I & I Editorial BoardAfter years of being scorned, derided and shrunk, the nuclear power industry is getting a boost from the Trump administration. Faced with rapidly growing demand for energy to supply a growing U.S. economy and booming AI sector, President Donald Trump’s Energy Department says it will help finance up to 10 new nuclear power plants – a huge reversal of decades of anti-nuclear sentiment and excessive regulation by the U.S. government.
You might be tempted to think: Oh, boy, another big government boondoggle. Nope. This is mainly reviving an industry that has languished largely due to excessive regulations and active political campaigns to make nuclear power a pariah among all possible energy sources.
This isn’t a massive subsidy. It’s a leg up, restarting an industry after decades of overt political hostility from Hollywood, journalists, activist groups, and the Democratic Party.
The private sector will do the work and generate the bulk of the financing.
“We want things built by and risk capital coming from the private marketplace, and most everything we’re doing is dominantly going to be funded by private capital,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the Washington Free Beacon. “But the government smothered the nuclear industry for 40-plus years. We’ve got to get it back up on its feet again.”
Wright calls it a nuclear “renaissance.” It’s one of the rare times use of that word is not hyperbole. The change of course follows Trump’s goal announced in May to quadruple U.S. nuclear energy output over the next decade, arriving at a crucial time for America’s energy future.
Even leftists now grudgingly acknowledge that switching to so-called renewable energy sources — such as solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal energy, and biomass — is not feasible for meeting growing U.S. and world needs. It’s painfully obvious, after decades of anti-nuclear propaganda and media scare-mongering, that only one energy source meets all the “green” criteria for efficiency, safety and cleanliness: nuclear.
Unfortunately, for three decades the U.S. has systematically allowed its atomic power infrastructure to languish and wither, leaving us with inefficient and not really clean renewable sources, instead of cleaner and cheaper, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear.
The total number of operating nuclear reactors peaked at about 112 in the early 1990s, falling to a little more than 90 today, a decline of 20%. And yet, nuclear plants still provide nearly 20% of all U.S. electricity on an annual basis, thanks to the industry’s plant upgrades, innovative new technologies and other efficiencies.
But we’re at a crossroads, and Trump fully understands this. Right now some 22 operating nuclear reactors at 18 separate sites are in the process of being deactivated. Their output must be replaced, or Americans will face even higher rates for electricity to heat, cool and light their homes.
Without replacing already lost capacity and future capacity, the U.S. will find satisfying its growing hunger for low-cost, reliable energy impossible. This means a reduced standard of living for all.
If you think that’s an exaggeration, it isn’t. In Europe, countries (we’re looking at you, Germany) have been decommissioning nuclear plants in favor of so-called green alternatives. The result is the massive deindustrialization of the European Union. According to World Bank data, per capita GDP in the European Union as a percentage of U.S. GDP fell from 77% in 2008 to just 50% in 2023.
As a result of poor energy choices along with a multitude of other productivity-killing policies, Europe is becoming an also-ran in the world economy. As the late, great journalist Charles Krauthammer once said, “Decline is a choice.”
Here in the U.S., blue states are emulating Europe, pushing up energy costs with needless regulations and restrictions, while red states pursue energy-friendly policies. The result, according to a recent study by the Institute for Energy Research: “The data is clear: bluer states tend to have much higher electricity prices than red states.”
This is why Trump’s nuclear “renaissance” is so important. It reverses our nuclear energy decline. Along with drilling for oil, and pursuing new technologies such as nuclear fusion and improved battery storage, nuclear power will help propel America into the future – a future of higher standards of living and opportunities for all, rather than the grim, dystopic, energy-poor America the left sees.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Nuclear energy gets “glowing” reviews 🙂
Regulation wasn’t Nuclear’s only problem, government agencies like the DoE and EPA actively encouraged and helped NGOs sue the nuclear companies to extort as much money as possible from the projects and make them prohibitively expensive. Nuclear energy should be cheap, it is the regulations, lawsuits, leftist fraud and graft that make it expensive.
Well done, President Trump; decades overdue for an intelligent and balanced policy to provide for the USA’s increasing energy needs. Very smart.
Please remember that the gov spend $4 to 9 billion, according to different sources, preparing Yucca Mountain in Nevada to store nuclear waste only to be denied its use by Nevada Senator Reid and Obama. That cave is still empty after 25 years. What a waste.
Though, if we reprocessed nuclear waste, as other nations do, we would have far less volume of waste needing permanent storage anywhere, according to what I have read.
The DOE dumped 64,000 gallons of water on top of Yucca Mountain to see how many years it would take for any of it to reach the interior where nuclear waste would be stored. The study was curtailed when all 64,000 gallons reached the storage area within 3 months. Yucca Mountain was selected from the 3 options under consideration because there were less people in Nevada to object to it.
Very interesting; I had not read about a water test.
However, if this water test is true and demonstrated such a complete failure of the cave, why did DOE not know that before spending $4-9 billion digging out Yucca Mt?
Seems any worthy geo-structural engineer, and I have worked with a few, would have discovered that likely failure at the very start of the whole project, if what you report is true?
Hard to believe they would not have been aware of the geological issues above the cave when the whole reason for selecting Yucca and spending billions to carve it out was its geological solidity, and yes, distance from many people. Hard to believe the water test explanation!
The plausible explanation I read was that Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, a petulant man, changed his mind and turned about face to oppose the project to keep the waste out of his state and then Obama, a gullible man, went along with Reid, killing the project for political, not for geologic reasons.
The nuclear bombers periodically stage “nuclear renaissances” to loot the U.S. treasury to prop up the failed nuclear energy industry. Private financial institutions will not touch investment in nuclear energy with a ten foot pole. They want safe investments with a quick ROI. And they do not want to invest in the most expensive form of energy production. So government subsidies are the only way the existing rust bucket reactors can limp along until they totally economically collapse.
I can’t imagine any of them being completed and online in the next 20 years. As soon as Trump leaves office the drive to build them will disappear and the inevitable lawsuits will hound the developers and drive up the costs to the point they will abandon them as a lost cause.
Added to that the next Democratic President (and yes there will be one) will bring all the power of the Federal Government to bear to help shut down the development.
Red states with energy should not sell to blue states. Let them live with their choices.
Remember Three Mile Island didn’t cause any harm unlike Chernobyl which did that’s only because the Soviets were too busy stealing our own Top Secret Military plans