ahead and could become one of the world’s most famous towns, thanks to one of the world’s wealthiest men.
Bill Gates and his 10-year-old energy company TerraPower are planning their first cutting-edge nuclear power plant in Kemmerer.
“I’m curious why you chose Wyoming because Wyoming is in fact the largest coal-producing state. So you kind of walked into the lion’s den on this one,” correspondent Barry Petersen said.
“Wyoming has a lot of transmission because of the coal plants. And, you know, they’re, they’re willing to let things go at, at full speed. There’s somewhat of a pro-business atmosphere,” Gates said.
Kemmerer Mayor Bill Thek says his town is no stranger to American entrepreneurs. JCPenny opened its first store in Kemmerer in 1902 before going nationwide.
“This is James Cash Penney,” Thek told Petersen.
“JC Penney?”
“Yeah, JC Penney. He created JCPenney Corporation right from here,” Thek said.
Now, Kemmerer has a 21st-century business hero.
“Wyoming is a fairly conservative state. Bill Gates is not a name where I think people would have a lot of praise for in Wyoming ’cause of his stance on phasing out coal and things of that sort. But now he’s kinda your local hero,” Petersen said.
“There are people who absolutely abhor him. But, you know, this is what it is. He decided to put money into this. The nuclear, as far as I’m concerned, goes along with his green energy moving forward. And we’re not, I’m not opposed to that, and I don’t think most of the citizens are opposed to something like that,” Thek said.
Solar and wind only work when the weather is right, but nuclear works 24 hours a day without spewing out climate-changing greenhouse gasses. It could be in operation by 2029, using a next-generation technology called natrium, which is the Latin name for sodium. Sodium-cooled reactors are three times more efficient than traditional water-cooled reactors, which means significantly less nuclear waste.
“And so the amount that you’re making, you know, per decade is less than the size of a big room. And so the technology for waste disposal we’ve had that advance. So that shouldn’t be a limiting factor anymore,” Gates said.
The promise of a new plant has bulldozers at work as out-of-town developers like David Jackson think they’re building into a boom. The first of 2,500 workers who will construct the plant are already doing site surveys. There will be 300 workers running the plant once it comes online.
“There’s a lot of big companies coming here. There’s a need for the housing. So we jumped right into the market and was kind of first come. That’s who’s gonna win the game,” Jackson said.
Today’s plant workers may also win by getting new jobs, says Roger Holt, a manager at the coal plant, and Mark Thatcher, a retired coal miner.
“You know, this is a new design nuclear reactor but it’s still is going to end up generating steam, turning a steam turbine,” Holt said. “You’re gonna have a lot of the same equipment that we use right now to generate power. So, a lot of what we do will be transferable.”
“Does this mean Kemmerer’s going to have jobs for 50 years?” Petersen asked.
“Yeah, the thing is, if you got 300 primary jobs, it allows gas stations, grocery stores, motels, everything else to be, ya know?” Thatcher said.
“Isn’t jobs the real answer here, that what you’re bringing to this community is a chance to continue going on after their legacy of coal is over?” Petersen asked Gates.
“Exactly. You know, when that coal plant is shutting down, the ability of this community to keep young people and still be vibrant is under threat,” Gates said.
Small towns survive when young people like these middle schoolers find hometown jobs and when parents can make a living to support a family. Now, Kemmerer can do that, says Thek.
“You have to move forward, or yeah, you stagnate and you die. And to me, that’s not an option,” Thek said.
Thousands have been displaced because of flooding caused by the destruction of a dam in Ukraine. Both Russian and Ukrainian officials are blaming the other side. Debora Patta has more.
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Russia and Ukraine are each blaming each other for destroying a Soviet-era dam. The dam’s destruction has caused severe flooding and could endanger a nuclear power plant. Debora Patta has the latest.
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Xcel Energy will start to power down its nuclear plant in Monticello, Minnesota, several weeks earlier than planned after more radioactive water leaked out of the facility, CBS Minnesota reports.
The company says it will shut down the facility starting Friday so crews can begin to make permanent repairs after 400,000 gallons of radioactive water leaked out beneath the facility late last year.
On Wednesday, the plant’s monitoring equipment detected that more radioactive water, hundreds of gallons, had leaked out since crews made temporary repairs, and said “a small amount from the original leak had reached the groundwater.” Officials say the contaminated water, containing the radioactive isotope tritium, hasn’t yet reached the Mississippi River, which runs next to the plant.
Xcel reported the initial leak to state officials in November of 2022, but the public wasn’t informed until last week.
Xcel Energy’s Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant
CBS Minnesota
State officials and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission defended the choice to delay public notification for months, with NRC officials saying it wasn’t warranted due to its small scale.
“If we look at the dose impact of something like this, it would be a fraction of a milligram. I’m talking 0.00-something milligrams. The average person will get 300 milligrams in a year just from the sun, the ground, everything,” Myers said.
Xcel says, “Tritium is a compound that is naturally present in the environment and is commonly created in the operation of nuclear power plants. It emits low levels of radiation, similar to everyday materials people use and the food we all eat.”
Xcel says powering down the plant will make it easier for crews to “permanently resolve” the leak, which occurred in a water pipe between two buildings at the plant about 42 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
“To date, Xcel Energy has recovered about 32% of the tritium released and will continue recovery over the course of the next year. The schedule for resuming operation at the plant is still to be determined,” the company said Thursday.
The company insists the leak poses no risk to neighbors or the environment, and the shutdown isn’t expected to impact electric service.
Xcel will hold two open hours at the Monticello Community Center to answer questions, on Friday and Monday.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency released this statement on the shutdown Thursday night:
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and Minnesota Department of Health are encouraged that Xcel Energy is taking immediate action to address the recurring issue of water containing tritium leaking from the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant.
State agencies were made aware this afternoon of an additional water leak at the Monticello facility following previous news about the leak of 400,000 gallons of water containing tritium. In the State Duty Office report filed today, Xcel Energy states that the new leak, located near the spot of the previously reported release, is still ongoing.
State agencies have no evidence at this point to indicate a current or imminent risk to the public and will continue to monitor groundwater samples. Should an imminent risk arise, we will inform the public promptly.
We encourage the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which has regulatory oversight of the plant’s operations, to share ongoing public communications on the leak and on mitigation efforts to help residents best understand the situation.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Minnesota Department of Health will continue to review Xcel’s response to the groundwater contamination and oversee the recovery, storage, and disposal of the impacted groundwater. We will also continue to coordinate with city, county, and other local officials to make sure the public is kept informed of developments.”
Minnesota regulators said Thursday they’re monitoring the cleanup of a leak of 400,000 gallons of radioactive water from Xcel Energy’s Monticello nuclear power plant, and the company said there’s no danger to the public. The leak was first detected in November of last year.
“Xcel Energy took swift action to contain the leak to the plant site, which poses no health and safety risk to the local community or the environment,” the Minneapolis-based utility said in a statement.
While Xcel reported the leak of water containing tritium to state and federal authorities in late November, the spill had not been made public before Thursday.
“If at any point there had been concern for the public safety, we would of course, immediately have provided more information,” Chris Clark, president of Xcel Energy-Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, told CBS Minnesota on Thursday. “But we also wanted to make sure we fully understood what was going on before we started raising any concerns with the public around us.”
State officials said they waited to get more information before going public with it.
“We knew there was a presence of tritium in one monitoring well, however Xcel had not yet identified the source of the leak and its location,” Minnesota Pollution Control Agency spokesman Michael Rafferty said.
“Now that we have all the information about where the leak occurred, how much was released into groundwater, and that contaminated groundwater had moved beyond the original location, we are sharing this information,” he said, adding the water remains contained on Xcel’s property and poses no immediate public health risk.
The Minnesota Department of Health also stated on its website that the leak did not reach the Mississippi River.
“The groundwater beneath the facility, it’s been determined that it moves in the direction of the Mississippi River, slowly, but that’s the direction that it flows, or moves, underground,” Doug Wetzstein an industrial division director with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, told CBS Minnesota.
Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that occurs naturally in the environment and is a common by-product of nuclear plant operations. It emits a weak form of beta radiation that does not travel very far and cannot penetrate human skin, according to the NRC. A person who drank water from a spill would get only a low dose, the NRC says.
The NRC says tritium spills happen from time to time at nuclear plants, but that it has repeatedly determined that they’ve either remained limited to the plant property or involved such low offsite levels that they didn’t affect public health or safety. Xcel reported a small tritium leak at Monticello in 2009.
Xcel said it has recovered about 25% of the spilled tritium so far, that recovery efforts will continue and that it will install a permanent solution this spring.
The company said it notified the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the state on Nov. 22, the day after it confirmed the leak, which came from a pipe between two buildings. Since then, it has been pumping groundwater, storing and processing the contaminated water, which contains tritium levels below federal thresholds.
“Ongoing monitoring from over two dozen on-site monitoring wells confirms that the leaked water is fully contained on-site and has not been detected beyond the facility or in any local drinking water,” the Xcel Energy statement said.
When asked why Xcel Energy didn’t notify the public earlier, the company said: “We understand the importance of quickly informing the communities we serve if a situation poses an immediate threat to health and safety. In this case, there was no such threat.” The company said it focused on investigating the situation, containing the affected water and figuring out next steps.
The Monticello plant is about 35 miles northwest of Minneapolis, upstream from the city on the Mississippi River.
Xcel Energy is considering building above-ground storage tanks to store the contaminated water it recovers, and is considering options for the treatment, reuse, or final disposal of the collected tritium and water. State regulators will review the options the company selects, the MPCA said.
Japan is preparing to release a massive amount of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea from the the triple reactor meltdowns 12 years ago at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The water contains tritium and other radioactive contaminants.
Dnipro, Ukraine — Russia hit Ukraine on Thursday with its most punishing attacks in nearly a month. A barrage of missiles and explosive drones rained down in a blistering assault that struck cities from the capital Kyiv to the vital southern port of Odesa, and all the way to the far-western city of Lviv.
At least nine people were killed, according to Ukrainian officials, and millions more were plunged into the cold and dark as the attacks hit power infrastructure — including cutting the vital electricity supply yet again to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest atomic energy facility.
A view of Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant as the war between Russia and Ukraine continues, from Nikopol, Ukraine, March 3, 2023.
Mustafa Ciftci/Anadolu Agency/Getty
Ukraine’s nuclear power operator Energoatom said the “last power line between the occupied Zaporizhzhia NPP [Nuclear Power Plant] and the Ukrainian power system was cut off as a result of rocket attacks.” The company said it was the sixth time the sprawling facility had been cut off from the nation’s electricity grid since Russian troops captured it last year. Russia accused Ukrainian forces of causing the outage, as it has in all previous instances.
Whenever the electricity supply is cut, the plant relies on old diesel generators to keep its vital cooling systems running, but they can only do the job for about 10 days.
“The countdown has begun. If it is impossible to renew the external power supply of the station during this time, an accident with radiation consequences for the whole world may occur,” Energoatom warned Thursday.
Rafael Grossi, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, issued a fresh appeal Thursday for a demilitarized safe-zone around the Russian-held plant, saying he was “astonished” by the fact that such a sensitive facility was still being put at risk by the war.
“Each time we are rolling a dice. And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out,” Grossi told the agency’s Board of Governors in Austria, according to a statement. “This is the sixth time — let me say it again — sixth time, that ZNPP has lost all off-site power and has had to operate in this emergency mode. Let me remind you, this is the largest nuclear power station in Europe. What are we doing? How can we sit here in this room this morning and allow this to happen? This cannot go on. I am astonished by the complacency.”
In January the IAEA announced plans to establish a “continuous presence” at all Ukrainian nuclear power plants “to help prevent a nuclear accident,” but the continued fighting around Zaporizhzhia has made it impossible at that facility.
Police inspect damage from a Russian missile attack in a residential district of Kyiv, Ukraine, March 9, 2023.
In the shell-shocked central city of Dnipro, residents’ fears were more immediate after the overnight missile attacks, and some struggled to comprehend why their city was a target for Vladimir Putin’s assault.
“It doesn’t make sense to me how this can be in the 21st century,” said 60-year-old Igor Yezhov, calling the Russian attackers “wild people — just savages.”
All winter the Kremlin has ruthlessly targeted Ukraine’s power and civilian infrastructure with missiles and drones, but it is the eastern mining city of Bakhmut where the ground war remains the most intense.
Moscow has thrown wave after wave of fighters, many of them from the Wagner Group, at the battle for Bakhmut, desperate to claim the entire town in what would be its first major territorial gain in over half a year.
In the battered town of Chasiv Yar, just a few miles west of Bakhmut in Ukrainian-held territory, CBS News met Baida, a soldier who had just returned from the front line. At 55, he said he’d never expected to become a soldier before Russia invaded his country, and he admitted the battle was “really hard.”
He spoke to us in front of the armored vehicle he’d driven in the battle, which he credited with saving the lives of himself and his fellow soldiers on multiple occasions.
“This vehicle is very strong, it survives anti-tank mines, keeps the personnel safe, survives rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank guided missiles,” he said. “I can show the examples of when we came under shelling in it and it stood strong, sustaining 120[mm] mortars. It maneuvers well, performs well in mud and forests, it’s stable.”
Ukrainian soldier “Baida” shows the armored personnel carrier that he credits with saving his life on multiple occasions as he took part in the battle for Bakhmut, as he speaks with CBS News in the nearby town of Chasiv Yar, Ukraine, in early March 2023.
Agnes Reau/CBS News
But Baida, a callsign, knows nothing can protect him or his fellow soldiers every time.
“Yesterday one of our men died, a driver of the same vehicle,” he said. “That’s how it is. We are hoping for everything to be okay… There are losses, but we can’t win without that.”
Those losses were felt acutely at the funeral of 29-year-old medic Yama Rikhlitska, who was killed as she treated injured soldiers in a field hospital just outside Bakhmut.
“Oh Yana,” her mother cried in anguish as she said her final goodbye, “my baby, my little one.”
As Ukrainians continue to pay the ultimate price in this war now in its second year, there’s a grim acceptance that the brutal conflict is showing no signs of easing, let alone ending.
Tehran — Iran has begun producing uranium enriched to 60 percent at its Fordo plant, official media reported Tuesday about the underground facility that reopened three years ago amid the breakdown of its nuclear deal with major powers. The move was part of Iran‘s response to the United Nations nuclear watchdog’s adoption last week of a censure motion drafted by Western governments accusing it of non-cooperation.
“Iran has started producing uranium enriched to 60 percent at the Fordo plant for the first time,” Iran’s ISNA news agency reported.
While 60 percent enriched uranium still isn’t technically weapons-grade (weapons require uranium enriched to 90 percent or higher), having a significant stockpile of it could reduce the time Iran would need to make a bomb.
Iran has always denied any ambition to develop a nuclear weapon, insisting its nuclear activities are for civilian purposes only, but the U.S. and its allies — most notably Israel and major European powers — don’t trust Tehran.
Under the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, Iran agreed to mothball the Fordo plant and limit its enrichment of uranium at other facilities to 3.67 percent, which is sufficient for most civilian uses, as part of a package of restrictions on its nuclear activities aimed at preventing it covertly developing a nuclear weapon. In return, major powers including the U.S. agreed to relax sanctions they had imposed over Iran’s nuclear program.
But the deal began falling apart in 2018 when then U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the agreement and reimposed crippling economic sanctions on Iran unilaterally.
The following year, Iran began stepping away from its commitments under the deal. It reopened the Fordo plant and starting enriching uranium to higher levels.
A file photo released by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran on November 6, 2019 shows a forklift carrying a cylinder containing uranium hexafluoride gas set to be injected for enrichment into centrifuges in Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility near the city of Qom, Iran.
France, Germany and the U.K., which were all party to the now-defunct 2015 nuclear agreement, expressed “grave concern” last year over Iran’s upgrade to 60 percent and said the Islamic Republic had “no credible civilian need for enrichment at this level.”
President Joe Biden has expressed a desire for Washington to return to a revived version of the agreement and on-off talks have been underway since April last year, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken said late last month that he saw little scope to restore the deal, as Iran battles nationwide protests sparked by the September death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman.
Commenting Tuesday on the Iranian announcement, U.S. special envoy for Iran Robert Malley said Washington had seen Tehran’s response to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) censure motion coming.
“Unfortunately, the Iranian response was not unexpected,” Malley told the Al Jazeera television network, adding that the U.S. would closely monitor the next steps taken by Iran.
Asked about negotiations to revive the nuclear deal, Malley said Tehran’s crackdown on anti-government protests, and the Islamic Republic’s admitted sale of drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine, had turned the Washington’s focus away from the discussions.
Implementation of the 2015 deal was overseen by the IAEA, but the U.N. watchdog’s relations with Iran have declined sharply in recent months. The IAEA board of governors passed a resolution on Thursday criticizing Iran for its lack of cooperation.
Iran announced late Sunday that it had begun taking retaliatory measures but did not specify what they were.
“In response to the recent action of three European countries and the United States in the adoption of a resolution against Iran, some initial measures have been decided by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran,” foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said.
The ISNA news agency said the upgraded enrichment at Fordo was one part of Iran’s response.
Nov. 1, 2019 satellite image provided by provided by Maxar Technologies shows the Fordo nuclear facility, just north of the holy city of Qom in Iran
Maxar Technologies via AP
“As well, in a second action in response to the resolution, Iran injected (uranium hexafluoride) gas into two IR-2m and IR-4 cascades at the Natanz plant,” it said, referring to an older enrichment facility where uranium was already being enriched to 60 percent.
The U.N. watchdog has been pressing Iran to explain the discovery of traces of nuclear material at three sites it had not declared, a key sticking point that led to the adoption of an earlier censure motion by the IAEA in June.
In a report seen by AFP earlier this month, the IAEA said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium stood at 3,673.7 kilograms as of October 22, a decrease of 267.2 kilograms from the last quarterly report. But that included significant stockpiles of uranium enriched to higher levels — 386.4 kilograms to 20 percent and 62.3 kilograms to 60 percent.
The IAEA complains that the ability of its inspectors to monitor Iran’s stepped-up nuclear activities has been hampered by restrictions imposed by Iran.
Sixty years ago to the day, November 20th, the world sighed in relief as the Cuban Missile Crisis ended. It was the closest we ever came to nuclear armageddon – until now, with Russia threatening to use nuclear weapons in the war. And then, there’s the dire and deteriorating condition of Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia, in Russian-occupied Ukraine.
The situation is carefully monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog tasked with making sure nuclear facilities are safe and atomic material is used only for peaceful purposes.
Its director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, recently inspected the site, which may be the most dangerous place in the world.
Lesley Stahl: So correct me if I’m wrong: Is this the first time a major power plant has been under fire in the middle of a war.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Well, it’s an unprecedented thing, really, in so many ways. This place is at the front line which makes the whole thing so volatile and in need of an urgent action.
Zaporizhzhia has been shelled repeatedly since March, with both sides blaming each other. Before the war the plant supplied 20% of Ukraine’s power. It’s now largely idle, but the reactors still need to be constantly cooled down with circulating water. If they overheat it could lead to nuclear catastrophe within hours.
Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
Getty Images
Lesley Stahl: The whole system is being cooled by electricity that’s coming in from the town, and there’s shelling. So what would happen if that electricity went down?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: What you have in that– in that situation is emergency systems that kick in. Like, diesel generators that you can have on a private property. And you don’t want the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe, one of the biggest in the world, to be cooled with– basically an emergency system which is dependent on fuel. Because when your diesels are out of whatever you put in it to make them work then what happens? Then you have a meltdown. Then you have a big radiological nuclear emergency or an accident, and this is what we are trying to prevent.
Lesley Stahl: So this situation is totally precarious.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Totally. Until we have this plant protected, the possibility of the nuclear catastrophe is there.
Possibly dwarfing Chernobyl, a far smaller Ukrainian plant that famously blew up 36 years ago. In late August, after months of negotiating with both sides, Director General Grossi led his agency’s first mission into an active warzone, to inspect the stability of the site.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: And as we were approaching the last Ukrainian checkpoint, we started hearing– shooting– quite heavy shooting. Very close to us. So at that point– even the people at the checkpoint were running for shelter.
Lesley Stahl: Do you think that the convoy itself was a target?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: I think it was an– a clear attempt to stop us, to say, “Go home. This is not your place.”
Rafael Mariano Grossi
But they proceeded. There were soldiers, tanks and armored trucks everywhere. The Russians are actually using the nuclear plant as their military base.
Lesley Stahl: When you went to visit, to inspect, you could go anywhere?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Yes.
Lesley Stahl: You weren’t kept from–
Rafael Mariano Grossi: You know– yes, you know– we are the IAEA. We are known as the nuclear watchdog.
Lesley Stahl: Well, there are reports that you weren’t allowed into some crisis room there– into the control room. Is that not true?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Well, there were areas that– where we were limited. But all the things we needed to see we could see.
Lesley Stahl: You didn’t want to see the control room?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Yeah, we did want to see it. But for us, what is important is to be looking at the essential nuclear operation of the plant. And this we could see.
That included evidence that rockets had come dangerously close to the reactors and other sensitive areas.
Rafael Mariano Grossi inspects a hole on the roof of a building at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant where nuclear fuel is stored.
Fredrik Dahl/IAEA
Rafael Mariano Grossi: I was on the– on the top of a building where they are… they are storing fresh fuel, the fuel that is going to go– into the– into the reactors. And–
Lesley Stahl: Nuclear fuel is what we’re–
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Nuclear fuel–
Lesley Stahl: –talking about–
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Nuclear fuel. And I– I could see very big holes out on– on that roof–
Lesley Stahl: On the roof?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Yeah. At least two I saw, very, very big.
On a satellite photo he also pointed out the switchyard where the electricity comes in from the town.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: So this is where the external power comes to cool the reactors down. And this place was shelled several times, several times, which tells you that people knew exactly what they were doing.
Lesley Stahl: They were trying to cut off the power source.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Here, here, here… exactly.
Shelling also destroyed one of the plant’s office buildings. These pictures were given to us by Andriy Tuz, a plant spokesman who fled Ukraine after working four months under Russian occupation.
Lesley Stahl: So tell us what that was like, working inside that plant, under Russian occupation from th–
Andriy Tuz: Yes. (SIGH) Russian troops take all our top manager with gun and they do only what Russian troops want.
Lesley Stahl: Did you feel like a hostage?
Andriy Tuz: Yes. Yes. I feel like I am prisoner in this nuclear power plant. I cannot say nothing because they go with gun.
There have been reports of imprisonments, kidnappings, and torture of Ukrainian employees. The head of the plant was detained. Andriy Tuz told us about the pressure one of the safety inspectors felt.
Andriy Tuz: It’s his work to go and check some pumps, how it work, how barometer, what pressure, what temperature. But he go and Russian tanks stay in front of him. It’s terrible. He cannot do his work. It’s to protect nuclear fuel, to control nuclear reaction.
Andriy Tuz
Lesley Stahl: When you’re operating at a nuclear power plant and you’re under stress, and you’re worried, and you’re feeling threatened, doesn’t that lead to the possibility of human error?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Of course. Yes.
Lesley Stahl: And the shelling goes on.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: And the shelling goes on. And this is why– we have been trying. I have been pushing– for the establishment of a protection zone. Which is basically don’t attack the plant.
He took his proposal to both President Zelensky in Kyiv and President Putin, in a one-on-one meeting last month in St. Petersburg.
Lesley Stahl: Interestingly, you sat very close to him, actually I think closer than you and I are right now.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Maybe, yes.
Lesley Stahl: Would you say that he is familiar with what’s going on-
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Absolutely–
Lesley Stahl: –at this nuclear plant?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: He knows every detail of it, which was surprising to me.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: In my conversation with him, I could see that he had a very– detailed knowledge, not only of the layout of the– of the plant, but also, and very importantly, of the electrical– access, the external power source. So– and he–
Lesley Stahl: Where these things are being bombed?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: It is– it is a facility that he knows– that he knows very well.
Lesley Stahl: Is Mr. Putin trying to use this plant as a weapon? And we know that he’s weaponized energy in this war because of the way he’s used oil and gas. It just raises the question whether this plant is seen in his mind as a way to squeeze the Ukrainians. Someone said to us the other day, “You know, this is his dirty bomb, this plant.”
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Yeah, but if you protect it there’s no dirty bomb.
Grossi meeting with Vladimir Putin
Getty Images
On Monday, the day we met Grossi, Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met in Bali and condemned Putin’s threat to use a nuclear weapon. And in Turkey, CIA Director William Burns warned his Russian counterpart of the consequences of such a move.
Lesley Stahl: Here we are talking about the possibility of a dirty bomb or a real bomb– I mean, this kind of idea of nuclear Armageddon because countries are now throwing the idea of using a nuclear weapon.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Yes.
Lesley Stahl: They’re just throwing it up in the air.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: When you talk about using nuclear weapons as “You could this mortar or that Howitzer or that…” I mean this is a completely different ball game.
Lesley Stahl: So heads of state should not be throwing this around.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: They should not be doing that.
Rafael Grossi, at 61, has been working to prevent the proliferation of nukes for almost 4 decades. He’s seen here with his fellow argentinian, pope francis, and his children, 7 daughters and one son. We watched him coaching his son’s soccer team on a rare day off. He’s been particularly busy, given the number of rogue states suspected of developing a bomb.
Lesley Stahl: How close is Iran to making a nuclear bomb?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: At the current level of production of this enriched uranium, Iran has accumulated already enough material to have more than one device, if they chose to do that. But we don’t have any information that would indicate that Iran has a nuclear weapon program at the moment.
Lesley Stahl: Really?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Really.
Lesley Stahl: So if I said to you, “Have we reached the point of no return with Iran? Is it time to just admit they’re a nuclear power?”
Rafael Mariano Grossi: No, we haven’t reached that point. But we need to work very hard so we don’t get there.
Director General Grossi is concerned about another country that hasbecome a member of the nuclear club, North Korea, which is expected to conduct its first underground nuclear test since 2017. And that’s not the only issue on his plate in the Pacific.
Lesley Stahl: The Chinese are protesting the sale of eight nuclear submarines by the United States and Great Britain to Australia. The subs contain nuclear war material.
Lesley Stahl: Do you protest the sale?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: If they want to do this, they have to have a special arrangement with us.
Lesley Stahl: And does Australia have a special arrangement with you?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: We have started working on that, which means that we should be able to come to an agreement that would allow us to inspect this nuclear material in an appropriate way so that it is not diverted, used to make bombs.
Lesley Stahl: Do you think this agreement, if it should come to pass, would satisfy the Chinese? Have you talked to China?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Well, China has a very firm position against this. They have been very critical of it. They have even been very critical of me.
Lesley Stahl: There’s this issue of a double standard. You know, if the sale was to Libya, the West would be screaming. And that it’s Australia, well, you know, they get a pass. Double standard question.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: Well, they may get their pass. They will not get mine until I have a satisfactory agreement.
Lesley Stahl: I want to go back to the nuclear power plant for one second, to Zaporizhzhia. When I realized that a nuclear power plant was under attack, my mind can’t even— calibrate what this means.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: It’s mind boggling, yeah, exactly. A demand for protection of the plant is very important. You don’t shell a nuclear power plant. You don’t storm a nuclear power plant.
Lesley Stahl: What about using a nuclear power plant as a military base?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: This is part of the agreement I have proposed.
Lesley Stahl: Yeah. But no one’s agreeing.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: They will.
Lesley Stahl: You think?
Rafael Mariano Grossi: I think.
Lesley Stahl: Are you — you’re always optimistic. This is you.
Rafael Mariano Grossi: I must– I must. Should I throw the towel? If I do that, can you imagine that? No.
Produced by Shachar Bar-On. Associate producer, Jinsol Jung. Broadcast associate, Wren Woodson. Edited by Peter M. Berman.
Russia launched new attacks around Ukraine‘s capital and other regions overnight, including sending Iranian-made kamikaze drones packed with explosives hurtling into towns around Kyiv. The drone attack set off air raid sirens and sent people running for shelters yet again in the capital, in a fourth day of reprisals by Moscow for a bombing that damaged a bridge providing the only land link between Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
Vladimir Putin’s escalating war on Ukraine is now led by a hard-line commander whose reputation for brutality earned him the nickname “General Armageddon.” For days it has been clear that the strategy is to increase the aerial assault not only on the front lines, where Russia has lost ground in recent weeks, but across Ukraine.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the kamikaze drones had killed or wounded anyone, but Ukrainian officials said Thursday that 13 people were killed and almost 40 others wounded over the preceding 24 hours of Russian missile strikes all around Ukraine.
A man reacts near the body of his cousin, killed in a Russian missile attack in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, October 13, 2022.
LIBKOS/AP
The southern city of Mykolaiv was struck again early Thursday, with Russian missiles destroying a five-story apartment building. The regional governor, Vitaliy Kim, said an 11-year-old boy was rescued from the debris six hours after the strike, but seven others remained missing.
Kim said Russia hit the building with an S-300 missile — a weapon designed, and usually used to bring down enemy aircraft. Russia has seemingly turned to the S-300s more often to carry out indiscriminate attacks on Ukrainian cities, amid intelligence reports that Putin’s army is running low on weaponry, and on morale.
Director GCHQ Sir Jeremy Fleming in the @RUSI_org Annual Security Lecture addressed the war in Ukraine, saying how Putin has misjudged the situation, with his plan being met by the courageous reality of Ukrainian defence.
“We know, and Russian commanders on the ground know, that their supplies and munitions are running out,” Sir Jeremy Fleming, head of Britain’s cyber intelligence agency GCHQ said in a speech on Tuesday.
The city of Zaporizhzhia — in Ukrainian-held territory but not far from the sprawling, Russian-occupied nuclear power plant that has been the focus of rising concern over a possible nuclear accident — was also hit again on Thursday.
The city, about 20 miles from the nuclear plant, has been the target of relentless Russian bombardment. Some of the missiles have slammed down in residential areas, and CBS News saw rescuers pulling one victim from beneath the rubble of an apartment building.
Rescuers stand over a dead body during recovery efforts after a missile attack by Russia, in Zaporizhzhia, southeast Ukraine, October 11, 2022.
Albert Koshelev/Ukrinform/Future Publishing/Getty
Over the past two weeks, more than 70 civilians have been killed by Russia’s aerial assault in Zaporizhzhia alone, according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukraine’s military claims it has managed to shoot down dozens of the missiles and Iranian-made “Shahed-136” drones Russia has fired over the past week, but with so many still getting through to wreak havoc on the country’s infrastructure and beleaguered civilians, it is desperate for more help.
To stop the aerial assault, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy begged this week for the U.S. and other partners to send Ukraine more, and more advanced, missile defense systems. He was assured that help is on the way.
