The antidote to false rumors of a nuclear revival? Start organizing!

There is a nuclear revival going on right now, but it’s a revival of rhetoric, not reality. The government and nuclear power industry’s saturation propaganda campaign is running 24/7 to promote a largely imaginary “nuclear renaissance” and dramatically expand the use of nuclear power.
But for all the fast talk about fast-tracking new reactor construction, in blind obedience to four executive orders from the Trump White House ordering it so, nothing much is actually happening.
Whether it’s developing and deploying so-called small modular reactors (SMR) or micro reactors, or reverting to the traditional 1,000+ megawatt versions, progress, if any, will be inexorably slow and exorbitantly expensive for a number of key reasons:

Time. Reactors have typically taken significantly longer to build than estimated, even when the technology is familiar. The new and unfamiliar reactor designs currently under construction licensing review will therefore take longer to complete than their predecessors and longer than the unrealistic projections made by their manufacturers.
That means they will arrive far too late — if at all — to address an accelerating climate crisis. With the Trump administration’s aggressive cancellation of cost effective and rapidly deployable renewable energy programs, the long and uncertain wait for nuclear power will mean the continued use of fossil fuels instead, making climate change as well as health outcomes worse.

Cost. The familiar full size reactors are now costing as much as three times more than anticipated. SMRs will be even more expensive per megawatt of electricity generated due to the substantial upfront investment needed in factories to produce hundreds of them to meet the same energy needs as large reactors. These high costs will cause electricity rates to soar in part due to state legislated rate hikes to finance construction and despite generous federal subsidies, without which nothing will be built at all. The nuclear industry has also long been protected from financial liability from catastrophic nuclear accidents through the Price-Anderson Act, leaving the public to cover the potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in costs of a nuclear disaster.

Waste. The long-lived and lethal radioactive waste problem hasn’t been solved.
Crucially, analysis has shown that the new smaller reactors will actually generate greater volumes of radioactive waste than the current large ones. This makes it highly irresponsible not only to continue generating these wastes but to advocate for nuclear expansion that will add to the mountain of waste still stuck at nuclear power plant sites.

Safety and Security. New reactor designs rely on old, already rejected systems such as “fast breeder” and “sodium-cooled” reactors whose earlier iterations have suffered fires and other technical failures. Breeders produce plutonium, making them attractive to countries interested in developing nuclear weapons under the guise of a civil program.

Many new reactor designs are also proliferation risks due to reliance on higher enriched uranium fuel. Manufacturers argue that these reactors won’t need stringent security and safety regulations or offsite emergency evacuation planning since they are “meltdown-proof,” claims disputed by scientists who have evaluated the various designs.

Climate. Both the nuclear industry and its federal regulator have deliberately chosen to ignore worsening climate change impacts, including an increase in major flooding and other violent weather events as well as sea-level rise. This myopic approach will significantly increase the risks of a severe reactor accident among both present and potentially newly constructed reactors. And as the above examples of cost and time have shown, wasting time and money on new reactors will take investment away from renewables that could address the climate crisis quickly.

Jobs. Promises of jobs bonanzas in communities where new reactors may be sited are abundant, but the jobs themselves likely won’t be. Most nuclear industry jobs are highly specialized and not suited to a local workforce. In contrast, skilled renewable energy jobs are growing at a faster rate than the rest of the US workforce, while also offering a far broader spectrum of employment opportunities.

Just Transition. The need for this under a green agenda eliminates nuclear power right from the start. Nuclear power operations are inherently discriminatory and colonialist.
The mining of uranium indefinitely contaminates the lands and waters of mostly Indigenous communities in North America and around the world, often leaving people in poverty and plagued by the dire health outcomes of indefinite exposure to radiation in their environment.

The violation of human and environmental rights continues during the power generation phase at reactor sites with routine and unmonitored releases of radioactivity into the air and water. Numerous studies have shown that young children living close to nuclear power plants suffer higher rates of leukemia than those who live further away.
And finally, when it comes to attempts to move radioactive waste off reactor sites, the chosen destinations have been on Native American reservations and within Latino communities.

These are the facts, but as we know, facts are not enough, or even these days particularly effective, in changing minds. The media has been captured by corporations and so have too many of our members of Congress. Nor do we have the resources to mount an information saturation campaign that can directly compete with the industry’s well-inanced PR machine.
That means we have to return to what we do best — grassroots organizing — and an essential place to start is within the climate movement, already highly mobilized and largely youth-driven. It is here that we can play an essential role in educating climate activists who are being urged to support nuclear power. Because nuclear power is already far slower and more expensive than renewables, the carbon emissions argument is actually irrelevant and a diversion from real climate action.
Climate activists cannot achieve their goals — the elimination of fossil fuel use — while nuclear power is in the way, crowding out access to transmission lines, diverting funds from renewables, energy efficiency and conservation and fatally delaying deployable climate measures. Partnering with climate groups in our areas and providing the anti-nuclear arguments they may lack, will make both movements stronger.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the founder of Beyond Nuclear and serves as its international specialist.