Nuclear power is having a pop culture moment

Mint

2 days ago

When fashion model Isabelle Boemeke started posting TikToks about nuclear power in 2020, her friends were baffled. One of her booking agents said she would wreck her career by touting something so controversial.
'This is how it all goes down," Boemeke says as she takes on the alienesque persona 'Isodope" and explains how a reactor works in an early video.
Later, she helped organize protests to keep California's Diablo Canyon Power Plant operating and gave a TED Talk on nuclear power that has been viewed more than 1.8 million times. Boemeke's TikTok on a natural nuclear reactor—which happened in a uranium deposit in Africa—got 38,000 likes.
What seemed a bit out-there in 2020 has become mainstream. Nuclear energy is having a moment in both pop culture and politics for the first time in decades, thanks in part to a new wave of activists like Boemeke.
Fans of nuclear power include Bill Gates and OpenAI's Sam Altman, both of whom have backed companies that aim to build new reactors, and politicians of both parties, from President Trump to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
They are riding a wave of improving public sentiment. About 60% of Americans support the construction of more nuclear power plants, according to the Pew Research Center. That's a significant shift from 2020, when 43% said they supported more power generation from atomic energy.
'I have to say, it feels good to be vindicated," said Boemeke, who is 35 years old and says a tweet about molten salt thorium reactors from planetary scientist Carolyn Porco sparked her interest in nuclear power.
Boemeke's book 'Rad Future: The Untold Story of Nuclear Electricity and How It Will Save the World" was published this month. She sells merchandise on her website, including hats that say 'Get in loser. We're going nuclear." When her friends text now, they tell Boemeke, ''I can't believe you were talking about this five years ago,'" she said. 'Now it's all everyone talks about."
Nuclear plants provide about 20% of U.S. electricity, but the power industry has been largely managing aging assets, not building new reactors. Calls for more emissions-free, reliable power generation nudged nuclear power into the climate conversation a few years ago.
The volume has increased with the tech industry's embrace of nuclear power, which is rooted in the mania over artificial intelligence. Building advanced AI systems will take city-size amounts of electricity. Microsoft and Meta Platforms have signed long-term power-purchase agreements with nuclear plants.
Nuclear engineering student Gabriel Ivory declared his affections in August 2024 when he joined the crowd of thousands of football fans at ESPN's College GameDay's broadcast at Texas A&M University.
Ivory held a homemade 'I [Heart] Nuclear Energy" poster and went to the event intending to talk about nuclear power with others in the crowd. 'I was excited about that, just having conversations with people casually," said Ivory, who graduated in May.
Instead, Ivory squeezed into a prime position during the broadcast and went viral. Screen grabs of him and his sign were shared by nuclear power organizations, a former Miss America (also a nuclear engineer) and companies like Constellation Energy, the country's largest operator of nuclear power plants, which has since hired Ivory. The Department of Energy made a video about him.
Atomic energy has been popular before. It once inspired midcentury modern design and was seen as futuristic. Concerns about weapons proliferation overtook the popular imagination, though. Following the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, America lost its enthusiasm for building nuclear power plants.
By the early 2000s, there was fresh talk of a 'nuclear renaissance," but abundant shale gas dropped the price of natural-gas-fired power generation. Wind and solar power got cheaper, too. Just two newer reactors were completed in recent years after major cost overruns. A handful of plants closed.
'It was so lonely when we first did this," said Heather Hoff, who co-founded Mothers for Nuclear in 2016 after working in operations at Diablo Canyon. 'We were trying to find anyone else who was pro-nuclear."
Nuclear policies at the state and federal level have been shifting rapidly.
New laws approved during the Biden administration included loans and tax credits for nuclear projects. President Trump has taken support further with executive orders that aim to overhaul the U.S. nuclear regulator, fast-track licenses for new projects and boost domestic fuel supplies.
Some states, including West Virginia and Montana, have rolled back moratoriums on building new projects. Tennessee created a $70 million nuclear-energy fund. Texas lawmakers created a $350 million fund this year to lure projects.
Critics of atomic energy say their concerns about cost, safety and waste haven't gone away.
'You've got people with a lot of money and really big bullhorns," said Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a nonprofit that advocates against new nuclear plants and waste transportation. 'The fundamental issues with nuclear power haven't changed. The reactors are still incredibly expensive. They're extremely risky, financially and otherwise."
Gene Stilp helped organize a demonstration in Washington, D.C., in May 1979 to protest in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident. He said the power industry has unleashed a tsunami of public relations in recent years around nuclear power.
'It's working in a sense that they're using the whole shift to AI to say, 'We need this,'" said Stilp, who continues to raise safety concerns, especially around the difficulty an evacuation would pose. 'It's a giant educational project."
Three Mile Island has been renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center. Its undamaged reactor, which operated until 2019, could generate electricity again under a 20-year power-purchase agreement between Constellation and Microsoft.
Jacob DeWitte, co-founder and chief executive of advanced nuclear technology company Oklo, said the conversation has changed from one about whether there is a role for nuclear in the electricity mix.
'Now it's more like, 'How do we get nuclear play as big of a role as it can play?'" he said.
Write to Jennifer Hiller at [e-mail]