New England Governors: Stop Chasing a Nuclear Fantasy

Are all six New England governors out of their minds? It’s 2026, renewable energy is surging globally, nuclear power plants remain as dangerous as ever, and they want to build new nukes?

On September 30, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey will host her regional counterparts at a “pro-nuclear summit” at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, for the public to supposedly learn about the so-called safety and benefits of “advanced” nuclear energy. Protesters will be there in droves, led in part by the Clamshell Alliance, which began exposing the perils of atomic energy half a century ago. The dangers nukes pose haven’t changed; 21st century marketing has.

At a time when the governors—and other government leaders—should be the strongest voices promoting renewable energy, many instead either enacted legislation, or offered incentives, or adjusted regulatory frameworks to support nuclear development. We’re in the midst of a catastrophic climate emergency that demands we accelerate clean energy, not gamble our future on repackaged nukes.

Here’s a question: How likely would any state be taking another bite of the nuclear apple if the Trump administration hadn’t cut nearly $8 billion in Biden-era renewables funding last year? There’s a story CNN, MS NOW, and Politico would be well advised to pursue.

New nuclear plants take 10 to 15 years to come online. Small modular reactors—the industry’s latest attempt to rebrand its radioactive product—still exist only on paper. Solar, wind, storage, and efficiency can be permitted and built now, at a fraction of the cost. Every dollar, every year spent chasing nuclear is a dollar and a year not spent on the energy sources that can actually reduce emissions safely.

In 1977, I was one of 1,414 people arrested for protesting construction of a nuclear plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire, along once-pristine salt marshes inland from the state’s coastline. Part of the Clamshell Alliance, one of the first groups in the country organizing to halt nuclear construction, we didn't need a degree in atomic energy to understand that nukes were hazardous, absurdly expensive, and a technology the government routinely lied about. The industry once claimed electricity from atomic reactors would be “too cheap to meter.”

Not long after Seabrook, I joined the staff of New Roots, editing a magazine chronicling the alternative energy movement, then still in its infancy. We’ve come a long way since then.

It’s been half a century since the antinuclear movement began waking the country up to atomic energy’s dangers—before Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Fukushima (2011), and the many near-misses since.

Longtime nuclear critic and Clamshell veteran Harvey Wasserman has compared the cost of the new reactors to renewables, noting that even pronuclear proponents concede they merely hope small modular reactors will cost “only” about three times as much as proven solar power, and four times or more the cost of offshore wind. Nuclear can’t compete with renewables on safety, construction time, climate impact, overall cost, or creating jobs.

Nuclear power is essentially uninsurable; it took an act of Congress limiting the liabilities of the nuclear power industry in the event of an accident—only then, back in 1954, did commercial utilities agree to build nuclear power plants and that law is now extended—solely for the benefit of commercial utilities—until 2065. No such exemptions are necessary or even contemplated for safe solar and wind power generation.

Indeed, the waste is studiously ignored by pro-nuclear advocates; no one wants to discuss out loud: every reactor over the past eight decades has produced radioactive material that will stay lethal for thousands of years, with no permanent storage solution anywhere. Nuclear infrastructure, from uranium mines to waste dumps, has a long documented history of landing hardest on poor, Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color, whose land and treaty rights get steamrolled in the process. There are zero radioactive byproducts from solar, wind, and low-head hydro.

Add nuclear plants sitting in active war zones in Ukraine and Iran, and the inconvenient truth that “civilian” nuclear programs are the on-ramp to developing weapons capability, and the case for caution isn’t nostalgia—it’s realism.

Governors: please do your homework to learn why the second Seabrook reactor was never built. When the twin-reactor project was proposed in 1972, it was projected to cost under $1 billion. By 1984, the price had ballooned past $10 billion. The utility abandoned the second reactor, and the primary builder filed for bankruptcy.

When you gather for your summit, governors, please don’t ignore the sea of protesters outside. Better yet: open a window, open the doors, and open your eyes. The energy future you’re looking for won’t be found inside your conference room. It’s been outside it for 50 years, literally beaming at us every day.

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Rob Okun (robokun50@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is former editor of New Roots, one of the early publications covering renewable energy. He is editor emeritus of Voice Male, which has long chronicled the profeminist men’s movement.