Robyn Dixon | Washington Post
President Donald Trump rebuked Russia on Monday for testing a new nuclear-capable cruise missile instead of working to end the war in Ukraine — a testy exchange that is indicative of how relations between the countries have worsened in recent weeks. Russia on Sunday announced a successful test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile called Burevestnik, which Russia says can carry a nuclear warhead and travel for more than 8,000 miles. Russian President Vladimir Putin, dressed in military fatigues, hailed it as “a unique product, unlike anything else in the world.”
Antoine Gara and Malcolm Moore | Financial Times
The US government and the owners of Westinghouse have struck an $80bn deal to build a fleet of nuclear reactors, using funding from a trade agreement with Japan. Brookfield Asset Management and Cameco, Westinghouse’s owners, said they had formed a new partnership to provide the reactor technology for the plants, which would help realise Donald Trump’s goal to quadruple US nuclear capacity by 2050. The investment announced on Tuesday would fund about eight Westinghouse AP1000 power plants, according to Brookfield, or a mix of larger facilities and small modular reactors.
Micah McCartney | Newsweek
Washington and Seoul are coordinating closely on their shared goal of convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, an official with South Korea's presidential office told the Yonhap News Agency on Sunday. The official was responding to President Donald Trump's comment to reporters that North Korea is "sort of a nuclear power" and has "a lot of nuclear weapons." ... No U.S. administration has recognized the North as a nuclear power, a move strongly opposed by the South, which considers such a move tantamount to legitimizing the United Nations-sanctioned nuclear program and a violation of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Dylan Butts | CNBC
Google and American electrical utility giant NextEra Energy announced a partnership Monday to revive Iowa’s only nuclear power plant to meet growing low-carbon energy demand from artificial intelligence. The Duane Arnold Energy Center, which closed in 2020, could begin operating in early 2029, pending regulatory approval. “Once operational, Google will purchase power from the 615-MW plant as a 24/7 carbon-free energy source to help power Google’s growing cloud and AI infrastructure in Iowa, while also strengthening local grid reliability,” the companies said in a press release.
Dominic Patten | Deadline
The U.S. Department of Defense and Netflix are in a clash over how accurate the streamer’s nuclear disaster drama A House of Dynamite truly is. Highlighting a specific major plot point in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed movie, an October 16 memo from Pentagon officials was produced with the intent to address “false assumptions” from the film. ... On the flip side, the project’s screenwriter Noah Oppenheim told MSNBC on Sunday that he would “respectfully disagree” with the Pentagon’s assessment.
Alicia Inez Guzmán | The New York Times
Technicians at Los Alamos National Laboratory must handle hazardous plutonium to create grapefruit-size nuclear bomb cores, known as pits. They do so in a nearly 50-year-old building under renovation to address aging infrastructure and equipment breakdowns that have at times disrupted operations or spread radioactive contamination, The New York Times found. Now, the laboratory is under increasing pressure to meet the federal government’s ambitions to upgrade the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The $1.7 trillion project includes everything from revitalizing missile silos burrowed deep in five states, to producing new warheads that contain the pits, to arming new land-based missiles, bomber jets and submarines.