Where Are The Pro-Nuclear Democrats?

From the Robert Bryce Substack

Once again, nuclear energy is absent from the Democratic Party Platform and it’s gone missing at the same time China is accelerating its nuclear buildout. Plus, radio and podcast hits.

About 15 years ago, I visited a high-ranking official at the Department of Energy at his office in Washington. We chatted for 30 minutes about the obstacles facing nuclear energy deployment in the US, including Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations, supply chains, and the need for a stable fuel supply. Toward the end of our conversation, he said that one of the biggest problems with nuclear energy is that it needs bipartisan support in Congress. That hasn’t happened because “Democrats are pro-government and anti-nuclear,” he said. Meanwhile, “Republicans are pro-nuclear and anti-government.”

To be clear, Democrats have been more vocal recently in their support for nuclear energy. In June, during an appearance at the Plant Vogtle in Georgia, where two new 1-gigawatt nuclear reactors have come online, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said, “We have to at least triple our current nuclear capacity in this country.” Also in June, the Senate passed, by a vote of 88 to 2, the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act, which aims to speed up the federal process for approving and deploying new reactors. (Ed Markey, the Democrat from Massachusetts, and Bernie Sanders, the Independent from Vermont, were the only senators to vote no on the measure.)  Last month, President Biden signed that bill into law.

The passage of the ADVANCE Act (and Granholm’s rhetoric) will give a much-needed boost to the domestic nuclear sector. But don’t expect to hear the words “nuclear energy” during the final two days of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Nor will you find a single mention of nuclear energy in the just-released Democratic Party Platform. Alas, this isn’t surprising.

The omission of nuclear energy in the party’s platform shows, yet again, that while Democrats are making climate change a top talking point — the word “climate” appears 81 times in the 92-page platform — the Democratic Party is still firmly in the grip of big anti-nuclear NGOs that operate on $100 million+ annual budgets. Those groups, which include Sierra Club, NRDC, and League of Conservation Voters, are integral to the party’s fundraising and get-out-the-vote effort. Those same NGOs continue to insist that the US can run its economy on alt-energy. Thus, the party’s top leaders dare not risk alienating them.

Indeed, as I explained in May, renewable energy fetishism dominates the Left’s approach to energy. The word “solar” appears nine times in the party’s platform, wind energy gets two mentions, and “clean energy” — the catch-all marketing term that has become the rationale for hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare under the Inflation Reduction Act — appears 44 times. (The word “Trump” appears 150 times!)

The omission of nuclear energy in the 2024 Democratic Party Platform means that over the past 52 years, nuclear power has received only one positive mention in its platform. That mention occurred in 2020. I wrote about it four years ago in Forbes:

It took five decades, but the Democratic Party has finally changed its stance on nuclear energy. In its recently released party platform, the Democrats say they favor a “technology-neutral” approach that includes “all zero-carbon technologies, including hydroelectric power, geothermal, existing and advanced nuclear, and carbon capture and storage.” That statement marks the first time since 1972 that the Democratic Party has said anything positive in its platform about nuclear energy. The change in policy is good — and long overdue — news for the American nuclear-energy sector and for everyone concerned about climate change. 

Before going further, I must note that the Republicans aren’t exactly jumping up and down over nuclear energy. In its 16-page platform, the GOP mentions it just once, saying, “Republicans will unleash Energy Production from all sources, including nuclear, to immediately slash Inflation and power American homes, cars, and factories with reliable, abundant, and affordable Energy.”

So why does this matter? There are four reasons.

First, China and other countries are leaping ahead of the US in terms of nuclear energy. Earlier this week, China announced it will spend $31 billion to build 11 new reactors over the next five years. The new projects include a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor in Jiangsu province. The US has led the world in nuclear technology since the end of World War II. And yet, we now risk being technological laggards in deploying new nuclear technology. According to the IAEA, China now has 28.5 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity under construction. The US, again, according to the IAEA, has no reactors under construction.

Second, there is no chance for large-scale decarbonization of the global economy without nuclear energy, and lots of it. Last December, during COP28 in Dubai, the US and more than 20 other countries signed a pledge to triple nuclear energy production by 2050. The first sentence of the declaration “recognizes the key role of nuclear energy in achieving global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.” The US delegation led the push to get countries to sign the declaration. So why aren’t Democrats touting their own effort?

Pew’s August 5 report shows the increase in support for nuclear energy.

Third, while polls show a tight race between Harris and Trump, the majority of Americans, some 56%, favor nuclear energy. An August 5 poll from the Pew Research Center found support for nuclear has soared over the past four years:

Americans remain more likely to favor expanding solar power (78%) and wind power (72%) than nuclear power. Yet while support for solar and wind power has declined by double digits since 2020 — largely driven by drops in Republican support — the share who favor nuclear power has grown by 13 percentage points over that span.

Fourth, the bully pulpit matters. If the US is going to revive its nuclear sector — an industry that has been withering for the past three decades — the public needs to hear about it from the country’s top leaders. Alas, that hasn’t happened at the convention in Chicago. And given the absence of nuclear energy in the Democrats’ platform, there’s no reason to expect to hear anything about nuclear tonight or tomorrow night.