By some counts, nuclear power is safer than wind and cleaner than solar. It is inarguably safer than burning coal and petrol. And yet the US—facing a crisis of global warming—has almost stopped building nuclear power reactors and plants entirely. Between 1973 and 2024, the country started and finished only three new nuclear reactors. And it has shut down more nuclear plants than it’s opened in most of our lifetimes.16 That is not a failure of the private market to responsibly bear risk but of the federal government to properly weigh risk.
