Book Review: The Nuclear Age by Serhii Plokhy (2025)

The Nuclear Age, Copyright 2025 by Serhii Plokhy

Reviewed by Sharon and Ace Hoffman

"The Nuclear Age" by Serhii Plokhy presents a fresh look at the history of how we got where we are today, and with seemingly perfect timing, the analysis Plokhy applies is chillingly relevant to current world events (March, 2026).*

Less than a hundred years ago, with the horrors of the first global conflict still in many people's memories -- and as another World War was fomenting -- scientists became aware of the fundamental forces in nature that make an atomic bomb possible (underlying forces that hold sub-atomic particles together -- and that can break them apart).

Political and scientific discussions regarding the theoretical possibility of making atomic bombs began in Germany, Japan (a little) and in the Soviet Union, as well as among Allied "Western" countries. Once the Western Allies (specifically the US, UK and Canada) began collaborating, along with refugee scientists from several other countries, the winner of the "race" to develop The Bomb was already won.

How long it would take, how big a task it would be, how big an explosion it would be (and whether it would be successful at all) were questions still left unanswered, but international collaboration was the winning ticket. (Russia eventually solved its own bomb development problems by stealing the results of the Allies' work.)

President Roosevelt's 1939 decision to provide $6,000 in initial research funding (equal to about $140,000 in 2026) was based on a letter written to him by Albert Einstein at the request of Leo Szilard. As Plokhy explains, despite Einstein's eminence and the potential gravity of his words, it nevertheless would take more than two years (until November 1941), as well as lots of research, and both scientific and political negotiations, before Roosevelt provided significant funding to start what became known as the Manhattan Project.

The ball was rolling...

Plokhy shows how *all* subsequent nuclear ambitions around the world were/are the inevitable result of how it started: Forged in the desperation of war, nuclear weapons and their necessary companions (i.e., nuclear reactors and other components of the nuclear fuel cycle) never really left the military world to become entirely — or even partially — "civilian." They cannot be separated: The support system is vital to having nuclear weapons, is politically too powerful, economically too large, and most importantly: Too vulnerable.**

The historical content of the book covers many aspects of nuclear weapons proliferation and control, including:

• Why some countries continue to insist that they need nuclear weapons.
• Why and how some countries, such as Ukraine and South Africa, have been persuaded to give up their nuclear weapons (and how it's worked out for those countries).
• How everything -- from domestic and international priorities, to personal relationships between world leaders, to activism at home and abroad — influences nuclear proliferation and arms negotiations.
• How nuclear weapons nations (including the United States) got their weapons, and...
• How various nations claimed their nuclear reactors were only being built for civilian purposes but in fact were a cover for a nuclear bomb program.

Plokhy discusses both horizontal (across countries) and vertical (within a country) proliferation of nuclear weapons. Vertical proliferation includes delivery mechanisms such as missiles, aircraft, and submarines as well as numbers of nuclear weapons.

Plokhy considers what we might be able to learn from all the non-proliferation negotiations since 1945, and points out that the planet is in the midst of yet another nuclear arms race, but this time without ANY active nuclear arms agreements.

In the early years of the nuclear age, Soviet negotiators were strongly in favor of international control of nuclear technology, but once the Soviet Union sufficiently built up their nuclear arsenal, they lost any interest in reducing their stockpiles below the point of Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.). Similarly, China advocated international controls until they built their first nuclear bomb in 1964.

Britain and France both built their first atomic bombs because their politicians feared their countries would be relegated to second-class status if they purchased bombs from America. Scientists from both countries had made many of the discoveries that contributed to the U.S. bomb program.

Similar concerns led India and North Korea to develop their own nuclear weapons programs by leveraging "civilian" nuclear reactor technology and expertise provided by the existing nuclear powers. Other countries (notably Ukraine) gave up their nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees.

The Nuclear Age shows that previous nuclear arms agreements never actually provided any safety because even a single rogue group can initiate worldwide disaster. Defense against small groups of terrorists armed with nuclear weapons is extremely difficult, if not impossible.

In the epilogue, Plokhy explains that Russia's seizures of nuclear plants in Ukraine should make the idea of nuclear power plants as dirty bombs (which has been known since the first nuclear reactors were built) impossible to ignore. He concludes with the frightening idea that the only common factor in nuclear negotiations is "fear of nuclear annihilation."

The Nuclear Age is highly recommended for its up-to-date information and its broad perspective on nuclear proliferation. All too often, the nuclear arms race has been discussed from a nationalistic vantage point. Plokhy makes it clear that the problem impacts all nations and is far more complex than "merely" technical or military considerations: it is intertwined with politics, financial considerations, government secrecy, false hopes, and wild promises.

Anybody who wants to understand the current dangers needs to consider the broader historical worldwide context of nuclear proliferation, and the many failed attempts to regulate nuclear technology. Plokhy's look back at the history of the nuclear problem and his analysis of past and current dangers is a good place to start. Sharon and Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA

* On January 27, 2026 the Union of Concerned Scientist's famous "Doomsday Clock" was set at 85 seconds to midnight -- closer than ever before, even during the Cold War. (In 1949 the clock was first officially set, to 3 minutes to midnight in response to the first Soviet bomb.)

And things continue to worsen: On February 28, 2026 the world woke up to a conflict involving two known/assumed nuclear powers (the United States and Israel) in a war with Iran, a country that has often been accused (without indisputable proof) of nuclear ambitions. As we write this, the risk of expansion of the conflict is very high. Nobody can ignore the possibility that this war may become nuclear -- either directly through the use of nuclear weapons or through widespread radioactive contamination resulting from the destruction of nuclear facilities anywhere in the region: Nuclear carriers, nuclear reactors, nuclear reprocessing facilities... and maybe who-knows-what.

** See Zaporazhzhia, or Chernobyl, or any reactor that is potentially in a war zone (which is all of them).

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Contact information for the author of this newsletter:

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Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner, The Animated Software Company

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Please comment on DOE proposal to kill NEPA re "advanced reactors" by March 4, 2026

Here is what my wife and I sent in (comment code: mm3-zy06-3m0o):

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Proposed regulation here: https://www.regulations.gov/document/DOE-HQ-2025-0405-0002

Post comments here: https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/DOE-HQ-2025-0405-0002

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The DOE proposes to apply a categorical exclusion to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for "advanced nuclear reactors". This proposed regulation should be rejected. It is a blatant attempt to further reduce environmental oversight of nuclear reactor designs, and to avoid the DOE's obligations to comply with existing regulations for environmental review.

To understand what this means, it's important to define the terms.

According to NEPA: "Categorical exclusions provide a mechanism to identify types of Federal actions that normally do not have significant environmental effects and for which neither an environmental assessment nor environmental impact statement is normally required." (source: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2026-01/DOE-NEPA-Implementing-Procedures-2026-02-02.pdf)

The proposed DOE regulation was written in response to Executive Order 14301 which defines advanced reactors as "... including microreactors, small modular reactors, and Generation IV and Generation III+ reactors ...".

DOE is proposing that advanced reactors can be excluded from NEPA review because their potential environmental impacts are not significant without ever defining what they mean by significant or what the impacts are for a particular project. We have to assume that approvals could include both existing designs for reactors that have never been built, as well as designs that have yet to be proposed.

It is clear that DOE is attempting to set a precedent for allowing future undefined experiments that endanger citizens' health and safety. New reactor designs would not even require DOE environmental review, and would proceed without giving the public an opportunity to comment or regulators an obligation to protect the public, the environment, or future generations.

The DOE justifies its abandonment of environmental review by citing eight NEPA reviews of reactor projects since 2021. In some of these examples, an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) or an Environmental Assessment (EA) was completed, but no significant environmental impacts were ever found. And somehow, the DOE wants us to believe that this brief and selective history proves that future nuclear reactor projects do not need environmental review! There is not even any evidence that these prior decisions were correct, they are simply anecdotal reports of the outcome of the environmental review.

The DOE should also clarify whether all reactors falling under this regulation will be sited on U.S. federal property. The summary for the proposed regulation implies that it only applies to reactors on federal property, but there is no supporting detail. This is relevant, because there is already a plan for a DOE-sponsored experimental reactor in an industrial park in Parsons Kansas.

The Parsons project is being steamrolled without oversight, environmental review, or community comment. The company proposing the project has no proof that their idea will even work, and yet the administration is pushing for the reactor to be designed, built, installed (a mile underground!), fueled, and to have reached criticality by July of 2026!

If the proposed regulation to create a permanent NEPA categorical exclusion for all DOE reactor projects is allowed, there will effectively be no environmental review for any future reactor design.

Sharon and Ace Hoffman Carlsbad, California USA

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On 2/22/2026 6:38 AM, 'Ellen Thomas' via NucNews wrote:
Helpful article out in NPR on this with a map and comparison of current and new rules of 458.1 https://www.npr.org/2026/02/02/nx-s1-5696525/trump-nuclear-safety-regulations-environmental-review

From this map, Idaho (ofc), Utah, Texas, Kansas, and Tennesee would be involved.

sophia@nukewatch.org
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The Trump administration exempts new nuclear reactors from environmental review

The Trump administration has created an exclusion for new experimental reactors being built at sites around the U.S. from a major environmental law. The law would have required them to disclose how their construction and operation might harm the environment, and it also typically required a written, public assessment of the possible consequences of a nuclear accident.

The exclusion announcement comes just days after NPR revealed that officials at the Department of Energy had secretly rewritten environmental, safety and security rules to make it easier for the reactors to be built.

The Department of Energy announced the change Monday in a notice in the Federal Register. It said the department would begin excluding advanced nuclear reactors from major requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The act calls on federal agencies to consider the environment when undertaking new projects and programs.

The law also requires extensive reporting on how proposed programs might impact local ecosystems. That documentation, known as an environmental impact statement, and a second lesser type of analysis, known as an environmental assessment, provide an opportunity for the public to review and comment on potential projects in their community.

In its notice, the Energy Department cited the inherent safety of the advanced reactor designs as the reason they could be excluded from environmental reviews. "Advanced reactor projects in this category typically employ inherent safety features and passive safety systems," it said.

The exemption had been expected, according to Adam Stein, the director of nuclear energy innovation at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental think tank that studies nuclear power and the tech sector. President Trump explicitly required it in an executive order on nuclear power he signed last May.

In a statement, the Department of Energy said that its reactors would still undergo environmental reviews.

"The U.S. Department of Energy is establishing the potential option to obtain a streamlined approach for advanced nuclear reactors as part of the environmental review performed under NEPA," it said. "The analysis on each reactor being considered will be informed by previously completed environmental reviews for similar advanced nuclear technologies."

Stein says he thinks the exclusion "is appropriate" for some reactors in the program, and agrees that previous reactors built by the Energy Department have not been found to have significant environmental impacts.

But critics of the possible exemption questioned whether the new reactors, whose designs differ from earlier ones, really are as safe as claimed.

Until now, the test reactor designs currently under construction have primarily existed on paper, according to Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group. He believes the lack of real world experience with the reactors means that they should be subject to more rigorous safety and environmental reviews before they're built.

"The fact is that any nuclear reactor, no matter how small, no matter how safe it looks on paper, is potentially subject to severe accidents," Lyman said.
Seeking swift approval

The move to exclude advanced reactors from environmental reviews comes amid a push to build multiple such reactors by the summer.

The Energy Department's Reactor Pilot Program is seeking to begin operations of at least three advanced test reactors by July 4 of this year. The program was initiated in response to the executive order signed by President Trump, which was designed to help jump-start the nuclear industry.

The reactors are being built by around 10 nuclear startups, which are being financed with billions in private capital, much of it from Silicon Valley. The goal, supporters say, is to develop new sources of electricity for power-hungry AI data centers.

Last week, NPR disclosed that officials at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory had extensively rewritten internal rules for the new test reactors. The new rules softened protections for groundwater and the environment. For example, rules that once said the environment "must" be protected, now say consideration "may be given to avoiding or minimizing, if practical, potential adverse impacts."

Experts were critical of the changes, which were shared with the companies but not disclosed to the public. The new rules constitute "very clearly a loosening that I would have wanted to see exposed to public discussion," Kathryn Huff, a professor of plasma and nuclear engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who served as head of the DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy from 2022 to 2024, told NPR after reviewing the documents.

In a statement to NPR, the Energy Department said the new rules continue "to protect the public and the environment from any undue risks."

"DOE follows applicable U.S. EPA requirements in these areas," it said.
Environmental review not needed

The decision to allow the reactors to avoid conducting environmental reviews means there will be less of an opportunity for the public to comment. But the environmental review process may not be an appropriate forum for such discussion anyway, Stein noted.

"I think that there's a need for public participation, particularly for public acceptance," he said. But he added, "the public just writing comments on an [environmental impact statement] that ultimately would get rejected doesn't help the public have a voice in any way that would shape any outcome."

The Energy Department said in its Federal Register notice and an accompanying written record of support that such reviews were unnecessary. The new reactors have "key attributes such as safety features, fuel type, and fission product inventory that limit adverse consequences from releases of radioactive or hazardous material from construction, operation, and decommissioning," according to the notice.

Lyman said he vehemently disagreed with that assessment.

"I think the DOE's attempts to cut corners on safety, security and environmental protections are posing a grave risk to public health, safety and our natural environment here in the United States," he said.

Clarification: The article has been updated to reflect the creation of a new exclusion category for the reactors. Individual reactor companies will still need to ask for the exclusion.

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Contact information for the author of this newsletter:

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Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner, The Animated Software Company

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Palisades Relief Request 5-14 (Pressurizer Spray Nozzle Safe End and Safety Nozzles Flange Welds)

I was unable to speak during the public comment portion of the Public Pre-Submittal Meeting which was held today by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to Discuss Palisades Relief Request 5-14 (Pressurizer Spray Nozzle Safe End and Safety Nozzles Flange Welds). However, participants could also submit comments in writing, so this was what I submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission earlier today (images added):

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I am in strong agreement with Michael Keegan's comment about the unanswerable risks due to loss of operating data (specifically, documents relating to the operating history of the plant that had been kept since the plant opened but have already been destroyed by staff, thinking the plant would never open again).

There is no way to rely on data that no longer exists. Yes, the plant was "operational" (but not profitably) when it was shut down. But since that time essentially nothing was maintained, and prior to shutdown, there were numerous problems over the years, resulting in steam generator tube plugging, planned replacement of same, and reactor pressure vessel head wear, along with pipe, pump and valve wear throughout the plant.

Numerous records relating to THIS particular topic have been willfully destroyed. It is reasonable to assume the same is true regarding records for other critical parts throughout the plant. What valves (if any) tended to leak? Which air filters tended to clog with rust? (The Davis-Besse reactor had an unnoticed problem with that, which was caused by the slow growth of their infamous reactor pressure vessel "hole in its head". Had an employee not leaned against the control rod during a reactor shutdown, it would almost surely have caused a meltdown the next time the reactor was operated.)

Most importantly at Palisades: Were any specific records purposefully destroyed first? Perhaps a whole filing cabinet or two of "industry secrets"? Why were the records destroyed at all, if the physical plant was still largely in operational or near-operational condition? That's a RED FLAG right there that "dirty secrets" were contained in those records which were destroyed!

Lastly, it is a "given" that an operating reactor is for more likely to have a catastrophic accident than spent fuel, especially spent fuel that has been out of the reactor for a few years or more. What is the comparative risk for the public, and the taxpayer, from restarting this particular reactor and creating additional spent fuel with nowhere to put it? The last major nuclear accident in the United States (Three Mile Island) practically killed the nuclear industry. The whole industry will take an enormous public-relations "hit" if the plan to restart Palisades fails in any way.

If it fails in a not-catastrophic way, such the way San Onofre failed, that would actually be a good thing! The more reactors that shut down permanently without a catastrophic accident, the better for America.

But that is a side issue to the reputational damage a failure at Palisades would do to the rest of the nuclear industry, which is hanging by a thread as it is, because its electricity is so much more expensive (and far less reliable) than numerous alternatives, such as (at the high-tech end) deep geological thermal energy, to (at the low-tech end) household heat pumps and solar rooftops. Behemoth power plants with a catastrophic risk requiring immoral immunity from full responsibility for catastrophic industrial accidents makes no sense in a democracy. In a democracy, the entity causing the damage pays. If nuclear can't get insurance, it's because it's far too dangerous.

Offer to let Holtec restart Palisades ONLY without the exemption of Price-Anderson and see what happens...

Thank you in advance for sharing these comments with the rest of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission team.

Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA

Note: The author has been studying nuclear safety independently since his teen years, including discussing safety issues with nuclear reactor designers and operators, three top Manhattan Project scientists, numerous health professionals, engineers, statisticians, economists, and many other experts in related fields. This writer actually believed, when it happened (and he was already concerned with reactor safety issues), that merely the separation of the Atomic Energy Commission into the Department of Energy (who would promote and develop nuclear power) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (which would be solely responsible for nuclear safety at commercial nuclear power reactors, since the AEC wasn't doing that part of its job very well) would result in shutting the entire industry down, because if you (the NRC) are NOT responsible for making sure the industry MAKES A PROFIT, there's NO WAY you can endorse the CHEAP-SKATE way the nuclear industry operates and has always operated. Too cheap to find insurance for themselves. Too cheap to restart Palisades without billions of dollars from the federal government and hundreds of millions more from the state. Too cheap to replace the worn-out steam generators and half a gazillion other parts that undoubtedly ought to be replaced but the combined cost and time loss would make it all look far too ridiculous for anyone to endorse. Too cheap to find a solution to storing the waste, other than to sue the government to pay Holtec to continue to store the waste on-site forevermore. Too cheap to cut their losses before a catastrophic accident happens (again) that's far worse than Three Mile Island, which was practically a nothing on a log scale where Chernobyl is a seven and Fukushima's triple meltdowns only a six.

But one thing nuclear was never too cheap about was this: It was never too cheap to meter, as originally promised. Nuclear power never was and never will be cheap, or competitive with cleaner alternatives. Currently the claim by the nuclear industry is that it is "green." But with all the mining, milling, transport, shutdown, repairs, concrete and steel (than can never be recycled), nuclear never was and ever will be the least bit "green". And despite Holtec's claims that a Palisades restart can be done safely, the reality is that nobody can be sure that restarting Palisades won't result in a catastrophic American meltdown. And if that happens, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the members of this committee specifically, will be as much to blame as Holtec will be. But it will be the public and the taxpayer who suffers and pays.

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Contact information for the author of this newsletter:

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Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner, The Animated Software Company

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