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.”
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.
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.)
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
Size of slim Republican House majority hangs on 5 uncalled races
Republicans hold a slim majority in the House of Representatives, though the size of that narrow margin will not be known until the final five undecided races are called.
The five House races that remain uncalled as of Monday morning are in Alaska, California, Iowa and Ohio. The balance of power currently sits at 218 seats for Republicans, and 212 for the Democrats.
Alaska
At-large district
Democratic incumbent Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola is in a tight race in Alaska’s at-large congressional district, where she is trailing Republican entrepreneur Nick Begich.
As of Monday morning, Begich holds a nearly 3-point lead at 48.7% of the vote compared to Peltola’s 46.1%. The vote count sits at 155,120 to 146,782 with roughly 98% of the vote counted.
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California
13th Congressional District
Republican Rep. John Duarte is leading former Democratic state assembly member Adam Gray in California’s 13th Congressional District, but the highly contested race remains uncalled as of Monday morning.
Roughly 86% of the vote has been counted, and Duarte holds a 50.6% to 49.4% lead. The pair is separated by just over 2,000 votes.
45th Congressional District
Democratic challenger Derek Tran has taken the lead over Republican incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel in the 45th District. Steel had been in the lead by a few hundred votes late last week, but Tran now has a razor-thin 36-vote lead.
Roughly 94% of the vote has been counted for the district.
Iowa
1st Congressional District
Republican incumbent Rep. Mariannet Miller-Meeks holds a less than 1% lead over challenger Christina Bohannan with 99% of the vote counted. Miller-Meeks’ lead sits at just under 1,000 votes.
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Bohannan has requested a recount in her bid to unseat Miller-Meeks. The Associated Press has not yet called the race because the margin was close enough that it could prompt a recount. Miller-Meeks has declared victory and said she was confident in her lead.
Ohio
9th Congressional District
Democratic incumbent Marcy Kaptur leads her Republican challenger, Derek Merrin, by less than 1 point with 99% of the votes counted. Kaptur’s lead sits at just over 1,000 votes as of Monday morning.
Races with a margin of 0.5% or less trigger an automatic recount in Ohio.
Fox News’ Anders Hagstrom, Chris Pandolfo and Jasmine Baehr and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Politics
Trump taps FCC member Brendan Carr to lead agency: 'Warrior for Free Speech'
President-elect Trump announced on Sunday that he has picked Brendan Carr to serve as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) starting in January.
Carr, who is currently the senior Republican member of the FCC, was first nominated to the commission by Trump in 2017. In a statement released on Sunday night, Trump commended Carr and noted that he had “been confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate three times.”
“His current term runs through 2029 and, because of his great work, I will now be designating him as permanent Chairman,” Trump wrote.
The Republican leader went on to call Carr “a warrior for Free Speech” who has “fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms, and held back our Economy.”
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“He will end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators and Innovators, and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America,” Trump added.
“Congratulations to Chairman Brendan Carr on a job well done,” the president-elect’s statement concluded. “Lead us into a great future, Brendan!”
In an X post on Sunday, Carr thanked Trump and wrote that he is “humbled and honored to serve as Chairman of the FCC.”
Carr recently made national headlines after he ripped the “Saturday Night Live” cast for platforming Kamala Harris as a guest without inviting Trump, which violates FCC rules.
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“NBC has structured this in a way that’s plainly designed to evade the FCC’s rules,” the official said shortly after the episode aired. “We’re talking 50 hours before Election Day starts, without any notice to other candidates, as far as I can tell.”
Carr later told Fox News Digital that the Harris appearance “[made] clear that [“SNL”] wanted to weigh-in in favor of one candidate before the election.”
“That’s exactly why, for decades, we’ve had an equal time rule on the book, is to prevent that,” the Republican explained. “Because remember, broadcasters are placed in a special position of trust. They’re not just like any other person with a soapbox on the corner. They have a license from the federal government that obligates them to operate in the public interest.”
Earlier in November, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) urged Trump to appoint Carr as the next FCC chairman, calling him a “great partner to the men and women in law enforcement.”
“Commissioner Carr has more than 20 years of private and public sector expertise in communications and technology policy as well as a deep institutional knowledge of the FCC,” Patrick Yoes, national president of the FOP, wrote in a letter. “He would make an outstanding FCC Chairman who will ensure the United States continues to lead the world in telecommunications advancements and innovations.”
Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton and Eric Revell contributed to this report.
Politics
Laphonza Butler reflects on her brief Senate career, the presidential race and her future
Political speculation about the future of Sen. Laphonza Butler — the short-term replacement appointed to the chamber after the death of Dianne Feinstein — has run rampant in political circles. Would she return to California and run for office? Become the next leader of the Democratic National Committee?
Asked Saturday evening whether she sees herself pursuing such prospects, Butler, 45, was unusually clear for a politician.
“I don’t,” she said in an interview after a send-off celebration at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center in Los Angeles. “We have an incredibly deep talent of great thinkers and strategists who are going to be able to take that work on.”
Butler was appointed to the Senate seat 13 months ago by Gov. Gavin Newsom, after garnering national acclaim as an influential labor chief in Los Angeles and president of Emily’s List, a national political organization that focuses on raising money to elect pro-choice Democratic women. The posting would have been a springboard to a strong run to retain the seat in the November election had Butler chosen to pursue that route. But she ruled that option out early, leading to Rep. Adam Schiff winning the seat. He is expected to be sworn in by mid-December.
Butler has embarked on a farewell tour of California, and on Saturday met with Los Angeles-area supporters. The event featured a warm, revealing conversation on stage with Mayor Karen Bass, a longtime ally.
Butler described the Senate as a “foreign land” and recounted the unexpected challenges that marked her tenure, including Hamas’ stealth attack on Israel in October 2023 and the bloody war that has resulted; the Senate’s rejection of House Republicans’ impeachment of the nation’s Democratic homeland security secretary; and being asked to vote four times to stop a government shutdown.
“Nevertheless, when I knew 14 months ago that I would accept the appointment, what I knew I was saying yes to was paying all of you back for everything you have given me,” she told the audience, which included local elected officials, labor activists and other Democratic constituencies.
Butler spoke of working with Republicans to find areas of collaboration on shared goals, such as the issue of maternal healthcare with Alabama Sen. Katie Britt and agricultural issues with Iowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley.
Butler and Bass spoke about their shared experience of being among the few Black women to serve in Congress. Butler said some fellow senators seemed surprised as they admired how articulate she was, and recounted hearing “blatant Aunt Jemima” jokes. Bass recalled her House colleagues regularly confusing her with Congresswomen Marsha Fudge of Ohio and Barbara Lee of Oakland, who are also Black.
Butler, who served as a co-chair of Vice President Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful White House bid, later spoke to reporters about the role of race and gender in the presidential race. She said that although stereotypes and barriers still exist in electing women of color, it would be “intellectually dishonest” to blame Harris’ loss solely on racism or misogyny.
“I don’t discount that it was something that people thought about, a barrier that we’ve yet as a country to break through relative to women at the top office,” Butler said. But “when you have, you know, more than 70% of the American people feel like the country is on the wrong track, it ain’t just about race and gender.”
She said the Democratic Party needs to figure out why the many policies it’s embraced that are actually helping Americans are somehow not resonating with voters.
“The election results tell us that there is a problem with messaging,” Butler said. “There is a problem with connecting to what is being said, and what people are feeling and hope for their government and for their own lives and communities.”
Butler is less certain about what’s next for her.
“I don’t know. I’m gonna be a mom to a 10-year-old who has picked up this new habit of competitive cheer,” she said, adding that she’s not planning to move back to California from Washington, D.C., anytime soon — certainly not before her daughter finishes the school year.
“She just started fourth grade. I’m not going to snatch her out of fourth grade, that’s for sure,” she said. “We’ll figure it out after that. But, you know, the whims of my life shouldn’t interrupt hers.”
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