He said the issues with nuclear energy – from the potential for disaster to the issue of how to store nuclear waste – should be compared with the potential for renewable alternatives like solar and wind energy.Ī much more supportive view of nuclear energy ![]() “Too often in the enthusiasm for nuclear energy, a carbon-free source of energy – and in the present situation of the issue of climate change, really a very important existential crisis – it’s easy to say, well, we’ll solve the problems later.” “I don’t have yet, although I’ve tried for years, a well-formed position for or against nuclear energy,” Ewing said. I was put in touch with him by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which aims to “reduce man-made threats to our existence.”ĭespite his decades spent focused on nuclear issues, he said something I found remarkable: The more circumspect voice is Rodney Ewing, a Stanford University professor and expert on nuclear waste who was chairman of a federal review of nuclear waste procedures. I talked to one nuclear expert who said the US should be slow and methodical about nuclear power and another who argued there are multiple, public misperceptions about nuclear power that should be corrected. Nuclear power – and how aggressively the US and other countries should be pursuing it – is a topic that splits scientists as well. At least one reactor, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California, will be kept open after a more than $1 billion grant. More than a dozen reactors have closed early in the US over the past decade, according to the Department of Energy. The bipartisan infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden in 2021 included a $6 billion program to provide grants to nuclear reactor owners or operators and stave off closing them. a billion-dollar taxpayer bailout for two nuclear plants.īillions set aside to fix aging US nuclear reactors, keep them online But otherwise, the US nuclear power portfolio is old, and much of it is in need of improvement.įor an idea of the money and corruption that can revolve around energy production, look at the sentencing last week of Ohio’s former House Speaker Larry Householder to 20 years in prison for his involvement in a bribery scheme meant to get the utility company FirstEnergy Corp. In addition to the Georgia reactor coming online, a new reactor began operating in Tennessee in 2016. Most large US nuclear reactors are old – averaging 40 years or more. It enriches and sells uranium through its state-controlled nuclear energy company, Rosatom, which builds and operates plants around the world, according to a March report from CNN’s Clare Sebastian that explains why the West has largely left Russia’s nuclear power industry alone.īut it is China that is moving the quickest toward nuclear power production, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.Īs of 2022, about 18% of US electricity is generated by nuclear power, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Russia, while it has been ostracized from the world economy in almost every way since its invasion of Ukraine, remains a major player in nuclear power. Most of its electricity is generated by nuclear power. Next door, France is the worldwide nuclear leader. The last nuclear reactor there was taken offline earlier this year, a decision some might have regretted after Germany’s access to Russian natural gas was threatened by the war in Ukraine. ![]() Germany made the decision to decommission all of its nuclear plants after disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima. ![]() The question of nuclear energy splits governments ![]() The opening of a new nuclear plant in Georgia, for example, will bring carbon emission-free energy at exactly the time worldwide temperature records drive home the reality of climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Those developments, which might give anyone pause about the future of nuclear power, are counteracted by other headlines. News that Japan will soon release radioactive water into the ocean, a reminder of the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
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