Since 2020, nuclear advocates have incessantly touted nuclear power’s benefits the way adolescents choose a first car: if it’s red, fast, and a convertible – that’s it! Cost? Don’t worry, “someone” will pay for it. Insurance? What could possibly go wrong? Maintenance? What could break? Alternatives? But, it’s red! And I NEED it!
This pro-nuclear messaging juggernaut emanates from the Biden/Trump Administration’s Department of Energy effectively functioning as a taxpayer-subsidized PR arm for the nuclear industry. Enormous legislative funding and recent dangerous presidential executive orders have ramrodded uncritical thinking about nuclear expansion down the throats of a largely uninformed public.
One brake on this mindless, unbridled nuclear expansion has been the existence of nuclear construction moratoriums, in Illinois and other states. Methodically, nuclear promoters have eliminated this last opportunity for reasoned debate about a nuclear future. Illinois’ moratorium has already been weakened to allow for so-called “small modular nuclear reactors” (SMNRs). Now, state legislators and Gov. JB Pritzker urge repeal of the remaining moratorium on large reactors.
This reflexive, undebated embrace of the nuclear fetish has occurred only by ignoring many unresolved, sometimes deliberately ignored, nuclear power problems of both currently operating and proposed reactors:
• Radioactive waste: Illinois’ 14 reactors have produced 11,000-plus tons of high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) – with no operational national disposal facility, adding about 250 tons annually. More reactors will mean more HLRW, all with no operational, environmentally responsible disposal site.
• Climate: Real climate solutions are not radioactive. In a time of climate crisis, promoting the most expensive, slowest means of addressing it is simply dumb environmental policy. Dollar for dollar, efficiency, renewable energy, storage and better transmission will prevent more carbon from entering the atmosphere than will any form of nuclear
Recently, reactors in Switzerland and France closed due to climate extremes in Europe, as has occurred several times this century, and in Illinois in 1988. ComEd lost over 100 reactor-operation days due to severe drought and heatwaves. The issue is clearly not whether nuclear power will save us from climate disruption, it’s how do we save nuclear power from climate disruption.
• Viable alternatives: In 2023 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission director Willie Davis stated that 2,000 gigawatts (GW) of power projects are stuck in interconnection queues nationally, “…as much generation waiting to be connected to the grid as double the amount of generation currently on the grid.” Lawrence Berkeley National Lab reports state that more than 90% of these are renewables or energy storage projects. Illinois’ share of this is about 80 GW – equivalent to 20 Braidwood-sized reactors.
Conclusion: aggressively expand efficiency, renewables, energy storage and improved transmission, are all faster and cheaper to deploy. No new technology required. No radioactive waste or accidents.
• Just transitions/environmental justice: Nuclear power communities need to proactively plan and save for inevitable reactor closure before they close to avoid catastrophic impacts on jobs and tax base. The Illinois General Assembly has ignored this imminent disaster since 2014, forgetting that Zion lost 55% of its tax base overnight when Zion’s reactors closed. Adding new reactors worsens this situation.
• Deteriorating regulation and safety: Recent Trump executive orders altered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s mission, for it to become an “enabler” of nuclear power, not just a regulator. These missions are totally incompatible, leaving Illinois, the most nuclear-reliant state, vulnerable to safety lapses and coverups, as was recently revealed at Constellation’s Quad Cities reactors.
Some small modular nuclear reactor designs eliminate safety containment structures, reduce or eliminate emergency planning zones, and reduce operation and security personnel to save money.
• Citizen oversight needed: Recent nuclear-related scandals, indictments and convictions in Illinois, Ohio and South Carolina illustrate that government can no longer be trusted to police its own on nuclear matters. All 12-plus million Illinoisans need a meaningful voice in deciding whether Illinois should embrace more nuclear, or continue to implement the energy plans in the 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act energy legislation emphasizing renewables, efficiency and energy storage.
For decades, nuclear hucksters have ignored these and other issues. Benefiting from multimillion-dollar government/private PR campaigns, nuclear used-car salespeople bamboozle an uninformed public, touting only nuclear benefits.
Illinois must thoroughly examine both sides of the nuclear ledger, or risk losing not only its renewable energy future, but potentially its environment and economy. Einstein once cautioned, “Clever people solve problems. Geniuses avoid them.” Caveat emptor.
David Kraft is director of the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service.
This article appears in October 16-22, 2025.
“Illinois’ 14 reactors have produced 11,000-plus tons of high-level radioactive waste (HLRW)”
And 98% of that is either uranium, or is non-radioactive after a decade or two. Global death toll from nuclear power spent fuel so far: zero.
“Real climate solutions are not radioactive.”
Nuclear power has so far displaced over 70 billion tonnes of CO2 which would have been released without it. Future hotter reactors could also use the secondary heat to pull CO2 out of the air.
“reactors in Switzerland and France closed due to climate extremes”
Smaller, hotter reactors could be air-cooled, avoiding this problem.
“Some small modular nuclear reactor designs eliminate safety containment structures”
Yes, like the Kairos design, which will not have the enormous steam containment dome. But it won’t need it because there is no water in the reactor, making a steam excursion impossible.
“reduce or eliminate emergency planning zones”
A zone sized for large-scale meltdown potential isn’t needed for reactors which can’t have core meltdowns in the first place.
“nuclear used-car salespeople bamboozle an uninformed public, touting only nuclear benefits.”
Nuclear benefits aren’t touted enough. A James Hansen study concluded 1.8 million additional lives would have been cut short by dirtier power alternatives if we hadn’t deployed nuclear power. Additional millions of health crisis events were avoided, along with hundreds of billions in medical costs. Thousands of tonnes of heavy metal poisons like mercury and arsenic were not discharged. The environmental destruction from coal and lignite mining was reduced. Commercial nuclear reactors gave us the means to destroy the fuel from 20,000 nuclear warheads. etc. Meanwhile professional anti-nukes get paid to do fearmongering about one of the safest forms of energy we’ve ever developed–and to try to scare us away from developing even safer kinds of nuclear. (which could destroy their livelihood)
“Einstein once cautioned…”
Probably false.
The US isn’t making key pieces of tech for infrastructure like the Chinese are for the US. So by her mentality I just gotta be handed all my govt positions, run my locales into the ground, and then I’ll be qualified? Good thing I’m almost done with my Business Management degree; I can kick this off effortlessly. I’m sure the US may have some access to cyber attacks but it’s not anywhere near the scale and ease China would have by building the tech in the first place. The China-US war over Taiwan will be fought in the streets of America between desperate disinformed mobs. She has my utmost support and blessings! Hopefully AOC can be the dressing for the word salad! Everyone I’ve talked to that’s remotely involved with utilities, public infrastructure, telecommunications, etc. already operates under the assumption that their network has been completely compromised by CCP or CCP affiliated hackers. My takeaway is basically if you’re a utility that’s not a nuclear facility you’re probably already compromised and have been for years.
Media has lost its independence. The atomic industry is sustained by a massive public relations machine which uses semantic tricks, including misusing words, to confuse radiation victims as to the cause of their illnesses. For eight decades, they have repeatedly discounted and denied accurate medical diagnoses for both civilians and military personnel. In cases of low-level radiation, like that surrounding nuclear power plants, the latent period for disease can be long, so industry and government intentionally obfuscate the fact that many illnesses originate with radiation. Long term dosimetry studies do not recognize low dose exposure. The people of Japan suffering from Fukushima melt down have an inalienable right to health and to life in a healthy environment. The examination of children’s thyroid glands benefits not only the patients themselves, whose cancers can be detected and treated at an early stage, but also the entire population, which is affected by irradiation from radioactive fallout. The correct continuation and scientific monitoring of thyroid examinations are therefore in the public interest and must not be thwarted by political or economic motives. Diagnosed with cancer in Japan can affect employment, mortgages, health insurance.
After the world’s first commercial nuclear reactor meltdown, the same powers neglect distributing potassium iodide pills for emergencies for fear it will clue people into the dangers of nuclear. Today, the dark truths of nuclear power are concealed by billionaires seeking their own profits without any concern for people and the planet. A coalition of large energy users like Amazon, Google, Dow and Meta pledged in March to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050. Financial institutions like Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley also endorsed the commitment for nuclear expansion.
The only two reactors the U.S. has managed to build this century – at Vogtle in Georgia – cost $35 billion for just 2.2 gigawatts. That made them the most expensive power plants ever built on the earth. And the kicker? Ratepayers had to pay thousands of dollars on their bills before the plant even produced a single electron. That’s the magic of nuclear power – it charges you before it delivers and often even if the project never gets finished.
Nobody ever thinks to remove all subsidies on everything and let the free market sort it out. Solar, wind, and oil are heavily subsidized too. Everything is. No one has a clear price signal to tell what is best with all these distortions and regulations.