Nuclear power has raised both hope and deep distrust. Can it make a comeback as energy needs increase? Review of The Power of Nuclear, by Marco Visscher, Bloomsbury Sigma, 320 pages, $28 (US)
BY JAMES B. MEIGS, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 04, 2025
THE INDIAN POINT nuclear power plant, on the banks of the Hudson River about 30 miles north of New York City, first opened in 1962 and was greatly expanded in the 1970s. For many years it was a monument to technological optimism. On a site smaller than that of a shopping mall, the plant’s two reactors could produce over 2,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply more than a quarter of the city’s power needs—safely and reliably, without a trace of emissions.
Indian Point could have gone on producing clean, dependable power for decades. But this was not to be. Thanks to pressure from the environmental group Riverkeeper and the ambitions of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a deal was struck in 2017 requiring Indian Point to go dark four years later. The plant was a “ticking time bomb,” Mr. Cuomo said, adding that its electricity would easily be replaced by planned wind and solar projects. Riverkeeper’s vice-chairman, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., applauded the “transition from a dirty, dangerous energy system to clean, safe, wholesome, local and patriotic power.”
And so a pioneering power station that once exemplified the prospect of boundless energy was laid low by nuclear paranoia and green utopianism. It is a story that has been repeated around the world.
A pioneering power station that once exemplified the prospect of boundless energy was laid low by nuclear paranoia and green utopianism. It is a story that has been repeated around the world.
In “The Power of Nuclear,” the Dutch journalist Marco Visscher sets out to explain how the early hopes for nuclear power were dashed by the environmental movement’s anti-technology bias and overblown radiation fears—and how the world’s most efficient energy source might be on the verge of a comeback.
This brisk and entertaining book (translated into English by the author himself) is as much a cultural history as a technological one. Mr. Visscher gallops through early research into radioactivity by Marie Curie, the sobering implications of the atomic bomb’s first and only use during World War II, and the postwar dream of harnessing nuclear power for peaceful purposes.
His breezy style might at first seem a bit lighthearted for the topic at hand. (The book’s section on nuclear accidents is titled simply, “Oops!”) But it allows him to sail through decades of history and summarize sweeping intellectual movements without bogging down in needless detail. One of those movements—and the book’s main focus—was the long cultural and political war against nuclear power.
In a 1953 speech at the United Nations, President Dwight Eisenhower proposed sharing America’s nuclear know-how with the world, under the condition that it be used strictly for power generation. He promised that “the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.” The first U.S. civilian nuclear plants—including Indian Point—would open within a decade.
Campaigns against nuclear weapons gradually included nuclear power as well
But even as the earliest plants came online, opposition was stirring. “Opponents of nuclear power cultivated mortal fear,” Mr. Visscher writes. It wasn’t hard. After all, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had horrifying effects. Then came years of irresponsible above-ground atom-bomb tests. The political campaigns against nuclear weapons and testing gradually evolved into an effort to stop nuclear power as well.
The anti-establishment and anti-capitalist movements of the 1960s and ’70s played a big role: In “Small Is Beautiful” (1973), the economist E.F. Schumacher argued for a less technological, low-growth society. In this worldview, nuclear power was wrongheaded not simply because it entailed risks but because it might be too good at enabling affluent lifestyles. Paul Ehrlich, the author of “The Population Bomb” (1968), later sounded a similar note: “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” Soon activists would embrace wind and solar power—supposedly more natural, less centralized—as the ideal energy sources.
The 1979 meltdown at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island plant, and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the U.S.S.R., sealed the deal: Nuclear power, it seemed, was just too dangerous. By 2011, when a tsunami led to meltdowns at Japan’s Fukushima plant, most developed nations had largely stopped building nuclear facilities. Now they began shutting them down. This global rollback, Mr. Visscher argues, was not a victory for human or planetary health but rather a tragedy.
Author debunks myths around Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima
The author assiduously debunks the myths surrounding the three iconic nuclear accidents. Fewer than 50 deaths can be proved at Chernobyl, he notes, while Three Mile Island and Fukushima produced no radiation fatalities. Even long-term studies have turned up little evidence of widespread health damage from the Chernobyl fallout. Could it be that “radiation is not nearly as terrible as we think?” he asks. Yes. In fact, it is indisputably true that low levels of radiation do not pose the health risks experts once feared.
“Fear of radiation,” one Chernobyl researcher concluded, “is a far more important health threat than radiation itself.” Nonetheless that fear soon put the nuclear-power industry on an unsustainable path.
Regulators added layer upon layer of rules, going far beyond any recognizable safety benefits. The cost of building new plants skyrocketed. Most power companies decided that building nuclear facilities wasn’t worth the financial costs and political blowback—especially when they could receive huge subsidies (and plaudits) for building wind and solar farms instead.
“Fear of radiation is a far more important health threat than radiation itself.”
But just as nuclear power appeared to be heading into the sunset, something extraordinary happened: Many environmentalists—ever more focused on climate change—began supporting the world’s most potent source of carbon-free energy. Meanwhile wind power and solar power proved unable to deliver on their inflated promises.
Germany offers cautionary tale on drawbacks of ‘green’ power
Germany, which enacted the world’s most aggressive renewable-energy program while retiring its nuclear fleet, offers a cautionary example. The country now faces sky-high energy prices, falling industrial output and economic decline— while its carbon emissions have declined only modestly.
People with a “Small Is Beautiful” outlook may find this de facto “degrowth” policy laudable, but few nations want to follow Germany’s path. Japan is reopening many of the plants it shuttered after Fukushima, while Britain is building its first new reactors in three decades. In the U.S. there is bipartisan support for investing in nuclear technology.
Tech giants, including Google, Meta and Amazon, are making deals with nuclear startups to supply their powerhungry data centers with the energy from small, next-generation reactors. These tech initiatives came too late for Mr. Visscher to include in his narrative—the original Dutch version of the book came out in 2022—but they bolster his hope that nuclear power will provide a growing share of our energy mix.
In an epilogue, Mr. Visscher describes his early days as an anti-nuclear environmental journalist. Today he finds nuclear power “a great miracle.” He writes that nuclear power plants inspire in him a sense of awe similar to that of visiting a cathedral.
I know the feeling. Like many, I was opposed to nuclear power as a college student but gradually changed my views. In 2018 I had the opportunity to tour the Indian Point facility. The plant was still running then, and the whole place literally hummed with energy. In 2022 I returned to see the reactors now silenced and precious equipment being carved into scrap metal.
Some environmentalists hailed this as a success. I found it maddening. Indian Point’s closure pushed up New York’s carbon emissions, as well as utility bills. The move was a policy disaster driven by ideology rather than science. “The Power of Nuclear”—with its factual rigor and accessible, persuasive arguments—aims to prevent such blunders in the future. The book makes a fine case for preserving and reviving “our mightiest energy source.”
James B. Meigs is the former editor of Popular Mechanics and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.