Like many Americans of my generation (I’m a Millennial, mea culpa), I grew up watching The Simpsons. Nuclear power, per the show, was lorded over by Mr. Burns, a business tycoon-cum-Nosferatu figure so old his social security number was a single digit. The waste that oozed from Mr. Burns’s plant eddied in Springfield’s waterways like a green, day-glo goo, spawning the town’s mutant three-eyed fish. Mr. Burns is a caricature as evocative as it is divorced from reality.
In truth, high-level civilian nuclear waste — the kind that most people worry about giving them an extra ear or seven fingers — has never harmed anyone in the nuclear industry’s entire history. (And, civilian nuclear waste is not a liquid, it’s a solid.)
Nuclear energy is often demonized, but it’s the best shot we have at powering our upcoming technological revolution. As the grid groans under the dual strain of increasing power demand and diminishing 24/7/365 power generation, nuclear’s firm, clean, reliable power offers the most coherent medium and long-term solution. In fact, nuclear is the most reliable source of power on the grid by a wide margin, boasting an average capacity factor of 92.3%. Compare that to geothermal (65%), combined cycle natural gas (59.9%), coal (42.6%), hydro (34.5%), wind (34.4%), and solar (23.4%). Nuclear is also the most energy dense source of power we have available; nuclear fuel is 2 million times more energy dense than any other chemical.
