CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Trump/Newsom Attack Renewables and Push Nuclear

Amidst Donald Trump’s wild Middle East War declarations, the tech billionaire push to nuclear reactor suicide has escalated with the shock relicensing of California’s two nuclear power plants at Diablo Canyon, now being pushed by the state’s liberal Governor Gavin Newsom, who has also joined Trump in their all-out attack against renewable energy.

Together, Trump and Newsom are pushing decrepit, virtually uninsured, militarily indefensible nuclear power plants whose drastic deregulation may now rival the dangers posed by any bombs Iran could produce

They also make no economic or ecological sense.

Despite the latest tsunami of “Nuclear Renaissance” hype, nuclear power plants are losing bigly to the worldwide surge in renewable energy. Solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal, and epic advances in battery storage continue to make the green alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear reactors—big and small—a far cheaper, safer, cleaner, more reliable, more job-producing alternative.

Despite the all-out Trump/Newsom all-out anti-green attack, as the “independent global energy think tank” Ember reported last month, “the world installed a record 814 GW of new solar and wind capacity in 2025, 17% more than in 2024 (696 GW).”

“The latest additions bring the combined global installed capacity of wind and solar to 4,174 GW (over 4 TW),” it said.

One GW (gigawatt) equals a billion watts, roughly the capacity of a big nuclear power plant; a TW is a trillion watts.

London-based Ember adds that “solar accounted for the majority of new capacity additions, with almost 4 GW of new solar added globally for every 1 GW of wind.”

Reuters reported last month: “Renewable power made up almost 50% of the world’s electricity capacity last year after a record ‌increase in solar installations.”

Despite the nuclear power push, some 90% of Earth’s annual newly installed annual generating capacity for the past few years has been solar, wind or geothermal, with battery backup.

Nonetheless, Republican Trump says, “nuclear’s a great energy.” His flood of executive orders on nuclear power have weakened or eliminated nuclear safety regulations—making nuclear power plants more dangerous than ever—and has expedited their being built. Last year his administration finalized an $80 billion deal with Westinghouse for new nuclear power plants.

Also, last year, the Trump family’s media company announced a merger with TAE Technologies, a California-based nuclear fusion company, in a deal worth over $6 billion. So, Trump now has a vested financial interest in nuclear power.

Trump is also attacking wind turbines everywhere. He even wants a $928 million chunk of taxpayer cash spent to kill a French-proposed offshore wind project and to instead fund Texas gas/oil projects, some of which will go for export.

Trump is joined in his all-out war on renewables by Newsom’s pro-utility rate hikes, virtually killing California’s once-booming rooftop photovoltaics industry, costing thousands of jobs and billions in extra rate payments. Even a proposed “balcony solar” bill would strictly limit a technology now cheap, reliable, and enough to power the whole state, as it does on a regular basis, without the need for Diablo’s hyper-expensive billionaire-benefitted power.

Trump-style, Democrat Newsom has also backstabbed a 2018 comprehensive plan he had signed to phase in a 100% renewable energy-based state grid while phasing out the embrittled, hyper-expensive Diablo reactors, which are surrounded by earthquake faults.

Trump has promised many millions to cover a loan to keep Diablo operating. But state legislators fear he may leave them holding much of the bag. They could vote to turn down the NRC’s 20-year license extension, and close Diablo instead in 2030.

But Newsom, who’s term-limited this year, will be pushing hard, even as his Diablo betrayal underscores global economic failure of nuclear power.

The two nuclear power projects in the U.S. since 2000 have been fiscal fiascoes. Construction of two plants in South Carolina was halted, the would-be plants abandoned, wasting $9 billion while producing zero electricity. Two plants at Vogtle, Georgia, opened seven years late, costing nearly $40 billion, more than double their original price. Projected cost estimates for the ceaselessly hyped “Small Modular Reactors” vastly exceed current prices for proven battery-backed solar, wind and geothermal.

And from the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plants in California to the Palisades plant in Michigan to the Indian Point plants in New York and onto Ukraine and Iran, the perils of nuclear power are clear.

Coupled with nuclear war,........

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