The costly downside of New Jersey’s Nuclear Revival

The longtime anti-nuclear advocate warns that subsidies, unresolved waste storage, and cheaper alternatives undermine the case for new reactors in New Jersey.

The Salem Nuclear Power Plant on Wednesday, April 8, 2026. Phoyo by Tim Larsen for the Office of the Governor.

By Jeff Pillets, The Jersey Vindicator

On April 8, Governor Mikie Sherrill signed landmark legislation to officially end a 40-year de facto moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants in New Jersey.

That previous ban reflected a bipartisan view in Trenton that the state should not accept the growing stockpile of dangerous reactor waste without a permanent national disposal plan. No such solution has emerged. New Jersey is now home to an estimated 7 million pounds of radioactive waste, much of it stored in flood-prone coastal areas.

Sherrill and other elected officials from both parties now argue that nuclear power is needed to help meet rising demand for affordable electricity.

Tim Judson

The Jersey Vindicator asked Tim Judson, executive director of the Maryland-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service, to weigh in on the state’s renewed embrace of nuclear energy. Judson, long one of the nation’s leading anti-nuclear voices, explains why he believes the shift could prove costly.

Q: Nuclear power supporters portray public subsidies as a temporary measure. They say new reactors will prove to be cost-effective in the long run. Are they wrong?

A: In short, yes. The costs of nuclear power plants have always gotten more expensive. They have required taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies at every stage, from construction to operation to decommissioning, and to storing their waste. New Jersey is a typical example. The Salem 1 and 2 reactors cost nearly $2 billion to build in the 1970s. The Hope Creek reactor cost more than double that amount in the mid-1980s. And even though ratepayers paid off those costs through huge rate hikes, PSEG and Constellation still demanded $300 million per year in ratepayer subsidies to keep running them.

Q: New Jersey ratepayers spent hundreds of millions of dollars to prop up aging nuclear plants at Salem and Hope Creek. Can we expect so-called small nuclear reactors, or SMRs, to require similar public support as they age?

A: What they call SMRs don’t really exist, but the fundamentals are similar enough that, if PSEG were to operate SMRs for 40 to 60 years, there’s no reason to think it would be different. Some concepts for what are being marketed as microreactors would supposedly be used for only a few years at a time, and then be replaced. But the costs for those are likely to be very high, so instead of requiring subsidies as they age, you might just end up paying high costs all the time. And when there are much more affordable sources of energy, like solar and wind, paying high costs for a power plant is really just a subsidy.

Read the full interview here

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Opinion: NJ plans to roll back key flood protections on Earth Day

Utility workers work among debris from flood damage caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida in Manville, N.J., Sunday, Sept. 5, 2021. Flood-stricken families and business owners across the Northeast are hauling waterlogged belongings to the curb and scraping away noxious mud as cleanup from Ida moves into high gear. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)


By Jeff Tittel in the Jersey Vindicator

Only in New Jersey does the Senate Environment Committee hold a hearing on Earth Day about pulling down an environmental rule. We have really gone from protecting the environment to siding with polluters and developers.

In the past, on Earth Day, we held hearings on how we could further protect our environment. The hearings focused on new protections for clean water, the Highlands, climate change, and renewable energy. We have now gone full Orwell. Even though we are facing a flooding crisis, we are not only doing nothing — the Legislature wants to pull down the only rule in years that tries to strengthen protections. New Jersey is one of the most flood-prone states in the nation. We have experienced flood after flood.

Flooding is not bad luck or an unavoidable act of God. It is the direct result of decades of reckless land-use decisions that put development before safety, politics before science, and profits before people. Even when the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection proposes changes, even small steps, special interests rush in.

New Jersey Senate Concurrent Resolution 106, sponsored by Senate President Nick Scutari, seeks to overturn the REAL Flood Rule. A Senate Concurrent Resolution serves as a legislative veto of an agency rule. To take effect, it must be approved by both the Senate and the Assembly on the grounds that the rule does not meet legislative intent. The Department of Environmental Protection would then have 30 days to withdraw the rule. If it does not, the Legislature votes again, and the rule is repealed. The governor cannot veto a Senate Concurrent Resolution.

The only time in New Jersey that a Senate Concurrent Resolution passed both houses and overturned a rule was in 2017, when the Legislature blocked Christie’s Highlands Septic Density rule. That rule would have weakened Highlands protections and allowed more development, more septic systems, and more pollution in drinking water supplies. At that time, the Senate used an SCR to stop a rule viewed as harmful and protect the environment. Now, critics say the same process is being used to block environmental protections and increase the risk of flooding and pollution.

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Jeff Titttel is the former director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey

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Large-scale battery storage is hot everywhere

By Keira Wright, Mark Chediak, and Petra Sorge, Bloomberg Green Daily

Around the world, a wave of large battery installations is lining up to be connected to the grid this year — from solar hubs in Texas to grasslands in Inner Mongolia and the site of a former coal plant north of Sydney.

Falling costs and soaring energy demand from data centers had already set the stage for rapid growth. The war in the Middle East has accelerated the trend by boosting demand for alternatives to expensive fossil fuels, setting 2026 up to be the year batteries become influential in the global energy system. BloombergNEF analysts had already expected installations to jump by about a third this year, led by expansion in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. That momentum could build further if fuel disruptions persist.

Signs of the ramp-up are already emerging. A Chinese battery manufacturer has forecast a sharp rise in first-quarter profit as global demand picks up. In Vietnam, a developer is seeking approval to replace a planned LNG-to-power project with a renewables-and-storage project, citing the surge in fuel costs linked to the war.

“We’ve now crossed into a point where anytime anyone is looking at investing in the power system, batteries are one of the most attractive options,” said Brent Wanner, head of the power sector unit at the International Energy Agency. “Battery storage systems will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.”

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Delta Air waters down its climate change goals

By Ben Elgin, Green Daily

Delta Air Lines Inc. quietly scrubbed a pair of key environmental targets from its sustainability web page .

The Atlanta-based carrier deleted its pledge to use sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) for 10% of its jet fuel by 2030. It also rephrased its quest to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 as an “aspiration,” rather than a “goal.”

A Delta spokesperson said the carrier still sees SAF as one of the most important ways to decarbonize flight, but its slow development threatens the industry’s climate ambitions. “While we have successfully increased use of SAF every year, we recognize that the technology has not advanced as rapidly as the industry requires,” said the spokesperson.

Delta generated about 60 million tons of heat-trapping emissions in 2024. That’s equivalent to the entire climate footprint of Ireland or Hungary. Like most airlines, it has long touted sustainable jet fuel — made from feedstocks like animal fat or used cooking oil — as a critical lever to cut its emissions. 

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Supreme Court sides with Big Oil in environmental damage case

The case holds particular relevance in Louisiana, where the oil and gas industry remains a major employer and the coastal region has steadily vanished in recent decades.

By Julian Mark, The Washington Post

The Supreme Court on Friday sided with oil giant Chevron, ruling that it can fight an environmental damage lawsuit in federal court — a decision that could affect the outcomes of nearly a dozen other lawsuits that make similar allegations about the oil and gas industry.

The unanimous decision puts into question a $745 million state court judgment against Chevron to help restore coastal wetlands in Louisiana that were damaged as long ago as World War II. Chevron had asked the Supreme Court to order the case moved to federal court, where legal experts say judges and juries are less likely to have a bias toward local interests. A move to federal court also means the massive judgment could be vacated.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. did not participate in the case. Shortly before arguments in January, he recused himself, citing financial interests in ConocoPhillips, the parent of Burlington Resources Oil & Gas, a party in a related case.

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Battery recycler runs out of juice

By Canary Media

Batteries are reshaping the U.S. energy system, not to mention the automotive and defense industries. But the movement to unlock affordable battery recycling just hit another setback.

The startup Ascend Elements has outlasted several rival battery recycling firms that ran out of money. It has operated a battery-disassembly plant near Atlanta since 2023, and is building a facility in Kentucky to turn ground-up batteries into useful ingredients for new units. Now, however, the company’s future is up in the air: It filed for bankruptcy on April 9, with company leadership citing ​“insurmountable” financial difficulties.

Ascend’s descent is indicative of the broader travails of the would-be battery-recycling industry, which was supposed to figure out what to do with all the old batteries that will pile up from the electric-vehicle revolution.

In the early years of the Biden administration, it looked like the venture capitalists were about to instigate a lithium-ion recycling revolution. Safely shredding old batteries was time-consuming and laborious, and retrieving valuable components was even harder. VCs funded a class of latter-day alchemists who bragged about shredding faster and cheaper, retrieving nearly 100% of the useful material from spent batteries, and then selling it right back into the supply chain. But those entrepreneurs struggled to achieve that performance at real, commercial-scale recycling facilities. Several diminished their ambitions for what they could actually recycle, a retreat that typically presaged corporate collapse.

The Trump administration created an even more challenging environment for these companies. Last year, it killed electric vehicle incentives for consumers, prompting many U.S. automakers to lose their nerve and pivot away from assertive EV plans.

The faltering American demand for EVs — and the batteries that power them — has rippled through the supply chain. Ascend faced financial headwinds as buyers of recycled battery materials pushed back their timelines, company leadership told Canary Media last year. The firm also nixed plans to produce cathode active material after agreeing to give up a $164 million federal grant in 2025, and then lost another $110 million from a separate federal grant.

It’s possible that Ascend has viable technology but never got to fully unleash it. The company ​“had a long history of fiscal and operational mismanagement,” as its own president and CEO, Linh Austin, wrote in a LinkedIn post last week. He promised to use Chapter 11 proceedings to ​“reset and move forward,” not give up.

Some legacy recyclers are still shredding away, like Cirba Solutions, which launched 35 years ago. And at least one recycling startup is making news for reasons unrelated to bankruptcy.

Redwood Materials has been grinding up gigawatt-hours of used batteries for years at its campus outside Reno, Nevada, down the road from a Tesla Gigafactory. However, the new initiative that Redwood has been proudly touting is not a recycling breakthrough but a clever reuse of lightly worn EV packs as cheap grid storage. Redwood recently confirmed that it will expand its flagship used-battery installation, which powers modular data centers, and announced this week that it will repurpose 100 Rivian packs to store energy for the EV company’s factory in Illinois.

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