My career, primarily in the electric utility industry, has focused on renewable energy and energy conservation. I would like to respond to recent advocacy for nuclear power and skepticism relating to renewable resources. Here is my overview of the attributes of renewals.

• Renewable energy does not produce a radioactive waste, thus avoiding the health and terrorism implications of nuclear power. The half-life of plutonium-239, a product of nuclear fission, is 22,000 years. You can’t guard a disposal site that long.
• The variability of solar and wind generation is being addressed with batteries, hydro storage, time of day electricity pricing, incentivized demand control, new transmission lines, and emergency generation in critical facilities. Most of these are seasoned technologies.
• Solar and wind generation can be decentralized (“distributed energy”). This, compared to centralized power plants, reduces the probability of wide-scale blackouts and the vulnerability to acts of terror and war.
• Solar and wind resources can be deployed much quicker – often within a year – than nuclear power plants, which allows them to better track actual demand rather than projected demand.
• Solar and wind can be built in a wide range of scales and financing arrangements – thus increasing the market and minimizing the risk of technological surprises and cost overruns. Even modular nuclear power plants require large capital commitments.
• Utility-scale solar and on-shore wind, as of 2024, offer the lowest levelized cost of energy compared to other new power resources, including nuclear.
• Large-scale renewable energy is maturing. According to Canary Media, “Across the U.S., 10 states currently generate half or more of their electricity supply from renewables, with Iowa and South Dakota leading thanks to abundant wind power. In Texas, solar generated more electricity than coalfor the first time in March [of 2024].” Renewables are good business for rural America.
• Energy efficiency is effectively a renewable resource. Successful efficiency measures over the years include LED lights, efficient industrial motors, the Energy Star program, and decades of related “market transformation” programs. By 1990 data confirmed that we can thrive economically while decreasing our per-capita power consumption. Between 2022 and 2027, the Northwest Power Planning Council recommends that the US Pacific Northwest acquire between 750 and 1000 aMW of power (which will power 600,000 to 800,000 homes) through energy efficiency.
• Technology advances in deep geothermal drilling will likely make the earth’s energy a widely available renewable resource – using the infrastructure of retired power plants.
• Any talk of removing subsidies for renewable resources should include removing subsidies to nuclear power, such as:
  • The Civil Nuclear Credit Program is a $6 billion subsidy under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021.
  • The Price-Anderson Act of 1954 and its Amendment in 1988 specifically limits the liability to the nuclear plant owners in case of accident. No private insurer would accept that risk.
  • Over the history of the nuclear industry, the many substantial cost-overruns have been born by taxpayers and rate payers, not

I initially became aware of the multitude of problems with nuclear power in 1975. This motivated me to choose a career to develop sustainable alternatives to nuclear power. Still, for the last couple decades, I’ve been quiet about the problems of nuclear power. After all, nuclear is arguably a low-carbon form of energy (ignoring the considerable emissions from the nuclear fuel cycle). And don’t we need all the resources we can get to combat Climate Change?

Besides concerns about the land area and mined materials renewables require may be well founded. And what about the power requirements of Artificial Intellegence?

Here’s why I speak out now. The current President is likely to support nuclear power and its financial constituency to the exclusion of renewables. Also, five bills are proposed in the Oregon Legislature to override a ballot initiative passed in 1980 to prohibit new nuclear plants in the state until (1) a federally approved permanent repository of nuclear waste is in place, and (2) the voters of Oregon approve issuance of a site permit.

If we deeply RE-invest in nuclear power, we effectively deny resources for renewables – not only in federal legislation but in our nation’s utility infrastructure.  We’d be folding a winning hand. Nuclear power is too expensive to meter.

BIO:

Jon Biemer is registered as a professional mechanical engineer in California. This blog article is adapted from his response to “Nuclear waste could be a game-changer to unlimited electricity,” posted in America Out Loud News, by Roland Stein, Oliver Hemmers, and Steve Curtis, December 23, 2024. Jon Biemer is author of Our Journey to Sustainability: How Everyday Heroes Make a Difference (2024) and Our Environmental Handprints: Recover the Land, Reverse Global Warming, Reclaim the Future (2021).