Commercial nuclear power generation is inherently dangerous. There is no legitimate guarantee that another severe nuclear accident or deliberate malevolent action cannot happen or for that matter, the global trafficking of of the civil technology and enriched uranium will not result in the global proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear war.

Industry and government assurances to the contrary are not supported by professional risk assessments including the life and property insurance industry.

The very first commercial nuclear power plant in the United States would never have been built and operated without first the US congressional passage of the indemnification of the nuclear power industry (suppliers and operators) from corporate liability for the radiological exposure and consequences of severe nuclear accidents. This includes the legislated protection through the nuclear industry’s “limited liability” for damages and harm to life, property, long term economic and agriculture damages and dislocation as well as the contamination of natural resources.   

The Price-Anderson Act (PPA) of 1957 was established solely for the purpose of providing the commercial nuclear industry “limited liability” protection. The original Act limited the industry liability to a severe accident to a total of $500,000 in claims damages including radiation sickness, loss of property values, loss of commercial and industrial business, etc. 

For example, you need only read your home owner or automobile insurance policy’s generic fine print: “Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, it is hereby understood and agreed that this policy shall not apply to any loss, damage or expense due to or arising out of, directly or indirectly, nuclear reaction, radiation or radioactive contamination regardless of how it was caused. “

While the PPA was initially publicly pitched as a temporary measure, once jump started it has been extended many times with the most recent June 18, 2024 congressional passage of the “Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy” (ADVANCE) Act without a single public hearing in either the US House or Senate chambers. The ADVANCE Act expanded the PPA’s nuclear accident indemnification of the existing aging US commercial nuclear power fleet, (94 units averaging roughly 50 years) to now include the so-called “inherently safe” GEN IV advanced reactors and Small Modular Reactors. The renewed PPA as also extends the “limited liability” period from 20 years extensions before congressional review to 40-year period which now expires on December 31, 2065.  The current PPA limited liability ceiling has also gone up over the years to currently $13.7 billion for the US industry’s collective liability for a single accident.  However, the current very rough projected cost for the total clean-up cost of the April 26, 1986 Chornobyl nuclear catastrophe in Ukraine is likely to exceed $700 billion and Japan’s 2011 nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi at $660 billion. [We note that the Fukushima triple nuclear accident was the failure of the US designed General Electric (GE) Mark I boiling water reactor.  There are 23 GE Mark I boiling water reactors (BWRs) currently licensed to operate and being renewed out to 2053 and beyond, that are using the same inherently flawed as in too small pressure suppression containment design for its power rating, hence the 100% failure rate of the three Fukushima reactors that were at 100% power when they simultaneously experienced “station blackout” conditions (loss of the offsite AC power grid, inundation of the onsite emergency AC backup power generators and depletion of DC power necessary for reactor core cooling following the severe earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.] 

So, to your question, the US commercial nuclear industry does not yet have the confidence to proverbially “put its money where its mouth is” on “inherent safety” claims not even for its PowerPoint reactors currently under development.

Beyond Nuclear’s public health and safety concerns, as well as environmental and climate protection, go beyond the growing risks and consequences of severe accidents to also encompass routine operational radioactive risks and consequences.

Over past decades, scientific studies have developed and culminated into the present up-to-date and widely accepted National Academies of Science’s “Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation Report 7” (BEIR 7),  that concludes that low dose radiation exposure, at any level and no scientifically demonstrated “safe threshold” dose, is clinically proven to potentially be 1) carcinogenic (the ability to induce cancer in living cells), 2) mutagenic (the ability to induce harmful genetic mutations in the DNA sequence within living cells) and 3) teratogenic (the ability to induce, cause harm and abnormality in biological reproduction including fetal exposure to radiation during pregnancy. While the biological standard for the “acceptable” exposure to radiation is based on a generic measure of “Roentgen Equivalent Man” (REM), the most vulnerable to the harmful effects of radiation among the human population are women and their ovum, the rapidly developing fetus, infants particularly females and young children, also female.

The BEIR 7 Report is the outcome and most up-to-date of studies that began after the 1945 atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and its effects on human beings. These studies also demonstrated that high radiation exposure will immediately destroy massive amounts of living cells resulting in radiation sickness and a high rate of mortality to living organisms rather than induce cellular damage and disease and significantly lower dose, indeed no “safe threshold” for biological harm.

Biological exposure to radiation can occur at every link in the nuclear fuel chain (from uranium mining, milling, uranium fuel enrichment and fabrication, routine reactor operations, decommissioning, interim waste storage, transportation and long term nuclear waste management over many thousands of years) because of the potential for radiation exposure, While electricity is perceived as the primary product of nuclear power, in fact it is a fleeting and useful by-product. The lasting legacy of nuclear power is highly radioactive nuclear waste.   Many, many more future generations  will inherit this legacy and  biological  risk of harmful radiation exposure from high-level radioactive waste without a  watt of benefit, only liability.

While safety and security precautions are paramount, the routine operation of nuclear power is also considered “inherently dangerous.” This is evidenced by the multiple layers of “defense-in-depth” necessary to shield the biosphere from the intensely radioactive fission reaction going on in the reactor core. For example, the fact that routine licensed fission reactor operation requires multiple layers of shielding and containment systems to reduce radiation exposure “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” (ALARA) from gamma rays, beta and alpha particles and radioactive gases.

Operating nuclear power stations also routinely releases radioactive emissions to the environment (air, land and water) occur. In fact, in 2010, the NRC contracted with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to do a “state-of-the-art study” on the cancer risk for populations surrounding nuclear power facilities that were being exposed to small but routine radioactive releases from nuclear power plant operations. The study was designed to specially focus on cancer rates and mortality among children who lived closest to the reactor operations.

“After spending five years and $1.5 million planning a nationwide probe into whether living near a nuclear power plant such as San Onofre is truly hazardous to your health, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission pulled the plug this week, saying the study would take too long and would be too expensive,” reported the Orange County Register in California.   The San Onofre nuclear power station was one of seven nuclear facilities that were part of an epidemiological study originally requested by the NRC from the US top scientific body. After the NAS provided the NRC with a model of the study that it would use around more US nuclear power stations,  the NRC dropped the project in 2015,  saying it would take to long and cost too much.  That was an excuse that the concerned public and even the scientists at the NAS did believe was true.

Here is another story that Beyond Nuclear published in 2023 in follow up to efforts to restart the nationwide scientific study which is yet to be performed in the US .

To conclude, it needs to be noted in addition to accidental releases and routine operational release of radiation that security risks associated with malevolent acts intended to compromise reactor safety-related systems, structures and components by insider sabotage, adversarial armed attacks on target sets, truck bombs, aircraft and drone strikes and more sophisticated acts of war cannot be reliably calculated to eliminate the risk from deliberate severe radiological releases and widespread consequences.

It should first be recognized that electricity generation is but the fleeting by-product of the nuclear power technology while nuclear waste is the enduring, harmful liability being passed onto future generations, society and the environment without a watt of benefit.

There is presently 90,000 metric tons of commercially generated high level radioactive waste stored onsite at each of the US nuclear power stations in storage ponds and dry casks because there has never been a scientifically accepted and reliable long term term management plan.  Current dry storage casks have a maximum design licensed life of 100 years. However, NRC inspection reports identify that dry cask seals are aging and deteriorating in as early as a decade of operation. 

Nuclear waste generation is an unresolved and still largely mismanaged problem at every link in the nuclear power fuel chain; beginning with literally mountains of unmanaged uranium mine tailings and contaminated water resources from the uranium extraction industry.  The radioactive contamination continues through the succeeding stages of fuel enrichment, fuel fabrication, reactor operations, reactor decommissioning, so-called “low level” radioactive waste storage and the still unmanaged long-term isolation of irradiated fuel rods and its consequential biological threat. Beyond Nuclear identifies these health, safety and environmental threats now and into the distance future by topic area on our website’s “Nuclear Waste” page .

With the initial production and concentration of a high-level radioactive waste accelerating with the “Atomic Age” that began in earnest in 1943 and the development of the first atomic bombs that nuclear waste is still being mismanaged. Here is but one current event at the West Lake landfill just outside St. Louis, Missouri of a much broader public health menace from the very beginning of nuclear waste generated more than 82 years ago atomic bomb projects.  Nuclear power development is an extension of the same mismanagement of the nuclear waste outcome. Families in suburban St. Louis have been and are continuing to be sickened by toxic exposure to radioactive and chemical waste illegally dumped in their community for decades.

There is presently no safe, “permanent solution” that has yet been found and scientifically demonstrated over the hundreds, thousands and millions of years of radiological half-lives anywhere in the world – and may never be found – for nuclear waste most enduring threat from biologically isolating irradiated and highly radioactive nuclear fuel. In the U.S., the only identified and flawed high-level radioactive waste deep geological repository site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada has been defunded and indefinitely cancelled. Yucca Mountain has long been identified as located in one of the most seismically active areas in North America.  Several earthquake fault lines cris-cross through the repository’s designated depth as well as evidencing volcanic ash in the fault lines. The would-be repository itself is surrounded by the Lathrop Wells cinder cones as among the youngest volcanoes in North America.

The Obama Administration defunded the US Department of Energy has indefinitely abandoned it search for a deep geological repository.

Beyond Nuclear advocates for an end to the production of nuclear waste and for securing the existing reactor waste in hardened on-site storage as the first and most relevant step in the long term management of high level radioactive waste.

The manmade climate change crisis is accelerating. The rate of acceleration and a point of no return are not reliably predictable. But many climate scientists are reevaluating their projections.

Beyond Nuclear’s central concern is that the nuclear industry and the NRC are presently analyzing only the impacts of low carbon emissions from nuclear power on climate change. The NRC and industry are not analyzing the impacts of increasingly severe effects of the climate crisis on nuclear power plants and the increased risk and frequency of severe nuclear accidents caused by climate change. All nuclear power plants are currently constructed and operated on major rivers, lakes, reservoirs and oceans for their cooling water. Many US nuclear power stations have been constructed on flood plains as well as below and even adjacent to large dams that impound millions of acre feet of water. For example, the three reactor units at the Oconee nuclear power station in South Carolina are located below two large dams; ten miles downstream of the Jocassee Dam (earthen rock filled) which impounds Lake Jocassee where the water level is normally 300 feet above the grade on which the nuclear power station and its safety systems operate and directly adjacent to and below the Keowee Dam (earthen rock filled) and another million acre feet of lake water where reactor safety systems are situated below the meteorological historic water levels in Lake Keowee.   As of 2024, at least 20 multi-unit US nuclear power plants that are located downstream of large dams, with 34 reactors potentially facing flooding hazards greater than they are designed to withstand due to upstream dam failures.  Many more US reactors are located directly on flood plains that were never designed, nor have been upgraded to face an uncertain future of climate change.

On April 2, 2024, the United States Government Accountability Office sent a report to Congress, “Nuclear Power Plants: NRC Should Take Actions to Fully Consider the Potential Effects of Climate Change.” 

Watch this short GAO video that accompanies their April 2024 report https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgdNMrxkxWQ

The NRC and the nuclear industry are not looking at the projected effects of climate change. The NRC has stated in their environment impacts statements for authorizing extreme operating license renewals (now extending reactor operation beyond 60 to 80 years, the consideration of the impacts of climate change on reactor operations is “out of scope” the environmental review process.  In terms of calculating public health and safety risks from severe nuclear accidents caused by floods, dam failures etc, this is not unlike driving your car through the rear view mirror. You are not watching out for what’s coming. The NRC is extending reactor operating license now beyond 2050 without doing the environment reviews of the projected effects of climate change (sea level rise, extreme precipitation, flooding, increasingly severe storms, hurricanes, wild fires and other potentially hazardous impacts on aging nuclear power plant operations.

Historically, as for building new reactors to meet future energy needs, nuclear power is notorious for being extremely unreliable to project cost of completion of construction (on budget) and time to completion of construction (on time). For example, in 2005 the US Congress passe legislation, The Energy Policy Act of 2005, that supposedly was to launch the first “nuclear renaissance” of new construction with massive federal incentives (federal loan guarantees, production tax credits, streamlined federal licensing combining construction and operating licenses into one permit, and more. The industry responded with “advanced” designs and by 2007 started submitting applications to the NRC for combined construction and operation licenses. According to a Congressional Research Service report in 2007, the US industry projected they would make application to finance 34 reactor units for review. By 2024, seventeen years later, of those 34 units, the industry had only finished two units Vogtle Units 3 and 4 more than a decade past projected its completion time. Where the projected completion cost of Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia was placed at $14 billion, the final cost was $36 billion and probably still rising. The other units were cancelled or abandoned mid-construction at the V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3 in South Carolina at a sunk cost close to $10 billion to be picked up by South Carolina electric ratepayers and bankrupting Westinghouse Energy, now foreign owned.  If nuclear power cannot be afforded or built on time, it will come to late to address climate change and divert critical financial resources and squander what precious little time is left to deliver with least coast renewable energy coupled with electricity storage, energy efficiency and conservation.

The US government and the nuclear industry have repeatedly to reliably delivery electricity at cost on time through a decades old strategy of “economies of scale” (building bigger produces least cost products, in this case, electricity. The original Generation I nuclear power plants were small but proved to be uneconomical largely on the necessity of proving high quality “nuclear grade” defense-in-depth systems, structures and components. When that failed, government and industry turned to larger nuclear projects in Generation II reactors built on the principle of  “economies of scale” which also failed  with nearly as many projects cancelled and abandoned as were completed in the US. After a decades long hiatus, the industry and the government have come full circle to try again with a promise to build “small” on a mass production scale.  The material and studies that we are reviewing predict that small modular reactors are not going to generate both profitable affordable electricity to sustain the industry and meet public demand.

The independent indicators that we are watching, the cost of nuclear power is steadily increasing, particularly as reactors are aging and hidden costs are emerging. New reactor project can be expected to become increasingly costly and take far longer to complete if at all.  Nearly half of US nuclear power stations is identified as uneconomical without increasing federal taxpayer subsidies and the cost to electrical ratepayers. Meanwhile, the cost of renewables, electric storage, efficiency and conservation in more dramatically declining, more reliably deploying, and overall at a faster growth rate.

March 2025, Reuters reports “About 92.5% of energy capacity added in 2024 came from renewables, at 585 gigawatts (GW), marking record annual growth of 15.1% and lifting total renewables capacity to 4,448 GW.” https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/global-renewable-power-capacity-falls-short-targets-despite-record-growth-last-2025-03-26/

March 26. 2025, Yale Climate Connections, University of Texas study finds that wind, solar, and battery storage projects boost Texas’s economies by generating billions in tax revenue and providing revenue for landowners via leases. Related projects are expected to contribute over $12 billion in tax benefits over their lifetimes and are important for supporting roads, schools, hospitals and other local projects. Landowners, meanwhile, are set to receive roughly $15 billion through land lease agreements. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/03/clean-energy-is-powering-local-economies-in-texas

March 27, 2025, PV-Magazine, study prepared by The Brattle Group at the request of the grid operator Southwest Power Pool says SPP could achieve “high levels of decarbonization and electrification with minimal rate impacts.” High shares of renewable generation could enable SPP to serve its customers with no increase in inflation-adjusted costs per MWh of electricity through 2050.  https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/03/27/reaching-90-renewables-can-maintain-stable-electricity-rates-brattle-finds

March 24, 2025, PV-Tech.org, World Added 553-GW of Solar Capacity in 2024 as Energy Demand Grows:  According to the IEA’s “Global Energy Review 2025,” report, the world has now added more solar PV capacity, year-on-year, each year since 2019, reaching 553-GW of new additions in 2024. Between 2023 and 2024, solar capacity additions increased by almost 30% year-on-year, and helped push the world’s operating solar capacity to 2.2-TW. https://www.pv-tech.org/world-adds-553gw-solar-capacity-2024-energy-demand-grows