Nuclear power plant workers prep for shutdown after 47 years

Workers at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station are prepping for the plant's shutdown after 47 years of operation.

On Friday, a team of workers will begin the process of reducing the plant's power output from the current 40% of its capacity to zero. The process will occur over about a five-hour period in a 1970s-era control room that contains hundreds of levers, gauges, lights and buttons.

During a simulation on Tuesday, workers traded commands about which knobs to turn and buttons to press to safely shut down the reactor as alarms sounded and lights flashed.

Joseph Lynch, government external affairs manager for Entergy Corp., takes questions from reporters, Tuesday, May 28, 2019, in the Control Room Simulator at a training facility several miles from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, in Plymouth, Mass. A simulated shutdown was performed in front of members of the media in the Control Room Simulator Tuesday ahead of the planned actual shutdown of the aging reactor planned for Friday, May 31. (AP PhotoSteven Senne)

Shutting down the reactor is the first step in a yearslong process of decommissioning the plant, removing spent fuel, and cleaning up the site.

The spent fuel rods will be stored in concrete casks.

A sign featuring an Entergy Corp. logo is attached to a sign near a gate to the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, in Plymouth, Mass., Tuesday, May 28, 2019. The operators of the nuclear plant performed a simulated shutdown at a training facility several miles from the reactor Tuesday, in advance of the actual shutdown of the aging reactor planned for Friday, May 31. (AP PhotoSteven Senne)

Warning signs are posted near a gate to the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, in Plymouth, Mass., Tuesday, May 28, 2019. The operators of the nuclear plant performed a simulated shutdown at a training facility several miles from the reactor Tuesday, in advance of the actual shutdown of the aging reactor planned for Friday, May 31. (AP PhotoSteven Senne)

Control Room Supervisor Bob Sheridan, of Duxbury, Mass., front, focuses on a screen during a simulated reactor shutdown Tuesday, May 28, 2019, in the Control Room Simulator at a training facility several miles from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, in Plymouth, Mass. The simulated shutdown was performed in front of members of the media ahead of the planned actual shutdown of the aging reactor on Friday, May 31. (AP PhotoSteven Senne)

Control Room Supervisor Bob Sheridan, of Duxbury, Mass., left, and Senior Reactor Operator Kelly Connerton, of Middleborough, Mass., center, stand together in the Control Room Simulator moments before a simulated reactor shutdown, Tuesday, May 28, 2019, at a training facility several miles from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, in Plymouth, Mass. The simulated shutdown was performed in front of members of the media ahead of the planned actual shutdown of the aging reactor on Friday, May 31. (AP PhotoSteven Senne)

LONDON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been damning of the U.K.'s naval capabilities. Their jibes may have stung in a country with a long and proud maritime history, but they do carry some substance.

The U.K. has been at the forefront of Trump’s ire since the onset of the Iran war on Feb. 28, when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer refused to grant the U.S. military access to British bases.

Though that decision has been partly reversed with the decision to permit the U.S. to use the bases, including that of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, for so-called defensive purposes, Trump is adamant he was let down. He has repeatedly lashed out at Starmer and branded the Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers as “toys.”

“You don’t even have a navy,” he told Britain's Daily Telegraph in comments published Wednesday. "You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work.”

Hegseth, meanwhile, said sarcastically that the “big, bad Royal Navy” should get involved in making the Strait of Hormuz safe for commercial shipping.

For numerous reasons, the Royal Navy is not as big and bad as it used it to be when Britannia ruled the waves. But it's not as feeble as Trump and Hegseth imply and is largely similar with the French navy, which it is often compared with.

“On the negative side, there is a grain of truth, with the Royal Navy being smaller than it has been in hundreds of years,” said professor Kevin Rowlands, editor of the Royal United Services Institute Journal. “On the positive side, the Royal Navy would say that it’s entering its first period of growth since World War II, with more ships set to be built than in decades.”

It’s not that long ago that Britain could muster a task force of 127 ships, including two aircraft carriers, to sail to the south Atlantic after Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands. That 1982 campaign, which then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan was lukewarm about, marked the final hurrah of Britain’s naval pedigree.

Nothing on that scale, or even remotely, could be accomplished now. Since World War II, Britain’s combat-ready fleet has declined substantially, much of it linked to changing military and technological advances and the end of empire. But not all.

The number of vessels in the Royal Navy fleet, including aircraft carriers, destroyers frigates and submarines has fallen from 166 in 1975 to 66 in 2025, according to The Associated Press' analysis of figures from the Ministry of Defense and the House of Commons Library.

Though the Royal Navy has two aircraft carriers at its command, there was a seven-year period in the 2010s when it had none. And the number of destroyers has halved to six while the frigate fleet has been slashed from 60 to just 11.

The Royal Navy faced criticism for the time it took to send the HMS Dragon destroyer to the Middle East after the war with Iran broke out. Though naval officials worked night and day to get it shipshape for a different mission than the one it was readying for, to many it symbolized the extent to which Britain’s military has been gutted since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

For much of the Cold War, Britain was spending between 4% and 8% of its annual national income on its military. After the Cold War, that proportion steadily dropped to a low of 1.9% of GDP in 2018, fuel to Trump's fire.

Like other countries, Britain, largely under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, sought to use the so-called “peace dividend” following the collapse of the Soviet Union to divert money earmarked for defense to other priorities, such as health and education.

And the austerity measures imposed by the Conservative-led government in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008-9 prevented any pickup in defense spending despite the clear signs of a resurgent Russia, especially after its annexation of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine.

In the wake of Russia's full-blown invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and with another Middle East war underway, there's a growing understanding across the political divide that the cuts have gone too far.

Following the Ukraine invasion, the Conservatives started to turn the military spending tide around. Since the Labour Party returned to power in 2024, Starmer is seeking to ramp up British defense spending, partly at the cost of cutting the country's long-vaunted aid spending.

Starmer has promised to raise U.K. defense spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2027, and the updated goal is now for it to rise to 3.5% of GDP by 2035, as part of a NATO agreement pushed by Trump. That, in plain terms, will mean tens of billions pounds more being spent — a lot more kit for the armed forces.

The pressure is on for the government to speed that schedule up. But with the public finances further imperilled by the economic consequences of the Iran war, it's not clear where any additional money will come.

The jibes will likely keep coming even though the critiques are unfair and far from the truth, said RUSI's Rowlands, who was a captain in the Royal Navy.

“We are dealing with an administration that doesn’t do nuance," he said.

This story has been corrected to show there were 166 vessels in 1975, not 466.

An artillery piece from the 1982 Falklands War between Argentina and Britain lies on Mount Longdon on the Falkland Islands, also known as Islas Malvinas, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan)

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