Mosko: Garden Grove Was a Warning, San Onofre Is the Test
James Heddle James Heddle

Mosko: Garden Grove Was a Warning, San Onofre Is the Test

In Garden Grove, the threat from a tank holding roughly 7,000 gallons of a common hazardous industrial liquid — about one-third the volume of a typical backyard swimming pool — was enough to force the evacuation of a reported 50,000 residents, close schools and roads, open emergency shelters, and mobilize a massive public-safety response.

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A Reply to Another Carefully Worded Defense of Nuclear Power
James Heddle James Heddle

A Reply to Another Carefully Worded Defense of Nuclear Power

Blakeslee testified that when PG&E discovered, based on the available seismic data, that the earthquake faults around the plant could generate a level of ground motion more than twice as powerful as what the plant’s safety components were designed to withstand, the utility simply changed the “damping coefficient” – altering the numbers to make the problem go away on paper.

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The Trump administration’s reckless attack on radiation protection will have long-term consequences for public safety
James Heddle James Heddle

The Trump administration’s reckless attack on radiation protection will have long-term consequences for public safety

President Donald Trump’s decision to bring independent regulatory agencies under White House control and to fire the NRC’s chairman ended the commission’s resistance. On July 2, 2025, an anonymous NRC spokesperson enthused in a social media post that the Executive Order reforming the NRC “gives us a chance to reconsider our radiation protection framework in support of the whole-of-government effort to safely enable the nation’s use of nuclear power.”

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The Big Tech Campaign to Fast Track Nuke Energy. Senators Whitehouse and Booker Take the Lead in Congress
James Heddle James Heddle

The Big Tech Campaign to Fast Track Nuke Energy. Senators Whitehouse and Booker Take the Lead in Congress

The Trump administration greenlit TerraPower to begin construction of its first plant in March, nine months ahead of schedule. The company credited Trump’s May executive orders and bipartisan reforms that Third Way and its partners helped create for the rapid timeline. Experts, such as Union of Concerned Scientists director of nuclear power safety Edwin Lyman, excoriated TerraPower’s rapid approval, noting the NRC itself conceded the reactor had unresolved safety issues in its reviews. 

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