Granholm’s Belated Nuclear Advocacy is a Welcome Development

In what has been an all-too-rare moment of energy policy lucidity from the current presidential administration, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, in Georgia last Friday to celebrate the opening of Georgia Power Company’s Plant Vogtle Unit 4 nuclear unit, advocated for expanded US investment in nuclear power in the coming years. Naturally, she couched her remarks in the context of reaching the Biden presidency’s ‘net-zero by 2050’ goal, which Bloomberg NEF recently said will cost well over $200 trillion globally.

“It is now time for others to follow their lead to reach our goal of getting to net zero by 2050," Granholm said. "We have to at least triple our current nuclear capacity in this country.”

This is great as far as it goes, especially coming from the authoritarian governing class that has been pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into unpredictable, intermittent power generation sources like wind and solar. Those industries, which have essentially become clients of the Democratic party in their thirst for a constantly rising suite of federal subsidies in recent years, lack the energy density to truly serve as adequate replacements for coal and natural gas in power generation.

That’s a problem nuclear facilities like the Vogtle Plant do not share, but President Biden and his senior political appointees have been largely silent about nuclear’s potential to help them make progress on their project to cut emissions of plant food, i.e., carbon dioxide. In addition to its high energy density, nuclear also emits zero carbon, a fact the Democratic party has long pooh-poohed in favor of superstitious fealty to lingering narratives about the dangers of radiation, nuclear waste disposal, and meltdowns that have never taken place.