Why Nuclear Power is the Best Solution for Our Energy Needs | Michael Shellenberger

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For years, Michael Shellenberger was demonized for advocating for the use of nuclear power as a rational solution to our energy needs.

But it seems we’re seeing a major shift. There’s been a huge sea change in public opinion.

The bad news, Shellenberger says, is that in the years it took for this to happen, many nuclear plants have been shut down.

“We did lose a fair number of them. Saved a bunch of them...but they're still shutting down nuclear plants in Germany.

Facebook needs so much power for their server farms that they bought all the power from Three Mile Island. That's the one reactor that has been operating since 1979. The reactor right next to it melted in 1979 and people thought that was some apocalyptic event…The radiation was contained in the containment dome, just like it had been designed to do. And now everybody wants that power, [is] desperate for that cheap nuclear power in a plant that's already built.

…Once you build a standard water cooled nuclear plant, a big one like we have in the United States, it's guaranteed to pay for itself. It's just guaranteed. And the reason is that they can run for 92% of the year or so, which is a huge amount of time. They can basically always be on. You can rely on them for your server farms.

… 8% of the year you refuel them, or you do a little bit of maintenance, but they're guaranteed to make money. Even if they go way over budget, they're still going to make money depending on financing and the price of electricity in the 20th year or the 25th year.

And they can run forever. You might have to swap out parts, but you're talking about plants that are going to be licensed to run for 80 years or more now. So it's a long-term investment.

…You see Silicon Valley, the Trump administration, a fair number of Democrats—including the governor of California—have all recognized that nuclear is really amazing. It's really the best form of electricity.

…We should have been building a lot more of it 20, 30 years ago, but…we should at least do so now,” Shellenberger says.