Foreign Policy: Will Washington Stop Nuclear Power

Foreign Policy: Will Washington Stop Nuclear Power

As Biden administration climate czar John Kerry rightly put it: “We don’t get to net zero by 2050 without nuclear power in the mix.” 

It is not often that John Kerry says something that is smart and needs to be repeated often.

For anyone hoping to reboot the nuclear power sector as a source of zero-carbon energy in the age of climate change, the news has not been good. On Feb. 28, the staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) forwarded a proposed licensing framework for next-generation reactors to the agency’s five politically appointed commissioners. That proposal came little more than a year after the NRC summarily rejected Oklo Power’s license application for its Aurora reactor. The application was the first attempt to obtain a license to operate an advanced nuclear reactor in the United States.