Washington should stay out of US nuclear renaissance

In just the past two months, Amazon Web Services signed a deal with Virginia’s Dominion Energy to develop three small modular reactors near existing nuclear power facilities at Lake Anna. Google agreed to finance seven small modular nuclear reactors with a startup company called Kairos, although it has not yet been determined where the facilities will be built. Microsoft inked a deal with Constellation Energy of Maryland to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, which the company plans to rename the Crane Clean Energy Center.

The private sector’s push into nuclear energy couldn’t come at a better time. Misguided policies of the Biden-Harris administration have pushed the nation’s electric grid to the brink of “catastrophic” failure, according to the testimony of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission commissioner. The Environmental Protection Agency, nevertheless, has continued removing tens of thousands of megawatts of power from the grid every year with stringent regulations on power plants, and at the same time, is mandating the purchase of thousands of new electric vehicles that demand millions more megawatts of power every year.

In the fantasy world of environmental activists, wind power and solar power generation are sufficient to replace fossil fuel power plants and power the grid to meet the surging demand for EVs. However, in reality, that is not happening and cannot happen. While the cost of wind and solar generation is falling, not enough new generation can be built to make up for the loss of fossil fuel power being removed from the grid while also meeting the rising demand for EVs. 

Unless Democrats want to give up on their dreams of eliminating coal power plants and switching the whole nation to EVs, they are going to have to accept a future in which nuclear power plays an increasingly important role. Germany recently tried to avoid this reality, shuttering both nuclear and fossil fuel power plants. The experiment was a disaster with geopolitical consequences. Not only did Germany become dependent on Russian gas, funding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but it had to reopen the coal plants it had closed.

Before irrational environmentalists throttled the previous nuclear renaissance, more than 100 nuclear plants were built across the United States, and 94 of them are still operating and generating about a fifth of all electricity. Nuclear power is more reliable than wind and solar power, and each plant’s output can be raised or lowered to suit conditions, whether it is day or night, windy or calm. 

The federal government has a role to play. The Energy Department has a record of delivering high-quality research and protecting public health. However, it should not get involved in finance or waste management for nuclear power. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 has been an abject failure. Inserting politics into nuclear waste management made it impossible for a commercially viable waste management industry to grow and thrive.

The federal government’s Nuclear Waste Fund has collected approximately $30 billion from nuclear power plant operators. Some $10 billion of that fund has been spent, and thanks to political interference, not a single ton of nuclear waste has been stored. Meanwhile, France allows nuclear fuel to be recycled, creating an entirely commercially profitable nuclear waste management sector. For once, Washington should follow Paris’s lead.

Aside from its interference in the nuclear waste management business, the feds would still be hampering the U.S.’s nuclear sector by making the country dependent on foreign sources of uranium. In 2020, 47,000 tons of uranium were mined worldwide, only 8 tons of which were mined in the U.S. Our inability to mine uranium is not because there isn’t any on our soil. Over 110,000 tons of uranium have been identified underground. We just lack the political will to unlock those resources.

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The Biden-Harris administration has put millions of acres of public land off limits to all resource extraction. Lands that have not been ruled out of bounds must go through an onerous permitting process that allows radical environmentalists to block and stall mine construction at every turn. To safeguard the nuclear future, the Biden-Harris administration’s public land designations must be reversed, and the National Environmental Planning Act must be reformed to prevent frivolous lawsuits.

The U.S. can meet the energy needs of tomorrow’s economy. The private sector is leading the way. We just need to fix regulatory mistakes in Washington to make that future a reality.