In a country that’s polarized on nearly every issue, a nuclear-energy consensus may be emerging.
In a country that’s polarized on nearly every issue, a nuclear-energy consensus may be emerging.
I t’s been over 40 years since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident ground nuclear-power production in the U.S. to a halt. The Energy Department says “no injuries, deaths or direct health effects were caused by the accident,” but it took decades before a new nuclear plant finally opened in Georgia last year. A new sodium-fueled fast reactor is now being built in Wyoming.
Even the Biden administration has announced it will be removing barriers to the construction of new nuclear plants in response to pleas from investors who are lining up to finance new projects. Investment in advanced fission technologies grew more than tenfold, to $3.9 billion, in the first seven months of 2024 from $355 million in all of 2023.
President Biden’s climate adviser Ali Zaidi says “we need to pull as many of the tools for decarbonization off the sidelines and onto the field.” Of course, he still backs the gargantuan Biden subsidies for green energy, but he has been forced to admit that for now, wind power provides less than a tenth of U.S. power generation and solar only 4 percent — nuclear still makes up nearly a fifth.
Germany, which began phasing out its nuclear-power program in 2011, soon saw its coal production increase. As Markham Heid of Vox has pointed out, because of this awkward reality, “no less a climate-change evangelist than Greta Thunberg has argued publicly that, for the planet’s sake, Germany should prioritize the use of its existing nuclear facilities over burning coal.”
In the U.S., even though Congress recently passed a bipartisan act intended to ease the nuclear-energy industry’s financial and regulatory challenges, reactor shutdowns continue to outpace new construction. According to a recent Pew Research Center report:
Americans remain more likely to favor expanding solar power (78%) and wind power (72%) than nuclear power [56 percent]. Yet while support for solar and wind power has declined by double digits since 2020 — largely driven by drops in Republican support — the share who favor nuclear power has grown by 13 percentage points over that span.
A March 2023 survey by Pew found that 41 percent of voters want the government to encourage nuclear-power production and only 21 percent think it should be discouraged. Another 36 percent said the government should neither hinder nor subsidize nuclear-energy development — a reasonable free-market view.
Pew reports that “Americans in both parties now see nuclear power more positively,” with support among Democrats up twelve points since 2020, to 49 percent, and up 14 points with Republicans during the same period.
As a further sign that antinuclear hysteria is easing, even Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s running mate and the greenest of governors, lifted Minnesota’s moratorium on building nuclear plants. In a country that’s polarized on almost every issue, nuclear power may be one on which we are slowly reaching a new consensus.