Who Pays the Price for Nuclear's Clean Energy Promise?
Your "backyard"?
Who Pays the Price for Nuclear’s Clean Energy Promise?
Atmos.earth | Yessenia Funes | 07.09.2025
Nuclear has been promoted as a climate solution for an energy-hungry society looking to wean itself from oil and gas. But is it as clean as advocates say?
Everything you can look at, breathe in, and touch is made up of tiny atoms. These basic units of our physical world require advanced microscopes to observe in real time, but our eyes witness what comes out of their collective amalgamation. We, too, are made of atoms—billions upon billions make up a single person. They are the building blocks of all the people and places we love.
These microscopic particles also carry energy, which is just what the world needs these days. Nuclear energy currently derives from splitting an atom. If hit just right by another particle, an atom can release its energy. This is called nuclear fission. In water, this reaction emits a strange and entrancing blue glow called Cherenkov radiation. Around the globe, some 440 reactors can trigger this reaction and convert the energy to electricity. One nuclear reactor can produce as much power as about 3 million solar panels, but only about 9% of global electricity comes from nuclear. At last year’s climate negotiations, known as COP29, six new countries agreed to triple their nuclear energy by 2050. Now, a total of 31 countries have pledged their commitment. Under former President Joe Biden, the United States made its own pro-nuclear promises in 2024, too.
“We’re at the start of quite a large expansion for nuclear,” said Henry Preston, a spokesperson for the World Nuclear Association, which represents the industry. Indeed, the recent passage of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” enshrines nuclear as central to the future energy mix of the United States.
Who could have guessed that Dump would Hump dirty and dangerous Nukes?
Unlike outdated fossil fuel-based energy sources like coal, oil, and gas, nuclear power doesn’t release greenhouse gases. That’s why many governments and the tech sector, in part spurred on by the expansion of energy-hungry AI, are looking to nuclear power as the future of clean energy. However, others believe that characterization of nuclear energy as “green” is oversimplified, saying that it ignores the dirty details of how atoms wind up in these reactors in the first place, the radioactive forever waste their reactions produce, and the military implications of advancing nuclear technologies.
“Nuclear is not clean,” said Kevin Kamps, a radioactive waste specialist for Beyond Nuclear...more
https://atmos.earth/who-pays-the-price-for-nuclears-energy-promise/
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In 2025, every form of "energy" is "dangerous". Some are more dangerous than others. Do you want your children's children guarding barrels of toxic waste generated so you could charge up your iPhone?
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Nuclear Waste: How Industry and Politics Created a Toxic Nightmare | Seed Documentary
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We do not need to derive all of our energy from a single source, nor is it (in my opinion) wise to. Most of the analysts I respect say it is necessary to use a variety of sources.
Energy derived from burning stuff (coal, oil, natural gas, trees, garbage…) contributes to atmospheric CO₂. It may be too late to undo the damage we have already done, perhaps we can slow & stop the damage we are currently doing. I think we can all agree this is necessary.
Nuclear energy is not without its own impacts. “Nuclear waste” is only one, and one which (I believe) is overestimated. Uranium is mined. Uranium mining in the US left behind a legacy of abandoned mines, contaminated land, water even homes. We don’t care about that, because it mostly affects the Navaho.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-06/documents/atsdr_uranium_and_radiation_basics_dec_2014_0.pdf
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-06/documents/atsdr_uranium_and_radiation_contact_dec_2014.pdf
Uranium mining has changed, with new means of mass extraction, including “open pit and underground mining,” “in situ leach (ISL) mining” and “heap leaching.” These days, we generally leave it to the poor of other countries deal with the mess.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/uranium-mining-overview
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining
“Renewable” energy is growing in significance, but has its drawbacks as well. Many of the ways we produce it rely on minerals which are mined, some in horrible environmental conditions. Conditions can be cleaner, but that means more overhead, making the product more expensive to produce, so… (as usual) we find desperately poor people to exploit…
https://www.ehn.org/chinas-rare-earth-mining-boom-leaves-toxic-legacy-in-water-and-soil
https://www.wboi.org/npr-news/2025-07-12/in-myanmar-a-rush-for-rare-earth-metals-is-causing-a-regional-environmental-disaster
“No nukes” is a simple-minded, knee-jerk reaction. However, there are drawbacks to nuclear power which must be acknowledged, just as there are to other “clean energy” sources, like hydroelectric dams, PV solar, wind turbines… “No renewables” (and the false equivalence, renewables = fossil fuels) is a similarly simple-minded, dogmatic position.
Nuclear fusion would be cleaner than nuclear fission, but it is not ready for deployment. “Gen-IV” fission reactors would be cleaner (and safer) than the “Gen-II” reactors which make up the vast majority of the world’s existing nuclear reactor “fleet” but, while closer to deployment than fusion reactors, thousands of “Gen-IV” reactors will not appear overnight.
Regardless of the choice of primary generation, to balance supply with fluctuating demand, energy storage is needed. (One possibility is hydrogen. I am becoming increasingly interested in “green ammonia.” Green ammonia has multiple uses, including the production of fertilizer, which currently is primarily produced using natural gas.)
