There are a hundred reasons why nuclear energy can play a massive role in the future of American power and prosperity.
It creates high-paying jobs better than any other energy source. Its fuel sources are abundant. It fuels NASA’s most innovative projects. It offers a solution to conservation concerns without devastating the economy. And despite its sensationalist image, it is far safer than fossil fuels, and about the same in safety as solar and wind.
“Nuclear provides 55% of our country’s clean energy, and about 20% of our power, and it’s one of the most reliable generators that we have on the grid today,” says Dr. Rita Baranwal, who this month completed her tenure as assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy in the Trump administration. “Our reactors in the U.S. avoid putting out 470 million metric tons of carbon emissions each year. That number is equivalent to removing 100 million cars off the road.”
But the field has been in a hard spot for decades. With high degrees of government regulation and small amounts of government investment, reactors have been shut down across the country, destroying jobs and energy.
The last four years, however, have seen early signs of what might just be a fission renaissance. After being slashed by President Obama in favor of more image-friendly and less efficient sources, the Trump administration has ramped up American investment in nuclear energy.
“When the president took office in 2017, he ordered a review of nuclear energy policy, and he said that he wanted to begin to revive and expand our nuclear energy sector,” Baranwal told The Federalist. “And so he issued an executive order, promoting energy independence and economic growth, and that included the recognition that nuclear energy is a clean baseload power source that’s very important to overcoming our environmental challenges.”
These changes, and the increases in funding that have come with them, have resulted in groundbreaking accomplishments in American nuclear energy that have hardly received the coverage they deserve.
The Federalist spoke with the recent assistant secretary about the frontline of these changes and how they can shape the future of American power. While there are far too many new policies to entirely capture in one article, what follows are three major concrete improvements — and why they’re so important.
Revolutionary Small Reactors Are On Their Way…
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