Posted on Friday, January 17, 2025

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by Ben Solis

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An increasing number of states have now passed legislation designating nuclear power as a source of “green energy.” Congress could soon be set to do the same.

Ohio became the latest state to pass such legislation just before Christmas when Governor Mike DeWine signed HB 308, officially rolling nuclear under the state’s legal definition of “green energy.” Notably, the bill garnered support from both Republicans and Democrats, who said the legislation signaled that Ohio is open for nuclear research and development.

One of the bill’s cosponsors, Sean Brennan, a Democrat from Parma, has said such legislation is necessary to meet growing energy demand. “It doesn’t promise any incentives or anything beyond simply placing nuclear under the category of green energy in the Ohio Revised Code,” Brennan told The Akron Signal. Ohio also passed a bill in 2023 designating natural gas as green energy.

The Buckeye State joins a growing list of other states that have passed similar legislation, including Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Utah. Even states that haven’t officially designated nuclear as “green” have shown interest in nuclear as new technologies like small modular reactors (SMRs) promise to make nuclear power generation safer and cheaper than ever before.

In light of these developments, investment in nuclear power as green energy, or perhaps more accurately clean energy, could become a key part of fulfilling President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to deliver “the number one lowest cost energy and electricity on earth.” The International Energy Agency estimates the cost of electricity production from nuclear to be roughly 30 percent cheaper than offshore wind or solar.

The American Legislative Exchange Council has already published a model bill which tags nuclear as green energy. As the bill points out, nuclear is reliable, “has a stable and predictable cost,” and produces less pollutants than natural gas.

There may not be a more opportune time for such a law than now, as polls indicate a growing support for nuclear energy among the American people. The 2024 National Nuclear Public Opinion Survey, conducted since 1983 by a firm specializing in energy-related issues, showed a record-high 77 percent of respondents favored using nuclear energy to generate electricity. Another poll from ecoAmerica found that 78 percent of Americans believe nuclear energy boosts growth, cuts pollution, and reduces energy costs.

I spoke with several industry experts for this column who explained that nuclear is not only safe, but also necessary to ensure a secure energy future for the United States and the West.

Accidents like Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Fukushima (2011) have led to lasting safety concerns when it comes to nuclear, but the data shows that nuclear is on average far safer than every other method of power generation except solar. New and improved technologies also have made nuclear safer than ever before, and nuclear engineers have learned from past disasters.

In the case of Chernobyl, the meltdown was caused by a deadly combination of outdated equipment, failure to follow basic safety procedures, and reckless experimentation ordered by the Soviet regime. Scientists at the plant were instructed to skip the typical cooling of the reactor to increase plutonium production for nuclear weapons.

Concerns about nuclear waste are also largely overblown. Retired Austrian nuclear engineer Dr. Helmut von Wiegand called nuclear waste “a legitimate concern, but not an unsolvable one.” While proper storage is a must, new technologies have again mitigated risks and provided new opportunities. Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, for instance, could reduce waste while increasing power output. President Jimmy Carter imposed a moratorium on the practice in 1979, but Trump could lift it.

The abundance of nuclear fuels also adds to the benefits of nuclear energy. At current consumption rates, there is enough accessible uranium to last at least the next 230 years. Uranium can also be extracted from seawater, a supply that is constantly replenished through erosion, runoff, and plate tectonics.

Perhaps most importantly of all, expanding nuclear energy production may be a necessity to meet the energy demands of the economy of tomorrow. New technologies like Artificial Intelligence require enormous amounts of energy. One query on Chat GPT pulls ten times as much energy as a Google search. Global electricity demand has already increased by 31 percent since 2000 and is set to grow by an annual average of 3.4 percent through 2026.

But in order to unleash the full potential of nuclear energy, the industry will need buy-in from leaders in Washington. In a bitterly partisan environment, nuclear could be one area of common ground, as it addresses Republican desire for cheaper electricity and Democrats’ push for cleaner energy – so long as Democrats are willing to ignore the cries of protest from a small minority of radical environmental lobbying groups.

Even without Democrat support, Republicans now have the power to prioritize nuclear investment. Liberal dreams of a “green revolution” may well come to pass – just not in the way they had hoped.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.