The United States is speeding up efforts to license and build a new generation of nuclear reactors to supply carbon-free electricity.
Faster development is one thing Congress and the administration agree on. President Joe Biden signed legislation in July to modernize the licensing of new reactor technologies so they can be built faster. Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate environment and House energy committees praised the enactment.
The U.S. is pursuing small modular reactors and advanced reactors. Some designs use something other than water for cooling, such as liquid metal, helium or liquid salt. Developers say the advanced coolants allow the reactors to run at low pressure, making them safer than traditional designs.
Russia and China are the only countries that are already operating advanced reactors.
The United States is trying to boost the new technology; the Energy Department announced $900 million in funding in June. Bill Gates' company, TerraPower, is the first in the U.S. to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a construction permit for an advanced reactor that would operate as a commercial nuclear power plant.
Readers had questions for The Associated Press about evolving nuclear. They wonder how the next generation of reactors can be a climate solution, where the radioactive waste would go, and above all, whether these new reactor designs are safe.
The AP turned to White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi and experts at the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission to help answer those questions.
Q: Elizabeth M. from Bisbee, Arizona said advanced nuclear seems like a compromise that, despite drawbacks, is the most practical and clean solution for America’s big energy appetite. We asked Zaidi for his take on how these new reactors can be a climate solution.
Zaidi said the world has to feed future energy needs “in a way that doesn't add to the problem of climate change.” Nuclear energy is one tool that can do that, he said.
“As we are finding ourselves in the middle of the climate crisis in the decisive decade for climate action, it’s incumbent on us to pull every tool off of the sidelines and help harness these technologies in the race for the future,” Zaidi said.
Nuclear power plants don't emit the planet-warming greenhouse gases that come from power plants that burn fossil fuels.
Q: At least one reader wondered about the timeline for these reactors to come online, lamenting how long it takes for older plants to get running.
Zaidi said the U.S. is working hard to make it happen “in this decade.” And he said the goal is “a massive ramp-up and scale-up of this technology” over the next 10 to 15 years.
The project furthest along, from Gates' TerraPower, applied for its construction permit in March. The company has said it wants to start operating commercially in Wyoming in 2030. The NRC has a 27-month goal for its technical review. If NRC approves the project along that timeline, TerraPower could be spinning up electricity in the early 2030s if it takes about three years to gets its plant built and obtain an operating license. But that's not certain. Other first-of-their-kind nuclear projects frequently faced delays and cost overruns.
Q: Lots of readers — including Jim M. from Manheim, Pennsylvania — wanted to know what would happen to the radioactive waste from new reactors. The question stems from the United States' decades-long inability to find a place to store spent fuel from current and former nuclear plants nationwide. Right now, spent fuel is being stored at more than 70 sites in more than 30 states — enclosed in steel-lined concrete pools of water or in steel containers known as dry storage casks.
Acting Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Michael Goff said spent fuel from the new reactors will be stored at the same sites where it’s used — the same situation the U.S. has today — until some federal storage facility is operational.
Goff said spent fuel from any new plants must be “stored, transported and disposed of” to meet the same NRC requirements that govern waste from current plants. That basically means keeping it cooled and secured.
The shape and composition of the fuel from some of the new reactors will be different, meaning it may require some technical changes to the way the fuel is packaged and contained, the Department of Energy said.
Goff noted that nuclear fuel can be recycled to make new fuel and byproducts, saying that “more than 90%” of its potential energy remains even after the fuel has been used in a reactor for five years. The U.S. doesn't currently recycle any of its spent nuclear fuel, but Goff said other countries, including France, do. And he said some advanced U.S. reactor designs might “consume or run on spent nuclear fuel” someday.
The French nuclear industry reprocesses spent fuel to recover uranium and plutonium for reuse, which reduces the volume of waste. Some radioactive materials, or byproducts, have commercial, medical and academic uses. The United States has studied the prospect of commercial reprocessing of spent fuel, but expected little interest from applicants for reprocessing facilities and currently does not encourage it.
Q: Anne L. from East Bay, California wants to know if these reactors have the same problems and dangers as large plants. She wasn't the only reader to wonder about such risks as overloads or meltdowns.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Scott Burnell said all U.S. nuclear plants have to meet NRC safety requirements, showing how they operate safely under ordinary conditions.
“They must also show they can safely shut down, and then keep their fuel properly cooled, under normal conditions and in case of severe weather, earthquakes, problems with plant systems and other extreme events. Current reactors use pumps and backup power systems to stay safe; new designs can rely on natural processes such as gravity and convection to remain safe,” he said.
Burnell said the latest designs are proposing nuclear fuels and cooling capabilities that reduce the already small possibility of fuel overheating or melting. The NRC will require even those designs to account for extreme events and keep their fuel cooled and safe, he said.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
FILE - Taillights trace the path of a motor vehicle at the Naughton Power Plant, Jan. 13, 2022, in Kemmerer, Wyo., next to a site where Bill Gates and his energy company are starting construction on a next-generation nuclear plant. (AP Photo/Natalie Behring, File)
FILE - Taillights trace the path of a vehicle at the Naughton Power Plant, Jan. 13, 2022, in Kemmerer, Wyo. (AP Photo/Natalie Behring, File)
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — The pagers used by Hezbollah that exploded in an apparent Israeli attack were made by a company based in Hungary, another firm said Wednesday as details of the mysterious operation began to emerge. The attack heightened the simmering conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that risks escalating into all-out war.
Pagers used by the militant group exploded nearly simultaneously a day earlier in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 12 people, including two children, and wounding around 2,800. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel.
An American official said Israel briefed the United States after the attack, in which small amounts of explosive hidden in pagers were detonated. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly.
The sophisticated attack renewed fears that the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza could spill into a wider regional conflict. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday the U.S. is still assessing how the attack could affect efforts to negotiate a Gaza cease-fire.
Hezbollah and Israeli forces have exchanged fire almost daily since Oct. 8, the day after a deadly Hamas-led assault in southern Israel triggered the war. Since then, hundreds have been killed in the strikes in Lebanon and dozens in Israel, while tens of thousands on each side of the border have been displaced. Hamas and Hezbollah are allies and both are supported by Iran.
Despite periodic cycles of escalation, Hezbollah and Israel have carefully avoided an all-out war, but Israeli leaders have issued a series of warnings in recent weeks that they might increase operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel began moving more troops to its border with Lebanon on Wednesday as a precautionary measure, according to an official with knowledge of the movements who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The AR-924 pagers used in Tuesday's attack were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, which is based in the Hungarian capital of Budapest, according to a statement released by Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese firm that authorized the use of its brand on the pagers.
Gold Apollo's chair, Hsu Ching-kuang, told journalists Wednesday the firm has had a licensing agreement with BAC for the past three years.
“According to the cooperation agreement, we authorize BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in designated regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC,” Gold Apollo said in a statement.
BAC Consulting Kft. was registered as a limited liability company in May 2022, according to its records. It has 7,840 euros in standing capital, the records showed, and had revenue of $725,768 in 2022 and $593,972 in 2023.
At the headquarters of a building in a residential neighborhood of Budapest, the names of multiple companies, including BAC Consulting, are posted on pieces of paper on a window.
A woman who emerged from the building and declined to give her name said the site provides headquarter addresses to various companies.
BAC's parent company is registered to Cristiana Rosaria Bársony-Arcidiacono, whose describes herself on her LinkedIn page as a strategic advisor and business developer. Among other positions, Bársony-Arcidiacono says on the page that she has served on the board of directors of the Earth Child Institute, a sustainability group. The group does not list Bársony-Arcidiacono as among its board members on its website.
The Associated Press has attempted to reach Bársony-Arcidiacono via the LinkedIn page and has been unable to establish a connection between her or BAC and the exploding pagers.
The attack in Lebanon started Tuesday afternoon, when pagers in their owners' hands or pockets started heating up and then exploding — leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicking bystanders.
It appeared that most of those hit were members or linked to members of Hezbollah — whether fighters or civilians — but it was not immediately clear if people with no ties to Hezbollah were also hit.
The Health Ministry said health care workers and two children were among those killed. In the village of Nadi Sheet in the Bekaa Valley, dozens gathered to mourn the death of one of the children, 9-year-old Fatima Abdullah.
Her mother, wearing black and donning a yellow Hezbollah scarf, wept alongside other women and children as they gathered around the little girl’s coffin before her burial.
Hezbollah said in a statement Wednesday morning that it would continue its normal strikes against Israel as part of what it describes as a support front for its ally, Hamas, and Palestinians in Gaza.
“This path is continuous and separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre on Tuesday,” it said. “This is another reckoning that will come, God willing.”
At hospitals in Beirut on Wednesday, the chaos of the night before had largely subsided, but relatives of the wounded continued to wait.
Lebanon Health Minister Firas Abiad told journalists during a tour of hospitals Wednesday morning that many of the wounded had severe injuries to the eyes, and others had limbs amputated. Journalists were not allowed to enter hospital rooms or film patients.
Abiad said the wounded had been sent to various area hospitals to avoid any single facility being overloaded and added that Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Egypt offered to help treat the patients.
Earlier Wednesday, an Iraqi military plane landed in Beirut carrying 15 tons of medicine and medical equipment, he said.
Experts believe explosive material was put into the pagers prior to their delivery.
The AR-924 pager, advertised as being “rugged,” contains a rechargeable lithium battery, according to specifications advertised on Gold Apollo’s website before they were removed after the attack.
It claimed to have up to 85 days of battery life. That would be crucial in Lebanon, where electricity outages have been common after years of economic collapse. Pagers also run on a different wireless network than mobile phones, making them more resilient in emergencies — one of the reasons why many hospitals worldwide still rely on them.
For Hezbollah, the pagers also provided a means to sidestep what’s believed to be intensive Israeli electronic surveillance on mobile phone networks in Lebanon.
“The phone that we have in our hands — I do not have a phone in my hand — is a listening device,” warned Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in a February speech.
Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs said from the beginning of 2022 until August 2024, Gold Apollo has exported 260,000 sets of pagers, including more than 40,000 sets between January and August of this year. The ministry said that it had no records of direct exports of Gold Apollo pagers to Lebanon.
This story has been updated to correct the age of one of the children killed. She was 9, not 8.
Spike reported from Budapest and Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press journalists Abby Sewell and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut; Simina Mistreanu in Taipei; Melanie Lidman and Josef Federman in Jerusalem; Zeke Miller in Washington; and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
Lebanese Red Cross ambulance passes next of the families of victims who were injured on Monday by their exploding handheld pagers, at the emergency entrance of the American University hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Families of victims who were injured on Monday by their exploding handheld pagers, wait at the emergency entrance of the American University hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
This shows a sing featuring the names of several companies on the door of a house where a Hungarian company that allegedly manufactured pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria is headquartered in Budapest Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos)
This photo shows a door of a house where a Hungarian company that allegedly manufactured pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria is headquartered in Budapest Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos)
This photo shows a house where a Hungarian company that allegedly manufactured pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria, is headquartered in Budapest Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos)
Civil Defense first-responders carry a man who was wounded after his handheld pager exploded, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024.(AP Photo)
Hsu Ching-kuang, chairman of Apollo Gold, talks about the Taiwan company's communication products at the headquarters in New Taipei City, Taiwan Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Johnson Lai)
Hsu Ching-kuang, chairman of Apollo Gold, talks about the Taiwan company's communication products at the headquarters in New Taipei City, Taiwan Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Johnson Lai)
A police officer inspects a car in which a hand-held pager exploded, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
People gather outside the American University hospital after the arrival of several men who were wounded by exploded handheld pagers, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bassam Masri)
Lebanese soldiers stand guard at a street that leads to the American University hospital where they bring wounded people whose handheld pager exploded, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
