Climate Crisis: Nuclear power is not the solution

Creating more U.S. nuclear plants is insane when we can't guarantee the safety of existing plants and their 80,000+ metric tons of waste

If you live in Orange or San Diego County, hopefully you’re aware that San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) has been turned into a nuclear waste dump for the foreseeable future. Regardless of your global location, you would be wise to track domestic and foreign moves to increase reliance on nuclear energy.

San Onofre power plant. Photo courtesy of So Cal Edison

The United States ushered in the atomic age in 1945 by dropping a uranium bomb on Hiroshima and a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki. We now have 3.6 million pounds of these and other lethal radioactive elements sitting on the beach at SONGS in temporary canisters, scheduled to remain there indefinitely.

No one has figured out how to safely dispose of deadly nuclear waste. Yet, to combat the climate crisis, the United States and the world propose to create more of it by extending the life of existing nuclear power plants and building new ones. Has the world learned nothing from the catastrophes of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, a…