Anti-Nuclear Gathering on Capitol Hill Next Week

Six experts from the scientific, legal, non-proliferation, regulatory and climate sectors will address the looming high costs and public safety risks posed by nuclear safety and security deregulation at a special briefing next week on Capitol Hill. 

The briefing, sponsored by Beyond Nuclear and Nuclear Information & Resource Service, will be held Tuesday June 2 between 11:30 am and 1 pm at Russell Senate Office Building Room 188. 

“Nuclear power is unaffordable, dangerous, too slow to address energy supply needs and the climate crisis and closely linked to the nuclear weapons sector,” the groups said in a statement announcing the event. “But the nuclear power industry, with the full backing of the Trump White House, is promising a second nuclear renaissance, despite the abject failure of the first. Worse are the dangerous and, in some cases illegal, measures they are taking to rubber-stamp reactor designs and fast-track nuclear expansion.”

“Driven almost entirely by the energy-guzzling AI sector, cryptocurrency mining and supersized data centers, this so-called renaissance is also dependent on the dangerous deregulation of nuclear safety oversight. This includes scrapping safety regulations and drastically curtailing the authority and independence of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the rush to build new nuclear power plants cheaply and fast.”

“Meanwhile, civil nuclear reactors are also now being prepared for use by the military, including to power kinetic and AI-based weapons systems, while skimping on safety features, further blurring the line between the two sectors and endangering the public.”

The briefing comes on the heels of an investigative report published in the May/June issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper that documents a concerted multi-million dollar campaign to turn the public and Congress in favor of nuclear power.

“In the early years of this effort, public support for nuclear energy was at a low point,” the Citizen reported. “In 2016, Gallup found a majority of Americans opposed nuclear energy for the first time since it began surveying the issue in 1994. Only 34% of Democrats favored it. By 2025, that figure climbed to 46% of Democrats – a 12-point change in less than a decade.” 

“That shift coincided with a surge of Silicon Valley nuclear investment and advocacy. Jeff Navin, a lobbyist for Bill Gates’ small modular reactor (SMR) startup TerraPower, described 2015 as a pivotal year for nuclear support in Capitol Hill.” 

“At that year’s Paris Climate Talks, Gates announced the Breakthrough Energy Coalition with co-investors including Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Richard Branson. Peter Thiel, another top Silicon Valley nuclear investor, published – The New Atomic Age We Need – a New York Times op-ed within the same 48-hour window.” 

“Breakthrough Energy has since grown into a $4 billion juggernaut spanning venture capital, philanthropy, and policy advocacy, with $7.9 million in direct lobbying expenditures since 2020.” 

The Citizen report placed Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) at the center of the nuclear industry’s campaign to turn around Congress.

Senators Whitehouse and Booker “each gave closing remarks at a nuclear energy summit in 2016. Third Way partnered with the Nuclear Energy Institute to host the Washington event.” 

“In Third Way’s telling, the summit marked the beginning of a years-long partnership with lawmakers who ‘continued to champion’ the nuclear legislation it helped write.” 

The participants at the June 2 event are:

Dr. Edwin Lyman, physicist, Union of Concerned Scientists

Peter Bradford, former NRC Commissioner

M.V. Ramana, physicist, University of British Columbia

Diane Curran, attorney, litigator vs. NRC

Joe Romm, physicist; former Department of Energy official, and 

Sharon Squassoni, George Washington University, former US government official.

Closing remarks will be made by Tim Judson, executive director, Nuclear Information & Resource Service and Paul Gunter, director of the reactor oversight project, Beyond Nuclear.

Introductions will be made by Linda Pentz Gunter, executive director, Beyond Nuclear. 

Peter Bradford will address the implications of the further loss of independence at NRC, an already compromised regulator. 

Diane Curran will show how the by-passing of environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act and the Atomic Energy Act ignore the realities of climate change and the greater likely risk of a severe nuclear accident. 

Ed Lyman will sound the alarm about the implications for public safety from the end run around safety regulations and the fallacies of “inherently safe” fast reactors. 

M.V. Ramana will dispel the myths that deregulating nuclear power is what will solve the high costs, delays, and failure rates, and why betting on small modular and “advanced” reactors is likely to backfire. 

Joe Romm will address how the nuclear renaissance is being driven by the demand for power for AI data centers and how blocking renewables is part of the strategy to expedite nuclear power development and worsen affordability. 

Sharon Squassoni will highlight the associated proliferation risks tied to the plans for export of “advanced” reactors and the militarization of the civil nuclear sector.