We are less afraid of nuclear power than we used to be. And we are less afraid than we should be, as Big Tech seeks to promote and control nuclear power for its own ends.
Consider Microsoft’s proposal to revive Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history. Under the deal, Microsoft would be the sole beneficiary of the power generated by the facility that shuttered in 2019. Microsoft’s stated goal in reopening this plant, scheduled for 2028, is to be fully committed to “decarbonizing” the power grid.
Consider also Google’s announcement to purchase nuclear energy from small modular reactors (SMRs) owned by Kairos Power. Kairos is currently building several of these reactors in Tennessee, in the belief that multiple smaller reactors will be easier to construct and maintain than a single large one. The first energy outputs are expected in 2030.
Finally, consider Amazon, which is following in Google’s footsteps by partnering with the company X-Energy to construct its own dedicated SMRs. Its plans, which would significantly outpace Google’s by the project’s completion in 2039, include nuclear reactors in Virginia, Washington, and Tennessee.
These long-speculated plans were announced in a flurry in the fall and confirm that the future of the tech industry—and of American energy production—is nuclear. The seemingly insatiable demand for energy by large language models—the core of what we have come to know as “artificial intelligence”—will be met by nuclear power.
There has been little to no pushback on these plans. The conservative Institute for Energy Research hailed the announcements as the latest reminder that “renewable energy is unreliable” for America’s growing energy demands, because, they argue, the promise of pure renewable energy is a fairy tale and not a practical solution. A few decades ago, a progressive think tank might have issued a rebuttal, aligning with a progressive Democratic Party to condemn private companies’ strong-arming of the power grid, the government, and the public into accepting nuclear power as the only viable option. But these are not today’s politics.
At the UN’s COP29 climate summit in October, nuclear power was celebrated as the only real way to meet the energy demands of the future while also slowing down climate change. The Biden administration—and the 2024 Democratic platform with him—was bullish about nuclear power, bolstering the tech companies’ plans by releasing a nuclear roadmap this November to triple U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050.
The popularity of nuclear power has grown so much at a federal level that Republican and Democratic positions today are indistinguishable on the topic. During Biden’s 2020 presidential bid, the Democratic Party fully endorsed nuclear power for the first time since 1972. In 1980, by contrast, the Democratic party opposed all new constructions of nuclear power and pushed for investments in renewable energy, while the Republican platform endorsed coal and nuclear power.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, only Donald Trump expressed reservations about nuclear power. Talking to Joe Rogan, Trump was wary of Biden’s promises about nuclear power, citing several projects that failed during his time as president and declaring nuclear power “too big, too complex, and too expensive” to be dependable. Given Trump’s newly close ties with a tech industry begging to be unregulated, it is hard to imagine that he will want to slow down their plans. Kamala Harris did not say much about nuclear power during her short bid for presidency, but neither did she back away from the Biden administration’s clear pro-nuclear stance.
When politicians and companies talk about nuclear power, they use language of inevitability and necessity. There is no other way to become carbon neutral, they argue. Nuclear power guarantees reliability and longevity in a way that no other power source can offer. The technology, argues its defenders, has come so far that the new reactors will be safe and environmentally friendly. The math behind nuclear energy is compelling: a single kilogram of enriched uranium can produce as much energy as 88 tons of coal, 47 tons of natural gas, and 66 tons of oil. For the same amount of energy, nuclear plants produce around two percent of the emissions of fossil fuels. On paper, it is an easy sell, but we should not be so easily convinced.
The science is clear: renewable energy sources like wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal vents, and hydroelectric plants remain the only true hope for a long-term future of stabilizing the climate and producing plentiful energy while keeping our air and water clean. Renewable energy projects, compared to nuclear power, are relatively simple to construct and to scale, from rooftop solar panels to hilltop wind turbines. A recent study showed that there are enough renewable-energy projects proposed today that would meet the entire national demand for energy by 2035 if the impediments were removed. These impediments include an aging power grid, bloated algorithmic models, corporate interests protecting the fossil-fuel industry, and the lack of federal willpower to overcome regulatory bottlenecks.
Nuclear power also has vast downsides that are, unsurprisingly, not discussed in the recent announcements and strategic national plans. Nuclear plants produce large quantities of radioactive waste for which there is no safe disposal method. Nuclear plants have consistently gone vastly over budget in construction, been expensive to maintain, and take far longer to complete than originally promised—if, indeed, they are ever completed. The Three Mile Island plant that shut down in 2019 did so because of unprofitability, not concern for safety.
Furthermore, nuclear power is a massive security and health risk. As Russia continues its invasion into Ukraine, the stability of the four Ukrainian power plants continues to be in question, as they have at multiple times lost power and been damaged by Russian attacks. The many safeguards in place are not bulletproof, and the destruction of a single power plant or a critical water line could cause serious injury or death to millions of people.
Beyond the environmental, health, economic, and planning risks, nuclear plants entail an ideology that is undemocratic and sometimes even fascistic.
“If you accept nuclear power plants,” argued philosopher Jerry Mander in 1977, “you also accept a techno-scientific-industrial-military elite.” Nuclear power requires all of these institutions to create and maintain itself. It cannot be left to decay, like an old coal plant or a broken wind turbine. It must be guarded around the clock with barbed wire and military security, not because we are in danger of losing electricity, but because nuclear power inherently endangers the entire global population. Every nuclear reactor produces waste that, with its lifespan of millions of years, places demands upon our children and grandchildren to maintain the technological and military capability to deal with its eternal radioactivity.
The emergence of bipartisan support for nuclear power aligns with the affinity of both parties toward the strong military, technological, scientific, and industrial complex that Mander warned about in the seventies. The Big Tech firms of today have become as dangerous as Big Oil in their capacity to influence global markets, political fortunes, and the lives of billions. Their desire for a power source that requires centuries of military and corporate control will further blur the lines between state and corporate power, transforming the military into a de facto protector of corporate wealth. “We may be able to manage some of the ‘risks’ to public health and safety that nuclear power brings,” wrote philosopher Langdon Winner in 1986, “but as society adapts to the more dangerous and apparently indelible features of nuclear power, what will be the long-range toll in human freedom?”
And there is yet another risk: the correlation of support for nuclear energy with support for nuclear weapons. While nuclear energy and nuclear weaponry should be able to be considered separately, support for one tends to bleed into support for the other. The recent bipartisan support for nuclear energy in the United States has come alongside alarming bipartisan support for expanding our arsenal of nuclear weapons. If nuclear energy demands an unhealthy merger of technological, corporate, and military powers, expanded nuclear weaponry welcomes a new global nuclear arms race that, when combined with the rise of AI weapon systems, will almost certainly drive us to the brink of global disaster.
A nuclear future is neither inevitable nor necessary. A renewable energy future is possible. A world without nuclear weapons is possible. A world where artificially intelligent algorithms serve democratic, peaceful societies is possible. Let us not be so taken with the glamour of an algorithm or the hype of some AI singularity that we sit by and watch Big Tech, along with our own government, take a step back from a long-term commitment to renewable energy. In the end, the only answer to nuclear power is the same answer to nuclear weapons: not even one is acceptable.
