Politics
Has nuclear power entered a new era of acceptance amid global warming?
When Heather Hoff took a job at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, she was skeptical of nuclear energy — so much so that she resolved to report anything questionable to the anti-nuclear group Mothers for Peace.
Instead, after working at the plant for over a decade and asking every question she could think of about operations and safety, she co-founded her own group, Mothers for Nuclear, in 2016 to keep the plant alive.
“I was pretty nervous,” said Hoff, 45. “It felt very lonely — no one else was doing that. We looked around for allies — other pro-nuclear groups. … There just weren’t very many.”
Today, however, public support for nuclear power is the highest its been in more than a decade as government and private industry struggle to reduce reliance on planet-warming fossil fuels.
Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science.
Although a string of nuclear disasters decades ago had caused the majority of older Americans to distrust the technology, this hasn’t been the case for younger generations.
Old-school environmentalists “grew up in the generation of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. … The Gen Zers today did not,” said David Weisman, 63, who has been involved in the movement to get Diablo Canyon shut down since the ’90s and works as the legislative director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility.
“They don’t remember how paralyzed with fright the nation was the week after Three Mile Island. … They don’t recall the shock of Chernobyl less than seven years later.”
Public support for nuclear power is the highest its been in more than a decade. Here, the domed reactors of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant rise along the California coast.
(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)
Many of these younger nuclear advocates — outwardly vocal on social media sites such as X and Instagram — hope the renewed interest will fuel a second renaissance in nuclear power, one that helps California, the U.S. and the globe meet ambitious climate goals.
“I think we are the generation that’s ready to make this change, and accept facts over feelings, and ready to transition to a cleaner, more reliable and safer energy source,” said Veronica Annala, 23, a college student at Texas A&M and president of the school’s new Nuclear Advocacy Resource Organization.
In the past few months alone, Microsoft announced plans to fund the reopening of Three Mile Island’s shuttered unit to power a data center. Amazon and Google have also invested in new, cutting-edge nuclear technology to meet clean energy goals.
While some advocates wish nuclear revitalization wasn’t being driven by energy-hungry AI technology, the excitement around nuclear power is more palpable than it has been in a generation, they say.
“There’s so many things happening at the same time. … This is the actual nuclear renaissance,” said Gabriel Ivory, 22, a student at Texas A&M and vice president of NARO. “When you look at Three Mile Island restarting — that was something nobody would have ever even thought of.”
This enthusiasm has also been accompanied by a surprising political shift.
During the Cold War nuclear energy frenzy of the 1970s and ’80s, nuclear supporters — often Republicans — touted the jobs the plants would create, and argued that the United States needed to remain a commanding leader of nuclear technology and weaponry on the global stage.
Meanwhile, environmental groups, often aligned with the Democratic Party, opposed nuclear power based on the potential negative impact on surrounding ecosystems, the thorny problem of storing spent fuel and the small but real risk of a nuclear meltdown.
“In America … it has been highly politicized,” said Jenifer Avellaneda Diaz, 29, who works in the industry and runs the advocacy account Nuclear Hazelnut. “That is a little bit shameful, because we have great experts here — a lot of doctors, a lot of scientists, a lot of engineers, mathematicians, physicists.”
Today, younger Republicans are 11% less likely to support new nuclear plants in the U.S. than their older counterparts. Meanwhile the opposite is true for the left: Younger Democrats are 9% more likely to support new nuclear than older Democrats, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.
As a result, while Republicans older than 65 are 27% more likely to support nuclear energy than their Democratic peers, Republicans age 18 to 29 are only 7% more likely to support it than their Democratic counterparts.
“Young Democrats and young Republicans may be looking at numbers — but two separate sets of numbers,” said Weisman. “The young Republicans may be looking at the cost per megawatt hour, and the young Democrats are looking at a different number: parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere.”
Brendan Pittman, 33 — who founded the Berkeley Amend movement, aiming to get his city to drop its “nuclear-free zone” status — said he’s noticed that younger people have become more open to learning about nuclear energy.
“Now, as we’re getting into energy crises, and we’re talking more about, ‘How do we solve this?’ Younger people are taking a more rational and nuanced review of all energy, and they’re coming to the same conclusion: Yeah, nuclear checks all the boxes,” Pittman said.
“I remember getting signatures on the streets of Berkeley, and I would say most young people — when I said we’re looking to support nuclear energy — they would just stop me and say, ‘Oh you’re supporting nuclear energy? Where do I sign?’” he said. “I didn’t even have to sell it.”
This newfound enthusiasm has also affected the nuclear industry, where two dominant age groups have emerged: baby boomers who mostly took nuclear jobs for consistent work, and millennials and Gen Zers who made a motivated choice to enter a stigmatized field, advocates in the industry say.
“You get all sorts of different backgrounds, and that really just blooms into all sorts of fresh new ideas, and I think that’s part of what’s making the industry exciting right now,” said Matt Wargon, 33, past chair of the Young Members Group of the American Nuclear Society.
Like the workers themselves, the industry has formed two bubbles: the traditional plants that have been operating for decades and a slew of new technologies — from small reactors that could power or heat single factories to a potentially safer class of large-scale reactors that use molten salt in their cores instead of pressurized water.
At existing plants, younger folks have injected innovation into longstanding operation norms, improving safety and efficiency. At the startups, those who’ve worked in the industry for decades provide “invaluable” knowledge that simply isn’t in textbooks, industry workers say.
Steam rises from the cooling towers of the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, in Waynesboro, Ga.
(Mike Stewart / Associated Press)
The infusion of new talent and ideas is a significant change from when Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island disaster in 1979 and the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986 devastated the industry. Regulations became stricter, and development on new reactors and new technology slowed to a halt.
False narratives around the technology ricocheted through society. Both Hoff and Avellaneda Diaz recall their parents worrying about radiation affecting their ability to have children. (The average worker at Diablo receives significantly less radiation in a week than a passenger does on a single East Coast to West Coast airplane flight.)
“Radiation is invisible — you can’t see it. You can’t smell it. You can’t hear it,” said Wargon. “And people tend to fear the unknown. … So if you tell them, ‘Oh this power plant has a lot of radiation coming out of it,’ it’s hard to dispel [the misinformation and fear].”
Only as the memories faded and new generations entered the workforce did the reputation of nuclear power slowly recover.
Advocates also say that college campuses have become a leading space for nuclear advocacy, with Nuclear is Clean Energy (NiCE) clubs popping up at multiple California schools in the past few years.
In August, Ivory held up a big “I [heart] nuclear energy,” sign behind an ESPN college football broadcast. It quickly spread on social media and even caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Nuclear advocates say the internet and easy access to accurate information has also helped their cause.
“That was certainly a revolution because right now, it’s super easy to Google it,” Avellaneda Diaz said. “Back then you needed to go to the library, get the book — it was not that easy to get the information or be informed.”
A poll conducted by Ann Bisconti, a scientist and nuclear public opinion expert, found that 74% of people who said they felt very well informed strongly favored the use of nuclear energy in the U.S., whereas only 6% who felt not at all informed supported it.
As such, public outreach and education has become a core tenant of the new nuclear advocacy movement.
“Let’s be real,” Annala said, “our generation has the whole internet at our fingertips … so, just starting the conversations is really the big thing.”
Advocates speculate that the ability to rapidly disseminate information on nuclear energy to combat misconceptions might have helped prevent nuclear energy from becoming politically and culturally toxic after the Fukushima accident, unlike with Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
While the Texas A&M students were quite young when the disaster unfolded, both Wargon and Pittman were in college in 2011 when an earthquake and tsunami in Japan crippled the power systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, triggering a meltdown. Avellaneda Diaz was in high school.
Hoff was working at Diablo Canyon when Fukushima happened. The public scare, in part pushed by the media, almost led her to quit her job.
Instead, after taking the time to analyze the causes of the meltdown and the errors made, she decided to embrace nuclear.
For her, Fukushima was a reminder that nuclear power comes with risk — however small — but that even in a worst-case scenario, operators are skilled at preventing a disaster. (PG&E says a Fukushima flooding episode would be impossible at Diablo Canyon.)
Environmental activists in Seoul march during a rally marking the 12th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)
Today, Hoff writes the emergency protocols for Diablo Canyon and hopes the industry will learn again how to engage with the public.
She said that’s what happened with her when she first — somewhat reluctantly — took a job at Diablo.
“I was a little obnoxious for the first few years,” Hoff said of her constant questioning and search for a critical flaw.
Instead of pushing back against her, the plant welcomed it.
Politics
Mamdani’s response to Trump’s Iran strike sparks conservative backlash: ‘Rooting for the ayatollah’
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New York City’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing blowback from conservatives on social media over his post condemning the U.S. attack on Iran that led to the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Saturday, as a joint strike on Iran by the United States and Israel was developing, Mamdani blasted the Trump administration’s decision in a post on X that has been viewed roughly 20 million times.
“Today’s military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression,” Mamdani wrote.
“Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war. Americans do not want this. They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks to reporters during a news conference in New York Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Mamdani said Americans prefer “relief from the affordability crisis” before speaking directly to Iranians in New York City.
“You are part of the fabric of this city — you are our neighbors, small business owners, students, artists, workers, and community leaders,” Mamdani said. “You will be safe here.”
The post was quickly slammed by conservatives on social media making the case that Mamdani’s response appeared sympathetic to Iran’s brutal regime and pointing to his lack of public reaction to the Iranian protesters killed in recent years.
“Comrade Mayor is rooting for the Ayatollah,” GOP Sen. Ted Cruz posted on X. “They can chant together.”
OBAMA OFFICIAL WHO BACKED IRAN DEAL SPARKS ONLINE OUTRAGE WITH REACTION TO TRUMP’S STRIKE: ‘SIT THIS ONE OUT’
“Do u say anything pro American ?” Fox News host Brian Kilmeade posted on X. “do u know any Iranians – ? they hate @fr_Khamenei they celebrate his death, you should be celebrating his death ! hes killed thousands of American’s and just killed 30k Iranians, did u even say a word about that? You are an embarrassment !! Please quit.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, questions Pam Bondi, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in Hart building Jan. 15, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“I don’t feel safe in New York listening to someone like you, Mamdani, who sympathizes with the regime that killed more than 30,000 unarmed Iranians in less than 24 hours,” Iranian American journalist Masih Alinejad posted on X.
“We Iranians do not allow you to lecture us about war while you had nothing to say when the Islamic Republic shot schoolgirls and blinded more than 10,000 innocent people in the streets. You were busy celebrating the hijab while women of my beloved country Iran were jailed and raped by Islamic Security forces for removing it.
“And NOW you find your voice to defend the regime? No. I will not let you claim the moral high ground. The people of Iran want to be free. Where were you when they needed solidarity?”
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“How is it that you can’t differentiate between good and evil?” Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman posted on X. “Why is this so hard for you?”
“It takes a particular kind of audacity, or ignorance, for a city mayor to appoint himself the conscience of American foreign policy while his constituents step over garbage on their way to work,” GOP Rep. Nancy Mace posted on X. “History will not remember his bravery. It will not remember him at all.”
“Iranian New Yorkers are thrilled today and see right through you,” Republican New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino posted on X.
Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management LP, speaks during the WSJ D.Live global technology conference in Laguna Beach, Calif., Oct. 17, 2017. (Patrick Fallon/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
“When Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, UAE, Bahrain all support today’s operation eliminating world’s #1 sponsor of terror, but New York City’s Mayor @ZohranMamdani is shilling for Iran,” Republican New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov posted on X.
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani’s office for comment.
Shortly after Mamdani’s post, it was announced by President Trump and Israeli officials that the military operation resulted in Khamenei’s death.
Israeli leaders confirmed Khamenei’s compound and offices were reduced to rubble early Saturday after a targeted strike in downtown Tehran.
“Khamenei was the contemporary Middle East’s longest-serving autocrat. He did not get to be that way by being a gambler. Khamenei was an ideologue, but one who ruthlessly pursued the preservation and protection of his ideology, often taking two steps forward and one step back,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of FDD’s Iran program, told Fox News Digital.
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WASHINGTON — For a decade, President Trump promised to end what he calls forever wars, casting himself as a leader opposed to prolonged conflicts in the Middle East and who would rather pursue peace in the world.
Now, early in his second term, Trump is taking military action against Iran that could expand well beyond a limited effort to halt the country’s nuclear program.
In a video posted on Truth Social, the commander in chief said American forces also plan to “raze their missile industry to the ground” and “annihilate their navy.” He warned members of Iran’s military to surrender or “face certain death.” And urged the Iranian people to take the moment as an opportunity to rise up against their government.
“This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States armed forces,” Trump said.
A few hours after relaying that message, Trump confirmed in a separate social media post that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, was among those killed by U.S. and Israeli strikes. Even with his death, Trump said that “the heavy and pinpoint bombing” would continue in Iran “as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”
Trump, who has been considering a strike on Iran for several weeks, acknowledged he reached the decision to attack Iran while aware of the human toll that could come with it.
“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war,” he said. “But we are doing this, not for now, we are doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.”
Trump’s military campaign in Iran is a sharp turn in tone for a president who has long been critical of open-ended conflicts in the Middle East, and marks a shift from an America-first agenda message that helped him return to the White House.
“I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars,” Trump said in his November 2024 victory speech as he promised to focus national resources on domestic priorities rather than foreign conflicts.
As Trump advocated to bring home American forces from deployments around the world and to withdraw from key defense treaties, his position resonated with a war-weary electorate in the lead-up to the election.
Fewer than six in 10 Americans (56%) believed the United States should take an active role in world affairs ahead of the election — the second-lowest level recorded since the question was first asked in 1974, according to polling by the Council on Foreign Affairs.
Trump’s posture on war in the Middle East had been largely consistent before he ran for office.
In 2013, he criticized then-President Obama’s negotiations with Tehran, predicting in a post on Twitter that Obama would “attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly.” That same year, Trump warned that “our horrendous leadership could unknowingly lead us into World War III.”
And in a heated February 2016 debate, Trump attacked former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, stating that his brother George W. Bush lied about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities to get the U.S. into the Iraq war. Trump called the Iraq war a “big, fat mistake” that “destabilized the Middle East.”
“They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none, and they knew there were none,” he said.
At the time of the Iraq war, however, Trump had said he supported it.
Trump’s confrontation with Iran bears little resemblance to his earlier rebukes.
Trump has yet to present evidence of an imminent threat to the United States from Iran’s nuclear program — a capability he claimed to have “obliterated” just eight months ago — and has instead framed the military campaign as one to ensure Tehran never develops nuclear weapons at all.
“It is a very simple message,” he said. “They will never have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump’s shift has already drawn the attention of congressional Democrats, many of whom are calling the president out for backing out on his promise to end foreign wars — and are demanding that he involve Congress in any further military actions.
“Regardless of what the President may think or say, he does not enjoy a blank check to launch large-scale military operations without a clear strategy, without any transparency or public debate, and not without Congressional approval,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) criticized Trump for “drawing the country into yet another foreign war that Americans don’t want and Congress has not authorized.”
The military involvement in Iran is not the first time that members of Congress have complained about the Trump administration’s willingness to sideline the legislative branch on decisions that could trigger broader conflicts this year.
In January, Trump ordered military forces to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and said the United States would run the sovereign nation until further notice. He threatened military action in Colombia, whose leftist President Gustavo Petro has been one of Trump’s most vocal critics.
Trump has alienated allied nations when he said he was willing to send American troops to seize Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. And on Friday, he said U.S. is in talks with Havana and raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover of Cuba” without offering any details on what he meant.
His actions have coincided with his annoyance at not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. At one point, the president said he no longer felt an “obligation to think purely of Peace” because he didn’t get the recognition.
Trump’s shifting tone, and his use of violent war imagery in his pretaped remarks about Iran, have rattled even part of his base.
“I did not campaign for this. I did not donate money for this,” said former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a conservative who recently left Congress after a bitter fight with Trump. “This is not what we thought MAGA was supposed to be. Shame!”
Republican leaders, however, are largely standing behind the president.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Iran “posed a clear and unacceptable threat” to the United States and has refused “the diplomatic off-ramps.” House Speaker Mike Johnson (D-La.) said Trump took the action after exhausting “every effort to pursue peaceful and diplomatic solutions.”
Other top Republican lawmakers rallied behind Trump, too.
“The butcher’s bill has finally come due for the ayatollahs,” Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote in a post on X. “May God bless and protect our troops on this vital mission of vengeance, and justice, and safety.”
Politics
Iran fires missiles at US bases across Middle East after American strikes on nuclear, IRGC sites
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Iran launched missile and drone strikes targeting U.S. military facilities in multiple Middle Eastern countries Friday, retaliating after coordinated U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iranian military and nuclear-linked sites.
Explosions were reported in or near areas hosting American forces in Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Jordan, according to regional officials and state media accounts. Several of those governments said their air defense systems intercepted incoming projectiles.
It remains unclear whether any U.S. service members were killed or injured, and the extent of potential damage to American facilities has not yet been confirmed. U.S. officials have not publicly released casualty figures or formal damage assessments.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) described the operation as a direct response to what Tehran called “aggression” against Iranian territory earlier in the day. Iranian officials claimed they targeted U.S. military infrastructure and command facilities.
Explosions were reported in or near areas hosting American forces in Bahrain, pictured above. (Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Adelola Tinubu/U.S. Naval Forces Central Command/U.S. 5th Fleet )
The United States military earlier carried out strikes against what officials described as high-value Iranian targets, including IRGC facilities, naval assets and underground sites believed to be associated with Iran’s nuclear program. One U.S. official told Fox News that American forces had “suppressed” Iranian air defenses in the initial wave of strikes.
Tomahawk cruise missiles were used in the opening phase of the U.S. operation, according to a U.S. official. The campaign was described as a multi-geographic operation designed to overwhelm Iran’s defensive capabilities and could continue for multiple days. Officials also indicated the U.S. employed one-way attack drones in combat for the first time.
IF KHAMENEI FALLS, WHO TAKES IRAN? STRIKES WILL EXPOSE POWER VACUUM — AND THE IRGC’S GRIP
Smoke rises after reported Iranian missile attacks, following strikes by the United States and Israel against Iran, in Manama, Bahrain, Feb. 28, 2026. (Reuters)
Iran’s retaliatory barrage targeted countries that host American forces, including Bahrain — home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet — as well as Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base and the UAE’s Al Dhafra Air Base. Authorities in those nations reported intercepting many of the incoming missiles. At least one civilian was killed in the UAE by falling debris, according to local authorities.
Iranian officials characterized their response as proportionate and warned of additional action if strikes continue. A senior U.S. official described the Iranian retaliation as “ineffective,” though independent assessments of the overall impact are still developing.
Smoke rises over the city after the Israeli army launched a second wave of airstrikes on Iran in Tehran on Feb. 28, 2026. (Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images)
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Regional governments condemned the strikes on their territory as violations of sovereignty, raising the risk that additional countries could become directly involved if escalation continues.
The situation remains fluid, with military and diplomatic channels active across the region. Pentagon officials are expected to provide further updates as damage assessments and casualty reviews are completed.
Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report.
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Iran fires missiles at US bases across Middle East after American strikes on nuclear, IRGC sites
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