A new generation finds promise in nuclear power

When Heather Hoff took a job at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, she was skeptical of nuclear power – so much so that she decided to report anything suspicious to the anti-nuclear group Mothers for Peace.

Instead, after working at the plant for more than a decade and asking every question she could think of about operations and safety, she founded her own group, Mothers for Nuclear, in 2016 to keep the plant alive.

“I was very nervous,” said Hoff, 45. “I felt very lonely — no one else was doing it. We looked around for friends — other pro-nuclear groups. … There weren't very many.”

Today, however, public support for nuclear power is at its highest in more than a decade as government and private industry strive to reduce reliance on planet-warming fossil fuels.

While a series of nuclear disasters decades ago had caused most older Americans to mistrust technology, this has not been the case for younger generations.

Old-school environmentalists “grew up in the generation of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. … Today's Gen Zers didn't,” said David Weisman, 63, who has been involved in the Diablo Canyon closure since the '90s and serves as legal director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility.

“They don't remember how paralyzed the nation was by panic a week after Three Mile Island. … They don't remember the shock of Chernobyl less than seven years later.”

Public support for nuclear power is at its highest in more than a decade. Here, the controlled reactors of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant rise along the California coast.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

Many of these young nuclear advocates – speaking out on social media sites like X and Instagram – hope that the renewed interest will spur a second renewal of nuclear power, helping California, the US and the rest of the world meet ambitious climate goals.

“I think we're a generation that's ready to make this transition, and accept the facts with emotion, and we're ready to transition to a clean, reliable and safe energy source,” said Veronica Annala, 23, a Texas A&M college student and president. of the school's new Nuclear Advocacy Resource Organization.

Only a few months ago, Microsoft announced plans to support the reopening of the Three Mile Island closed unit to power the data center. Amazon and Google too invested in new, advanced nuclear technology meet clean energy goals.

While some advocates wish the nuclear revival wasn't driven by power-hungry AI technology, enthusiasm for nuclear power is stronger than it's been in a generation, they say.

“There are many things happening at the same time. … This is a real renaissance of nuclear weapons,” said Gabriel Ivory, 22, a Texas A&M student and NARO vice president. “When you look at the Three Mile Island renaissance — it was something no one could have imagined.”

This enthusiasm has been accompanied by dramatic political change.

During the Cold War era of nuclear power in the 1970s and 80s, nuclear proponents – often Republicans – touted the jobs the plants would create, and argued that the United States needed to remain the world's dominant technology and weapons leader.

At the time, environmental groups, often aligned with the Democratic Party, opposed nuclear power based on the potential negative impact on the environment, the difficult problem of storing spent fuel and the small but real risk of a nuclear meltdown.

“In America … it was very political,” said Jenifer Avellaneda Diaz, 29, who works in the industry and manages a representative account. Nuclear Hazelnut. “That's a shame, because we have great experts here – many doctors, many scientists, many engineers, mathematicians, physicists.”

Today, younger Republicans are 11% more likely to support nuclear plants in the US than their older counterparts. Meanwhile the opposite is true on the left: Young Democrats are 9% more likely to support new nuclear than older Democrats, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.

As a result, while Republicans older than 65 are 27% more likely to support nuclear power than their Democratic counterparts, Republicans ages 18 to 29 are only 7% more likely to support it than their Democratic counterparts.

“Young Democrats and young Republicans may be looking at the numbers — but two different numbers,” Weisman said. “Young Republicans may look at the cost per megawatt hour, while Democrats look at a different number: parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere.”

Brendan Pittman, 33 – founder of Berkeley Amendment movementaiming to get his city downgraded to its “nuclear-weapon-free zone” status – he said he noticed that young people were more open to learning about nuclear power.

“Now, as we get into the energy crisis, and we're talking more about, 'How do we solve this?' “Young people take a logical and thoughtful review of all power, and they come to the same conclusion: Yes, it's testing nuclear boxes,” Pittman said.

“I remember getting signatures on the streets of Berkeley, and I'd say a lot of young people – when I say we're looking to support nuclear power – they just stop me and say, 'Oh you support nuclear power? Where do I sign?'” he said. “I didn't even have to sell it.”

This newfound enthusiasm has affected the nuclear industry, where two age groups have emerged: baby boomers who are increasingly taking nuclear jobs for steady work, and millennials and Gen Zers who have made a motivated choice to enter the stigmatized field, industry advocates say. .

“You get all kinds of different backgrounds, and that just blossoms into all kinds of new ideas, and I think that's part of what makes the industry so exciting right now,” said Matt Wargon, 33, the group's former chairman. Youth Membership Group of the American Nuclear Society.

Like the workers themselves, the industry has created two bubbles: traditional plants that have been operating for decades and an array of new technologies – from small reactors that can power or burn individual factories to the potentially safe category of large reactors that operate. dissolved salt in their cores instead of pressurized water.

In existing plants, young people have incorporated innovations into long-term working practices, improving safety and efficiency. For starters, those who have worked in the industry for decades provide “valuable” information that is not in the books, industry workers say.

Steam rises from the cooling towers of the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, Waynesboro, Ga.

(Mike Stewart / Associated Press)

The infusion of new talent and ideas is a major shift since Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island disaster in 1979 and the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986 devastated the industry. Regulations became stricter, and the development of new reactors and new technologies slowed down.

A false narrative about technology emerged in society. Both Hoff and Avellaneda Diaz remember their parents worrying about radiation interfering with their ability to have children. (A regular worker in Diablo it receives very little radiation per week than one passenger Flight from East Coast to West Coast.)

“Radiation is invisible — you can't see it. You won't smell it. You don't hear it,” said Wargon. “And people are often afraid of the unknown.” … So if you tell them, 'Oh this power plant has a lot of radiation coming out of it,' it's hard to get rid of it. [the misinformation and fear].”

Only when memories faded and new generations began to work did nuclear power's reputation slowly recover.

Advocates also say that college campuses have become hotbeds for talking about nuclear weapons, as Nuclear is Clean Energy (NiCE) clubs have sprung up in many California schools in the past few years.

In August, Ivory proposed “I [heart] nuclear power,” we signed after ESPN's college football broadcast. It quickly spread on social media and even caught the attention of the US Department of Energy.

Nuclear advocates say the Internet and easy access to accurate information have also helped their cause.

“That was quite a revolution because right now, it's very easy for Google,” said Avellaneda Diaz. “Back then you needed to go to the library, get a book – it wasn't that easy to get information or information.”

A poll conducted by Ann Bisconti, a scientist and nuclear opinion expert, found that 74% of people who said they felt very well informed favored the use of nuclear power in the US, while only 6% felt they had no information at all. it.

Therefore, public outreach and education have become the norm for the new nuclear advocacy movement.

“Let's be honest,” said Annala, “our generation has the entire Internet at our fingertips … so, just starting conversations is a really big deal.”

Advocates think that the ability to quickly disseminate information about nuclear power to combat misconceptions may have helped prevent nuclear power from becoming a political and cultural threat after the Fukushima accident, unlike Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.

While Texas A&M students were very young when the disaster struck, both Wargon and Pittman were in college in 2011 when the earthquake and tsunami in Japan damaged power systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, causing a meltdown. Avellaneda Diaz was in high school.

Hoff was working at Diablo Canyon when Fukushima happened. Public intimidation, claimed by the media, almost led him to quit his job.

Instead, after taking time to analyze the causes of the economic collapse and the mistakes made, he decided to embrace nuclear weapons.

For him, Fukushima was a reminder that nuclear power comes with risk – no matter how small – but that even in the worst-case scenario, operators have the skills to prevent disaster. (PG&E says the Fukushima flood episode will not be in Diablo Canyon.)

Environmental activists in Seoul march during a rally to mark the 12th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

Today, Hoff is writing emergency agreements for Diablo Canyon and hopes the industry will relearn how to communicate with the community.

He said that's what happened to him when he first – reluctantly – took a job at Diablo.

“I was a little reluctant the first couple of years,” Hoff said of his constant questioning and searching for a critical flaw.

Instead of retreating from him, this plant accepted it.