Bob Alvarez, Presente!
It is with a profound sadness and sense of loss that we share the news of Bob Alvarez’s passing on July 1, 2025, at age 78.
(We will post links to Bob’s obituaries here, once they are published.)
Bob served as a critical expert witness in Beyond Nuclear’s resistance against highly radioactive waste consolidated interim storage facilities in Texas and New Mexico. He provided key insights into the inevitable need to repackage commercial irradiated nuclear fuel, from its current. gigantic surface storage and transport containers, into much smaller, repository-ready containers for ultimate disposal deep underground, something the nuclear establishment rarely to never discusses publicly. (See one of Bob’s expert witness declarations, here.)
He played a lead role in calling attention to, and explaining the global risks of, potential fire risks at the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 indoor wet storage pool for irradiated nuclear fuel, in the aftermath of the explosions, reactor core meltdowns, fires, and other disasters in Japan beginning on March 11, 2011.
That work was a natural progression from his leadership in addressing the dangers of pool fires in the U.S., including a groundbreaking January 2003 study co-authored by himself and six additional experts, as well as a solo report he published on behalf of the Institute for Policy Studies in May 2011, in light of the cautionary tale at Fukushima.
Bob continually collaborated internationally on radioactive waste risks, as well.
Bob often weighed in at critical times with key insights, as at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California, in 2016 and 2022, regarding irradiated nuclear fuel risks, costs, and liabilities which Pacific Gas & Electric, NRC, and DOE hoped most people wouldn’t think about.
Bob had deep institutional memory from having lived through the work. For example, when Jimmy Carter passed on late last year at age 100, Bob reminded anti-nuke list-servs that:
“Carter, as Governor of [Georgia], stopped the [Atomic Energy Commission] plan to dig a 15-foot diameter shaft and dispose of 80 million gallons of high-level radioactive wastes at the Savannah River Plant beneath the region’s primary ground water supply.”
Bob, working with Beyond Nuclear board of directors members Kay Drey and Lucas Hixson, as well as working alongside grassroots watchdogs like Just Moms STL, undertook critical studies in St. Louis, Missouri, regarding Manhattan Project and Cold War radioactive waste dumping in the metro area, as at West Lake Landfill.
Bob was also the go-to person in the country for up to the minute figures on how much irradiated nuclear fuel was stored where in the U.S., which tellingly is difficult to obtain from such sources as NRC, DOE, and the nuclear power industry.
As but one example, Bob weighed in with critical info. — still very valuable, years later, as we resist Palisades’ “zombie” reactor restart, and “Small Modular Reactor” new builds — re: irradiated nuclear fuel at the Palisades atomic reactor in Michigan in 2021:
In a Feb. 22, 2021 analysis, done about a year before previous owner Entergy permanently shut down Palisades on May 20, 2022, thereby ending the reactor’s generation of highly radioactive waste, Robert Alvarez, a former senior advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy during the Clinton administration, reported:
“The Palisades ISFSI [Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation] holds 1096 assemblies in 13 NUHOMS 24PTH, 11 NUHOMS 32 PTH and 18 VSC-24 casks. There is a remaining balance of SNF [Spent Nuclear Fuel] assemblies in the Palisades Reactor spent fuel pool, which Holtec proposes to place in the 20 Holtec HI STORM dry casks.”
These are but a few of countless examples regarding Bob’s generous assistance to Beyond Nuclear’s work since our founding in 2007, and to the broader nuclear watchdog movement going decades back in time.
It is difficult to even summarize Bob’s lifetime of achievements — from supporting Karen Silkwood’s orphaned children, alongside his wife Kitty Tucker, after Silkwood’s suspicious death in 1974, to leading a U.S. government delegation to North Korea on a nuclear weapons non-proliferation mission in the 1990s, to penning critical insights from his keen nuclear watchdog perspective in recent weeks, and countless vital achievements in between, over more than a half-century — so please watch the 1.5 hour recording of Bob’s Lifetime Achievement Award event from March 2022, which we helped organize in our role as an Alliance for Nuclear Accountability member group — another network where Bob was beloved and indispensable. The link to the recording of the event is linked here, and a little further below, in Dee D’Arrigo’s reproduced email message.
(See a Karen Silkwood info. board, created by Beyond Nuclear’s Kevin Kamps, along with his colleague Yuko Tonohira, to honor Silkwood’s memory. The info. board was also inspired by and intended to honor Bob Alvarez and Kitty Tucker’s support of Silkwood’s children and family, knowing that Bob and Kitty would be in attendance at a Nov. 2014 anti-nuke gathering in D.C., which coincided with the 40th annual commemoration of Karen Silkwood’s suspicious death. Also see a Beyond Nuclear tribute to Silkwood at the 50th annual commemoration of her death, in 2024, including a link to a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article Bob wrote about Silkwood.)
Bob published writings regularly at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, including this Feb. 1, 2024 special report entitled “The Fallout Never Ended.”
He also exposed nuclear snake oil salesmen, such as this take down of thorium.
While at ANA’s Lifetime Achievement Award event website for Bob Alvarez, be sure to check out a sampling of his famed, colorful vignettes from his nuclear watchdog work. And see a summary of his remarkable work prepared by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), where he long served (at IPS, Bob’s vignettes are called “mini-memories”).
Bob Alvarez, presente! You will be deeply missed. May your memory be a blessing, as well as in inspiration to others to carry on your important work, which you shared with your remarkable wife, Kitty Tucker (1944-2019; see Beyond Nuclear’s tribute to Kitty, here; also see Kitty’s Washington Post obituary, here)!
Email message from Dee D’Arrigo at NIRS, sent at 3:32am ET, Thursday, July 3, 2025:
Dear friends
Support Beyond Nuclear
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