Nuclear "Abundance" Is Bunk

The United States has been on the precipice of a “nuclear renaissance” for four decades. And I can tell you right now, with confidence, that it will never happen. Why? Because nuclear power is getting more costly while solar alternatives are getting cheaper. By a lot. And the persistence—by politicians like Governor Kathy Hochul, by policymakers on both sides of the aisle, and even by smart analysts like Ezra Klein—to wish nuclear back into competitiveness suggests why we localists should always be skeptical of top-down theories of change.

Basic facts:

• Over the last 30 years, exactly four new nuclear reactors have come online in the United States, each with a capacity of 1.1 gigawatts.

• The most recent two, Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia, collectively cost $36.8 billion. The capital cost is $16,700 per installed kilowatt, which implies a production cost of 17-22 cents per kilowatt-hour. (The actual cost consumers pay, which includes utility overhead and transmission and distribution, is more than double.)

• The capital cost for onshore wind projects is $1,150-1,800 per kilowatt in 2026, which—accounting for the intermittency of wind in most sites—implies a production cost of 2.5-5 cents per kilowatt hour.

• Utility-scale solar is generally cheaper than wind. So nuclear power is about 8-10 times more expensive than its truly renewable alternatives.

• The intermittency of wind and solar is becoming largely irrelevant because large-scale storage is becoming inexpensive as well. Earlier this year, California announced that it had deployed battery blocks to store and dispense the equivalent of 12 nuclear power plants. In other words, in one year, the state deployed three times more power capacity than the entire national nuclear industry in three decades.

• More importantly, as I showed in my recent paper for the City of Irvine, it is cheaper for the city, its residents, and its businesses to solarize with batteries than to use any utility electricity whatsoever. Over the next 20 years, if Irvine does nothing, it will spend about $58 billion with the local utility, Southern California Edison. Complete solarization would cost $16 billion and thus save the city $42 billion.

The bottom line: Nuclear power has become completely uneconomic. Fahgettaboutit!

Nuclear supporters nevertheless insist that new generations of small modular reactors (SMRs) will be magically cheaper. In fact, a recent report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Finance Analysis concludes: “SMRs still are too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning from fossil fuels in the coming 10 to 15 years.”

This is great news for those who care about sustainability. Nuclear power generates radioactive waste that still lacks a safe storage solution (my father worked on the earliest solutions in 1949). Nuclear power risks costly accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima. (One estimate puts the long-term costs of the Chernobyl disaster at $700 billion.) Most importantly, it spreads nuclear technology and materials that make nuclear bomb-making easier and nuclear war more probable. Consider that our entire fight with Iran right now is over that country’s use of nuclear power to develop nuclear weapons.

Which brings us to Abundance, the much-discussed book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. In their very first chapter, they write: “By some counts, nuclear power is safer than wind and cleaner than solar.” Huh? Perhaps if you completely ignore the problems of nuclear waste, safety, and weapons proliferation. “By some counts,” bleach cures COVID-19.

Klein and Thompson then claim that the failure of the U.S. nuclear industry “is not a failure of the private market to responsibly bear risk but of the federal government to properly weigh risks.” In other words, nuclear power could still save us through government fiat.

This is complete nonsense. The nuclear industry has been the beneficiary of at least $85 billion in federal subsidies since 1948, plus loan guarantees, tax credits, enrichment subsidies, waste disposal subsidies, and much more. The Vogtle reactors would never have been built but for $12 billion in federal loan guarantees. Nor will the private market ever “responsibly bear risk,” because of the Price-Anderson Act’s low limits on liability for nuclear power operators. Despite massive, unprecedented federal support, the nuclear industry is becoming less competitive by the day.

The fact that Abundance leans on an example like nuclear suggests how flimsy its central thesis really is. Abundance asserts that America—or at least the Democrats’ America—should be developing big plans and rolling them out across the country, and the way to do this is to crush local opposition and a vast array of environmental protection laws.

As Mike Lofgren notes in Salon: “The idea (of Abundance) was that Democrats should drop their phobias about environmental degradation, urban sprawl, interstate highway construction, and other quality-of-life considerations, and instead engineer the economy to crank out more stuff for the masses—housing, green energy jobs, infrastructure. All they have to do is defang regulations contained in the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, zoning restrictions, and other examples of Luddite do-gooderism. Grateful voters would flock to the Democratic Party, and right-wing extremism would lose its steam.”

In the case of nuclear power, Klein and Thompson would spread unaffordable electricity generation across the country—the most costly tool for achieving decarbonization—even if it put communities everywhere into bankruptcy. This is exactly what happened when the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) tried to build five nuclear power stations, better known as “Whoops!”, 40 years ago. Their Abundance-like quest wasted billions of dollars—communities be damned—and led to the second-largest municipal bond default in U.S. history.

Localists are rightly skeptical of big anything—big government, big business, big labor, big energy projects from big thinkers. What will really unlock “abundance” in America is a federal government that enables communities to choose the decentralized futures they want, not a deadly nuclear future imposed by beneficent technocrats.

---

To help you and your community make your own smart choices for investment, we share below our usual updated listing of crowdfunding and fund opportunities. And if you like what you’ve read today, please become a paying subscriber below.

- Michael H. Shuman, Publisher

Publication of The Main Street Journal depends on your support. If we can reach 600 subscribers by the end of this year, we can continue delivering The Main Street Journal in 2027. (Below is a chart of our progress toward this goal.) If you like what you’re reading, please consider becoming a paid subscriber today. Paid subscribers can attend our monthly “Mondays with Michael” and receive a free consult on their projects. Please join the blue line below!

SPONSOR CORNER

The National Coalition for Community Capital (NC3) is dedicated to educating, advocating, and activating community capital and serves as MSJ’s fiscal sponsor. Thank you for being a part of a growing movement! Contact NC3 for support in integrating local investing in your work: info@nc3now.org.

NEW INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES

Below is our list of recently posted investment opportunities across the United States. Please note that our listing of these opportunities does not constitute an endorsement. Remember that all investments carry risk. Click on the hyperlinks and read the details carefully before investing.

Use the map below to help you find an investment opportunity near you. Each issue, we’ll highlight about a half dozen active campaigns.

COMPREHENSIVE LISTINGS

Click the images below to view our comprehensive list of investment opportunities, organized by theme or region.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES BY KEY THEMES

✔️ Energy 💡

✔️ Food & Farming 🌱

✔️ Housing 🏡

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES BY REGION

✔️ Great Lakes

✔️ Mid-Atlantic

✔️ Midwest

✔️ New England

✔️ Rocky Mountains

✔️ South

✔️ Southwest

✔️ West

FUNDS OPEN TO GRASSROOTS INVESTORS

The following is our first draft of funds that invest in local businesses and are open to non-accredited investors. Please help us add to this list!

MSJ & PARTNER EVENTS

• July 31: Thinking Local - A Conversation on Business Succession - In-Person Event (Portland, OR)

• August 4-5: Vermont Public Banking Congress - In-Person Event (Multiple Locations, VT)

• August 10: Mondays with Michael - Virtual Event

• August 11 - 13: Funders on Farms: Investing in a Resilient Food System - In-Person Event (Ancram, NY)

• August 21-23: Wisconsin Permaculture Convergence - In-Person Event (Viroqua, WI)

• August 25 - 27: SuperCrowd26 - Virtual Event

• September 15–16: Neighborhood Economics - In-Person Event (Galveston, TX)

JOBS BOARD

• Boston Ujima Project: Finance Director

• Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive: Communications & Outreach Coordinator

BECOME A MAIN STREET CHAMPION

Whatever your interest or ambition, we invite you to “go public” to help others in your region find you, scheme with you, and start a local investment movement in your community. We aim to identify dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of Main Street Champions like you in every corner of the globe. Together, we can move our hard-earned savings from Wall Street to Main Street, putting them to work in our own communities. Fill out the intake survey below to join this growing cohort!

About The Main Street Journal

The Main Street Journal aims to catalyze the movement of $50 trillion from Wall Street to Main Street, facilitating economic development and economic justice. It’s sponsored by the National Coalition for Community Capital. We welcome feedback on all aspects, from our design to our content. Please send your ideas to Jen Risley at jen@main-street-journal.com.

If you would like to support our work, please use the button below. Thank you!

Our Team:

• Michael Shuman – MSJ Publisher

• Paul Spinrad - Decent Tuesdays Writer & Editor

• Jen Risley - MSJ Editor

• Wendy Wasserman - Strategic Advisor

PARTNERS

Abrams+Angell | American Independent Business Alliance | Candide Group | Capital for Change | Capital Institute | Community-Vision Solutions | Cordata Capital | Council Fire | Crowdfund Better | Crowdfund Capital Advisors | Democracy Collaborative | Eleanor LeCain | Exit to Community Collective | Fair Food Network | Garlic and Roses | Impact Finance Center | ImpactPHL | Initiative for Local Capital | Institute for Local Self-Reliance | The Kassan Group | Longfellow Health Clubs | Mission Driven Finance | National Coalition for Community Capital | Natural Investments | Neighborhood Associates | Neighborhood Economics | New Majority Capital | Next Egg | Nonprofit Quarterly | Ownership America | Ownership Capital Lab | Ownership Matters | Partnership for Southern Equity | PathLight Law | Project Equity | Project for Public Spaces | Prospera Partners | Raise Green | Revalue | Rising Tide Capital | Schumacher Center for a New Economics | Shelterforce | Slow Money | SOCAP | Sun Valley Institute for Resilience | The Super Crowd Inc. | Sustainable Business Network of MA | Transform Finance | Uwharrie Bank | Village Well | Zebras Unite

We welcome any nonprofit or for-profit entity committed to local investment as a partner. If your organization is interested, please contact Jen Risley at jen@main-street-journal.com.