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NE Professor Ivan Maldonado Writes Op-Ed for Knoxnews

OPINION: US can fight global warming with new strategy for nuclear power, mining

Environmental groups seem indifferent to the plight of US manufacturers of clean energy products that lack a secure domestic supply of materials.

G. Ivan Maldonado
Guest columnist

Ivan Maldonado.

Think for a minute about the wrongheaded view of nuclear power that the environmental movement has been espousing for decades.

In this view, nuclear power is a fiasco, doing nobody any good. This was the kind of thinking that underlay a recent letter to Congress, in which more than 600 environmental groups opposed the Biden administration’s effort to keep existing nuclear plants open, claiming it’s a ”false solution” in the battle against global warming.

Never mind that nuclear plants provide electricity reliably, without loading the atmosphere with carbon emissions. In fact, the fleet of nearly 100 U.S. nuclear plants accounts for more than 55% of the nation’s zero-carbon energy, a larger share than any other energy source. Nuclear plants like those in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s nuclear fleet provide baseload electricity reliably, without loading the atmosphere with carbon emissions. Yet environmental groups that purport to be the most concerned about global warming oppose nuclear power.

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