One thing Hollywood is very good at is scaring the bejesus out of Americans — even when they’re merely spreading false fears.
A famous movie in 1979 called “The China Syndrome” chronicled a nuclear power accident that could kill tens of thousands of Americans with radiation poisoning. The title came from a spooky fairy-tale scenario in which the nuclear material would melt the Earth right through to its core and then all the way down to China. Despite causing few deaths, the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania that year further panicked Americans about the safety of nuclear plants.
The damage to the industry was done and nearly fatal. For nearly four decades, the nuclear industry failed to permit any more new nuclear plants.
That was yesterday. The time is right for a nuclear renaissance. The incoming administration, from President-elect Donald J. Trump on down, is pro-American energy independence. Nuclear power has to be part of the equation.
We need to get back to building new plants so we have the electric power capacity for the next generation of artificial intelligence and other uses that will tax the grid beyond what it can provide. AI will use three to four times as much energy as the internet, so demand is going to spike, and we will be at risk of brownouts.
Jack Spencer — an energy policy expert at the Heritage Foundation — has just published a fabulous policy manifesto, “Nuclear Revolution: Powering the Next Generation,” on how we unleash (we love that word) a nuclear power renaissance in America.
Spencer shows conclusively that “obstructive regulations at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and antinuclear scare tactics from the left are what has inhibited this industry for decades.”
It’s as if Jane Fonda (remember her in “The China Syndrome”?) was running our energy policy.
Today we get a little less than 20% of our electric power from decades-old nuclear plants that are now being retired. If we don’t build new ones, we will lose ground on our energy production at the very time we need much more capacity.
The federal government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on wind and solar subsidies — but these are still niche energy sources that are not scalable to meet our $25 trillion industrial economy’s needs. Former Vice President Al Gore and the climate change environmental groups should be all in on nuclear as a clean energy source with very minimal greenhouse gases.
If we double our nuclear power capacity over the next decade or so and allow more natural gas and oil drilling here at home, we can regain our energy-dominant position. OPEC would be a toothless tiger, and the Russian war machine could be defunded.
Small reactors that can serve towns of 50,000 to 100,000 people can minimize risks of major plant accidents that could put Americans in danger.
It’s all so logical. It puts America first.
We don’t need Fonda dictating our energy policy any longer.
Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He was also an economic adviser to the Trump campaign.
