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Forty-six years after a nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, the Trump administration is lending Constellation Energy a billion dollars to restart the undamaged reactor at the plant, located in Middletown, Pennsylvania. It was the site of the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history, which speaks extraordinarily well of nuclear energy.
For anyone who was around in the late 70s and 80s, the turn of events probably seems remarkable. When I was growing up, Three Mile Island was often talked about as if it were another Hiroshima. The alarmism surrounding the meltdown stunted the growth of nuclear energy.
And, of course, the initial concerns regarding the accident were completely understandable. But no one died due to the Three Mile Island meltdown. No one was even hurt. There was no evidence that any harm had come to locals. A 1985 report from the Pennsylvania State Health Department found no increase in cancer. A 1998 study from Columbia University’s School of Public Health and the National Audubon Society found no indication of higher cancer rates either. A 20-year study by the University of Pittsburgh found no overall increase in cancer deaths in the five-mile radius around the plant. Another 13-year study, which tracked lung cancer and leukemia within a five-mile radius, found no increase.
I was somewhat surprised to learn that public attitudes did not change significantly after the accident. Three Mile Island had very little effect on people’s views about, for instance, the safety of new power plants. In the months following the accident, 21% of Americans reported that nuclear power plants are “very safe,” while another 46% said they are “somewhat safe.” Only 30% said they are “not so safe.” This represented only a 2% shift from before the accident.
Over the next couple of decades, you couldn’t read a story about nuclear energy without a mention of Three Mile Island. Support began to drop. In 1989, the Shoreham nuclear power plant near where I was raised was decommissioned after a long campaign by anti-nuclear activists. New York state took over the project and attached a 3% surcharge to every Long Island electric bill for 30 years to pay off the $6 billion it cost to build the now-useless plant.
At some point, the dangers of nuclear meltdowns were conflated with fears of nuclear war, a not unfounded concern of Americans during the Cold War. From the 1980s and 1990s, nearly every poll found a majority or plurality of Americans opposing expansion of nuclear energy.
Those decades saw plenty of cultural scaremongering over nuclear energy and proliferation. “The China Syndrome” was released days before the Three Mile Island accident. It was hailed as a prophetic film regarding the perils of a nuclear world. However, the fictional account was far worse and scientifically dubious than any real accident in the United States. Others, from “Silkwood” to “War Games” to a slew of apocalyptic movies such as the Mad Max films, which, to be fair, only made a post-nuclear dystopia look cool, all played on the anxieties of the nuclear age.
Perhaps the most successful piece of scaremongering, however, came in the form of the made-for-TV anti-nuclear proliferation film, “The Day After.” In an age of virtually unlimited viewing choices, it may be difficult to comprehend what a big deal a television movie could be. More than 100 million Americans, nearly 39 million households, watched the bleak film. After the airing, ABC hosted a debate featuring Carl Sagan, William F. Buckley, Henry Kissinger, and Elie Wiesel. Local TV set up hotlines so that horror-struck Americans could call to get help grappling with the trauma caused by the movie.
In recent years, HBO produced the show “Chernobyl” about the 1986 meltdown of Reactor No. 4 at a nuclear plant in the Soviet Union, which exploded during a safety test. Like most nuclear accidents, human error was at fault. Thirty-one people died, and hundreds of thousands involved in the cleanup were exposed to radiation.
The lesson is that two-bit autocracies shouldn’t have nuclear power or weapons.
The other notable nuclear accident occurred in Japan in 2011 when an earthquake destroyed reactors in Fukushima. Around 20,000 people were killed by the quake and subsequent tsunami. Not one person died due to radiation.
Currently, the United States operates 54 commercial nuclear power plants and has 93 active commercial reactors. The last serious accident was at Three Mile Island. In total, there have been 13 fatalities at nuclear facilities since 1955. To put that in context, around 100 Americans die extracting oil, gas, and coal each year. The amount of regulatory oversight of nuclear facilities is immense. And new technology makes them safer than the old ones.
Perhaps the lack of any deadly accidents was one of the reasons minds have changed. Nearly every poll has shown a significant increase in support for nuclear energy over the past decade. Perhaps the clamoring for “clean energy” has also changed some minds. In that regard, nothing beats nuclear power right now.
The 40-year campaign to demonize fossil fuels has failed. Gas, oil, and coal remain the cheapest, most portable, and most effective energy sources available. We have an abundance of it in the United States. We can still import it relatively cheaply. And there are centuries more of the stuff in the ground. The only energy scarcity we experience is the one we create for ourselves through bad public policy.
Despite its history, nuclear already generates far more electricity than solar in the United States, despite the endless championing, subsidizing, and mandating of other “alternative” energy sources. Nuclear generates nearly 20% of the U.S. electricity, while solar generates around 5%. Without government inducements and taxpayer support, the solar industry would likely collapse, as a single nuclear plant would generate as many as tens of millions of solar panels.
The real technological race for the future isn’t for better solar panels but for nuclear fusion, which would create four times the energy of traditional nuclear fission and four million times more than burning fossil fuels, with no greenhouse gases or dangerous radioactive waste.
Currently, China spends twice as much on researching this technology.
FROM ‘FAMILY FIRST’ TO ‘ME FIRST’: HOW AMERICAN VALUES COLLAPSED
Now, it’s also true that nuclear plants need significant capital investment and government assistance to cover the tremendous upfront costs and risks associated with getting a plant online. If you have a philosophical problem with government loans, then you may not love nuclear power, either. But if we’re going to create a national policy of energy dominance, why not back the source that wins in almost every way?
Especially now that Americans have largely overcome their irrational fears.
