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Nuclear Waste Corrosion accelerates as stainless steel, glass, and ceramics interact in aqueous conditions, driving localized corrosion in repositories like Yucca Mountain, according to Nature Materials research on high-level radioactive waste storage.

Key Points

Degradation of waste forms and canisters from water-driven chemistry, causing accelerated, localized corrosion in storage.

✅ Stainless steel-glass contact triggers severe localized attack

✅ Ceramics and steel co-corrosion observed under aqueous conditions

✅ Yucca Mountain-like chemistry accelerates waste form degradation

The materials the United States and other countries plan to use to store high-level nuclear waste, even as utilities expand carbon-free electricity portfolios, will likely degrade faster than anyone previously knew because of the way those materials interact, new research shows.

The findings, published today in the journal Nature Materials (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-019-0579-x), show that corrosion of nuclear waste storage materials accelerates because of changes in the chemistry of the nuclear waste solution, and because of the way the materials interact with one another.

"This indicates that the current models may not be sufficient to keep this waste safely stored," said Xiaolei Guo, lead author of the study and deputy director of Ohio State's Center for Performance and Design of Nuclear Waste Forms and Containers, part of the university's College of Engineering. "And it shows that we need to develop a new model for storing nuclear waste."

Beyond waste storage, options like carbon capture technologies are being explored to reduce atmospheric CO2 alongside nuclear energy.

The team's research focused on storage materials for high-level nuclear waste -- primarily defense waste, the legacy of past nuclear arms production. The waste is highly radioactive. While some types of the waste have half-lives of about 30 years, others -- for example, plutonium -- have a half-life that can be tens of thousands of years. The half-life of a radioactive element is the time needed for half of the material to decay.

The United States currently has no disposal site for that waste; according to the U.S. General Accountability Office, it is typically stored near the nuclear power plants where it is produced. A permanent site has been proposed for Yucca Mountain in Nevada, though plans have stalled. Countries around the world have debated the best way to deal with nuclear waste; only one, Finland, has started construction on a long-term repository for high-level nuclear waste.

But the long-term plan for high-level defense waste disposal and storage around the globe is largely the same, even as the U.S. works to sustain nuclear power for decarbonization efforts. It involves mixing the nuclear waste with other materials to form glass or ceramics, and then encasing those pieces of glass or ceramics -- now radioactive -- inside metallic canisters. The canisters then would be buried deep underground in a repository to isolate it.

At the generation level, regulators are advancing EPA power plant rules on carbon capture to curb emissions while nuclear waste strategies evolve.

In this study, the researchers found that when exposed to an aqueous environment, glass and ceramics interact with stainless steel to accelerate corrosion, especially of the glass and ceramic materials holding nuclear waste.

In parallel, the electrical grid's reliance on SF6 insulating gas has raised warming concerns across Europe.

The study qualitatively measured the difference between accelerated corrosion and natural corrosion of the storage materials. Guo called it "severe."

"In the real-life scenario, the glass or ceramic waste forms would be in close contact with stainless steel canisters. Under specific conditions, the corrosion of stainless steel will go crazy," he said. "It creates a super-aggressive environment that can corrode surrounding materials."

To analyze corrosion, the research team pressed glass or ceramic "waste forms" -- the shapes into which nuclear waste is encapsulated -- against stainless steel and immersed them in solutions for up to 30 days, under conditions that simulate those under Yucca Mountain, the proposed nuclear waste repository.

Those experiments showed that when glass and stainless steel were pressed against one another, stainless steel corrosion was "severe" and "localized," according to the study. The researchers also noted cracks and enhanced corrosion on the parts of the glass that had been in contact with stainless steel.

Part of the problem lies in the Periodic Table. Stainless steel is made primarily of iron mixed with other elements, including nickel and chromium. Iron has a chemical affinity for silicon, which is a key element of glass.

The experiments also showed that when ceramics -- another potential holder for nuclear waste -- were pressed against stainless steel under conditions that mimicked those beneath Yucca Mountain, both the ceramics and stainless steel corroded in a "severe localized" way.

Other Ohio State researchers involved in this study include Gopal Viswanathan, Tianshu Li and Gerald Frankel.

This work was funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

Meanwhile, U.S. monitoring shows potent greenhouse gas declines confirming the impact of control efforts across the energy sector.

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US Nuclear Generating Costs 2017 show USD33.50/MWh for nuclear energy, the lowest since 2008, as capital expenditures, fuel costs, and operating costs declined after license renewals and uprates, supporting a reliable, low-carbon grid.

Key Points

The 2017 US nuclear average was USD33.50/MWh, lowest since 2008, driven by reduced capital, fuel, and operating costs.

✅ Average cost USD33.50/MWh, lowest since 2008

✅ Capital, fuel, O&M costs fell sharply since 2012 peak

✅ License renewals, uprates, market reforms shape competitiveness

Average total generating costs for nuclear energy in 2017 in the USA were at their lowest since 2008, according to a study released by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), amid a continuing nuclear decline debate in other regions.

The report, Nuclear Costs in Context, found that in 2017 the average total generating cost - which includes capital, fuel and operating costs - for nuclear energy was USD33.50 per megawatt-hour (MWh), even as interest in next-generation nuclear designs grows among stakeholders. This is 3.3% lower than in 2016 and more than 19% below 2012's peak. The reduction in costs since 2012 is due to a 40.8% reduction in capital expenditures, a 17.2% reduction in fuel costs and an 8.7% reduction in operating costs, the organisation said.

The year-on-year decline in capital costs over the past five years reflects the completion by most plants of efforts to prepare for operation beyond their initial 40-year licence. A few major items - a series of vessel head replacements; steam generator replacements and other upgrades as companies prepared for continued operation, and power uprates to increase output from existing plants - caused capital investment to increase to a peak in 2012. "As a result of these investments, 86 of the [USA's] 99 operating reactors in 2017 have received 20-year licence renewals and 92 of the operating reactors have been approved for uprates that have added over 7900 megawatts of electricity capacity. Capital spending on uprates and items necessary for operation beyond 40 years has moderated as most plants are completing these efforts," it says.

Since 2013, seven US nuclear reactors have shut down permanently, with the Three Mile Island debate highlighting wider policy questions, and another 12 have announced their permanent shutdown. The early closure for economic reasons of reliable nuclear plants with high capacity factors and relatively low generating costs will have long-term economic consequences, the report warns: replacement generating capacity, when needed, will produce more costly electricity, fewer jobs that will pay less, and, for net-zero emissions objectives, more pollution, it says.

NEI Vice President of Policy Development and Public Affairs John Kotek said the "hardworking men and women of the nuclear industry" had done an "amazing job" reducing costs through the institute's Delivering the Nuclear Promise campaign and other initiatives, in line with IAEA low-carbon lessons from the pandemic. "As we continue to face economic headwinds in markets which do not properly compensate nuclear plants, the industry has been doing its part to reduce costs to remain competitive," he said.

"Some things are in urgent need of change if we are to keep the nation's nuclear plants running and enjoy their contribution to a reliable, resilient and low-carbon grid. Namely, we need to put in place market reforms that fairly compensate nuclear similar to those already in place in New York, Illinois and other states," Kotek added.

Cost information in the study was collected by the Electric Utility Cost Group with prior years converted to 2017 dollars for accurate historical comparison.

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Maritime Link Cable Burial safeguards 200-kV subsea cables in the Cabot Strait as Emera and Nova Scotia Power trench lines to mitigate bottom trawling risks from a redfish boom, ensuring Muskrat Falls hydro delivery.

Key Points

Trenching Cabot Strait subsea power cables to prevent redfish-driven bottom trawling and ensure Muskrat Falls power.

✅ $14.492M spent trenching 59 km at 400 m depth

✅ Protects 200-kV, 170-km subsea interconnects from trawls

✅ Driven by Gulf redfish boom; DFO and UARB consultations

The parent company of Nova Scotia Power disclosed this week to the Utility and Review Board, amid Site C dam watchdog attention to major hydro projects, that it spent almost $14,492,000 this summer to bury its Maritime Links cables lying on the floor of the Cabot Strait between Newfoundland and Cape Breton.

It's a fish story no one saw coming, at least not Halifax-based energy conglomerate Emera.

The parent company of Nova Scotia Power disclosed this week to the Utility and Review Board that it spent almost $14,492,000 this summer to bury its Maritime Link cables lying on the floor of the Cabot Strait between Newfoundland and Cape Breton.

The cables were protected because an unprecedented explosion in the redfish population in the Gulf of St Lawrence is about to trigger a corresponding boom in bottom trawling in the area.

Also known as ocean perch, redfish were not on anyone's radar when the $1.5-billion Maritime Link was designed and built to carry Muskrat Falls hydroelectricity from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia.

The two 200-kilovolt electrical submarine cables spanning the Cabot Strait are the longest in North America, compared with projects like the New England Clean Power Link planned further south. They are each 170 kilometres long and weigh 5,500 tonnes.

Nova Scotia Power customers are paying for the Maritime Link in return for a minimum of 20 per cent of the electricity generated by Muskrat Falls over 35 years.

The electricity is supposed to start sending first electricity through the Maritime Link in mid-2020.

First time cost disclosed
In August, the company buried 59 kilometres of subsea cables one metre below the bottom at depths of 400 metres.

"These cables had not been previously trenched due to the absence of fishing activities at those depths when the cables were originally installed," spokesperson Jeff Myrick wrote in an email to CBC News in October.

Ratepayers will get the bill next year, as utilities also face risks like copper theft that can drive costs in the region. Until now, the company had declined to release costs relating to protecting the Maritime Link.

The bill will be presented to regulators, a process that has affected projects such as a Manitoba Hydro line to Minnesota, when the company applies to recover Maritime Link costs from Nova Scotia Power ratepayers in 2020.

Myrick said the company was acting after consultation with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Unexpected consequences
After years of overfishing in the 1980s and early 1990s, redfish quotas were slashed and a moratorium imposed on some redfish.

Confusingly, there are actually two redfish species in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

But very strong recent year classes, that have coincided with warming waters in the gulf, as utilities adapt to climate change considerations grow, have produced redfish in massive numbers.

After years of overfishing, the redfish population is now booming in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. (Submitted by Marine Institute)
There is now believed to be three-million tonnes of redfish in the Gulf of St Lawrence.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is expected to increase quotas in the coming years and the fishing industry is gearing up in a big way.

Earlier this month, Scotia Harvest announced it will begin construction of a new $14-million fish plant in Digby next spring in part to process increased redfish catches.

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Quebec Windstorm 2025 disrupted Montreal and surrounding regions, triggering power outages, Hydro-Québec repairs, fallen trees, infrastructure damage, and transport delays, while emergency response and community resilience accelerated restoration and recovery efforts across the province.

Key Points

A severe April 29 windstorm with 100 km/h gusts caused outages, damage, and emergency recovery across Quebec.

✅ Gusts exceeded 100 km/h across Montreal and nearby regions

✅ Hydro-Québec restored power; crews cleared debris and lines

✅ Communities shared resources, shelters, and volunteer support

A powerful windstorm swept across Quebec on April 29, 2025, leaving tens of thousands of residents without electricity and causing significant damage to infrastructure. The storm's intensity disrupted daily life, leading to widespread outages across the province, fallen trees, and transportation delays.

Storm's Impact

The windstorm, characterized by gusts exceeding 100 km/h, struck various regions of Quebec, including Montreal and its surrounding areas. Hydro-Québec reported extensive power outages affecting numerous customers. The storm's ferocity led to the uprooting of trees, downing of power lines, and significant damage to buildings and vehicles.

Response and Recovery Efforts

In the aftermath, emergency services and utility companies mobilized to restore power and clear debris. Hydro-Québec crews worked tirelessly, much like Sudbury Hydro teams did in Ontario, to repair damaged infrastructure, while municipal authorities coordinated efforts to ensure public safety and facilitate the restoration process. Despite these efforts, some areas experienced prolonged outages, highlighting the storm's severity.

Community Resilience

Residents demonstrated remarkable resilience during the crisis. Many communities came together to support one another, as seen when Toronto neighborhoods rallied during lingering outages, sharing resources and providing assistance to those in need. Local shelters were set up to offer warmth and supplies to displaced individuals, and volunteers played a crucial role in the recovery process.

Lessons Learned

The storm underscored the importance of preparedness and infrastructure resilience, including vulnerabilities highlighted by a recent manhole fire affecting Hydro-Québec customers. In response, discussions have been initiated regarding the strengthening of power grids and the implementation of more robust emergency response strategies to mitigate the impact of future natural disasters.

As Quebec continues to recover, the collective efforts of its residents and emergency services serve as a testament to the province's strength and unity, even as similar strong-wind outages affect other regions, in the face of adversity.

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Canadian electricity transmission enables grid resilience, long-distance power trade, and decarbonization by integrating renewables, hydroelectric storage, and HVDC links, providing backup during extreme weather and lowering costs to reach net-zero, clean energy targets.

Key Points

An interprovincial high-voltage grid that shares clean power to deliver reliable, low-cost decarbonization.

✅ Enables resilience by sharing power across weather zones

✅ Integrates renewables with hydro storage via HVDC links

✅ Lowers decarbonization costs through interprovincial trade

As the recent disaster in Texas showed, climate change requires electricity utilities to prepare for extreme events. This “global weirding” is leaving Canadian electricity grids increasingly exposed to harsh weather that leads to more intense storms, higher wind speeds, heatwaves and droughts that can threaten the performance of electricity systems.

The electricity sector must adapt to this changing climate while also playing a central role in mitigating climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced a number of ways, but the electricity sector is expected to play a central role in decarbonization, including powering a net-zero grid by 2050 across Canada. Zero-emissions electricity can be used to electrify transportation, heating and industry and help achieve emissions reduction in these sectors.

Enhancing long-distance transmission is viewed as a cost-effective way to enable a clean and reliable power grid, and to lower the cost of meeting our climate targets. Now is the time to strengthen transmission links in Canada, with concepts like a western Canadian electricity grid gaining traction.

Insurance for climate extremes
An early lesson from the Texas power outages is that extreme conditions can lead to failures across all forms of power supply. The state lost the capacity to generate electricity from natural gas, coal, nuclear and wind simultaneously. But it also lacked cross-border transmission to other electricity systems that could have bolstered supply.

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Long-distance transmission offers the opportunity to escape the correlative clutch of extreme weather, by accessing energy and spare capacity in areas not beset by the same weather patterns. For example, while Texas was in its deep freeze, relatively balmy conditions in California meant there was a surplus of electricity generation capability in that region — but no means to get it to Texas. Building new transmission lines and connections across broader regions, including projects like a hydropower line to New York that expand access, can act as an insurance policy, providing a back-up for regions hit by the crippling effects of climate change.

A transmission tower crumpled under the weight of ice.
The 1998 Quebec ice storm left 3.5 million Quebecers and a million Ontarians, as well as thousands in in New Brunswick, without power. CP Photo/Robert Galbraith
Transmission is also vulnerable to climate disruptions, such as crippling ice storms that leave wires temporarily inoperable. This may mean using stronger poles when building transmission, or burying major high-voltage transmission links, or deploying superconducting cables to reduce losses.

In any event, more transmission links between regions can improve resilience by co-ordinating supply across larger regions. Well-connected grids that are larger than the areas disrupted by weather systems can be more resilient to climate extremes.

Lowering the cost of clean power
Adding more transmission can also play a role in mitigating climate change. Numerous studies have found that building a larger transmission grid allows for greater shares of renewables onto the grid, ultimately lowering the overall cost of electricity.

In a recent study, two of us looked at the role transmission could play in lowering greenhouse gas emissions in Canada’s electricity sector. We found the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is lower when new or enhanced transmission links can be built between provinces.

Average cost increase to electricity in Canada at different levels of decarbonization, with new transmission (black) and without new transmission (red). New transmission lowers the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (Authors), Author provided
Much of the value of transmission in these scenarios comes from linking high-quality wind and solar resources with flexible zero-emission generation that can produce electricity on demand. In Canada, our system is dominated by hydroelectricity, but most of this hydro capacity is located in five provinces: British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Québec and Newfoundland and Labrador.

In the west, Alberta and Saskatchewan are great locations for building low-cost wind and solar farms. Enhanced interprovincial transmission would allow Alberta and Saskatchewan to build more variable wind and solar, with the assurance that they could receive backup power from B.C. and Manitoba when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.

When wind and solar are plentiful, the flow of low cost energy can reverse to allow B.C. and Manitoba the opportunity to better manage their hydro reservoir levels. Provinces can only benefit from trading with each other if we have the infrastructure to make that trade possible.

A recent working paper examined the role that new transmission links could play in decarbonizing the B.C. and Alberta electricity systems. We again found that enabling greater electricity trade between B.C. and Alberta can reduce the cost of deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions by billions of dollars a year. Although we focused on the value of the Site C project, in the context of B.C.'s clean energy shift, the analysis showed that new transmission would offer benefits of much greater value than a single hydroelectric project.

The value of enabling new transmission links between Alberta and B.C. as greenhouse gas emissions reductions are pursued. (Authors), Author provided
Getting transmission built
With the benefits that enhanced electricity transmission links can provide, one might think new projects would be a slam dunk. But there are barriers to getting projects built.

First, electricity grids in Canada are managed at the provincial level, most often by Crown corporations. Decisions by the Crowns are influenced not simply by economics, but also by political considerations. If a transmission project enables greater imports of electricity to Saskatchewan from Manitoba, it raises a flag about lost economic development opportunity within Saskatchewan. Successful transmission agreements need to ensure a two-way flow of benefits.

Second, transmission can be expensive. On this front, the Canadian government could open up the purse strings to fund new transmission links between provinces. It has already shown a willingness to do so.

Lastly, transmission lines are long linear projects, not unlike pipelines. Siting transmission lines can be contentious, even when they are delivering zero-emissions electricity. Using infrastructure corridors, such as existing railway right of ways or the proposed Canadian Northern Corridor, could help better facilitate co-operation between regions and reduce the risks of siting transmission lines.

If Canada can address these barriers to transmission, we should find ourselves in an advantageous position, where we are more resilient to climate extremes and have achieved a lower-cost, zero-emissions electricity grid.

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EU Solar Impact on Electricity Prices highlights how rising solar PV penetration drives negative pricing, shifts peak hours, pressures wholesale markets, and challenges grid balancing, interconnection, and flexibility amid changing demand and renewables growth.

Key Points

Explains how rising solar PV cuts wholesale prices, shifts negative-price hours, and strains grid flexibility.

✅ Negative pricing events surge with higher solar penetration.

✅ Afternoon price dips replace night-time wind-led lows.

✅ Grid balancing, interconnectors, and flexibility become critical.

The latest EU electricity market report has confirmed the affect deeper penetration of solar is having on wholesale electricity prices more broadly.

The Quarterly Report on European Electricity Markets for the final three months of last year noted the number of periods of negative electricity pricing doubled from 2019, to almost 1,600 such events, as global renewables set new records in deployment across markets.

Having experienced just three negative price events in 2019, the Netherlands recorded almost 100 last year “amid a dramatic increase in solar PV capacity,” in the nation, according to the report.

Whilst stressing the exceptional nature of the Covid-19 pandemic on power consumption patterns, the quarterly update also noted a shift in the hours during which negative electric pricing occurred in renewables poster child Germany. Previously such events were most common at night, during periods of high wind speed and low demand, but 2020 saw a switch to afternoon negative pricing. “Thus,” stated the report, “solar PV became the main driver behind prices falling into negative territory in the German market in 2020, as Germany's solar boost accelerated, and also put afternoon prices under pressure generally.”

The report also highlighted two instances of scarce electricity–in mid September and on December 9–as evidence of the problems associated with accommodating a rising proportion of intermittent clean energy capacity into the grid, and called for more joined-up cross-border power networks, amid pushback from Russian oil and gas across the continent.

Rising solar generation–along with higher gas output, year on year–also helped the Netherlands generate a net surplus of electricity last year, after being a net importer “for many years.” The EU report also noted a beneficial effect of rising solar generation capacity on Hungary‘s national electricity account, and cited a solar “boom” in that country and Poland, mirroring rapid solar PV growth in China in recent years.

With Covid-19 falls in demand helping renewables generate more of Europe's electricity (39%) than fossil fuels (36%) for the first time, as renewables surpassed fossil fuels across Europe, the market report observed the 5% of the bloc's power produced from solar closed in on the 6% accounted for by hard coal. In the final three months of the year, European solar output rose 12%, year on year, to 18 TWh and “the increase was almost single-handedly driven by Spain,” the study added.

With coal and lignite-fired power plunging 22% last year across the bloc, it is estimated the European power sector reduced its carbon footprint 14% as part of Europe's green surge although the quarterly report warned cold weather, lower wind speeds and rising gas prices in the opening months of this year are likely to see carbon emissions rebound.

There was good news on the transport front, though, with the report stating the scale of the European “electrically-charged vehicle” fleet doubled in 2020, to 2 million, with almost half a million of the new registrations arriving in the final months of the year. That meant cars with plug sockets accounted for a remarkable 17% of new purchases in Q4, twice the proportion seen in China and a slice of the pie six times bigger than such products claimed in the U.S.

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