In advance of New York’s April 19 pri­ma­ry, pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Bernie Sanders char­ac­ter­ized the 40-plus-year-old Indi­an Point nuclear pow­er sta­tion locat­ed 36 miles north of Mid­town Man­hat­tan as ​“a cat­a­stro­phe wait­ing to hap­pen” that should be shut down.

'The climate will definitely feel the burn: Closing a typical 1,000-megawatt reactor would directly or indirectly put an extra 3 million to 8 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year.'

Sanders’ state­ments in New York were no sur­prise. His ambi­tious plan to com­bat cli­mate change includes a phase-out of the nation’s nuclear pow­er plants, which cur­rent­ly account for about one-fifth of U.S. elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion. Instead, he pro­pos­es work­ing toward a 100 per­cent clean-ener­gy sys­tem by invest­ing heav­i­ly in wind, solar and geothermal.

Hillary Clin­ton, mean­while, has called for invest­ment in nuclear pow­er along­side renew­able ener­gy as part of her plan to mod­ern­ize the U.S. ener­gy infra­struc­ture. She oppos­es shut­ter­ing Indi­an Point, which is cur­rent­ly being reviewed for license renew­al by the Nuclear Reg­u­la­to­ry Commission.

As a sen­a­tor, Clin­ton called for greater over­sight and increased safe­ty mea­sures at the nuclear pow­er plant, but in an inter­view with the New York tele­vi­sion show Cap­i­tal Tonight in ear­ly April, she paint­ed Sanders’ call to close it as naïve. ​“We also have to be real­is­tic,” she said. ​“You get 25 per­cent of the elec­tric­i­ty in the greater New York City area from Indi­an Point. I don’t want mid­dle-class tax­pay­ers to see a huge rate increase.”

Nuclear pow­er isn’t just a flash­point in the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign; it’s a sub­ject of deep dis­agree­ment among envi­ron­men­tal­ists. While a vibrant anti-nuclear move­ment once guid­ed pro­gres­sive opin­ion, some greens have reversed their stance because of the imme­di­a­cy of cli­mate change. The oper­a­tion of nuclear pow­er plants is vir­tu­al­ly car­bon-neu­tral, although the process­es of min­ing and enrich­ing ura­ni­um fuel, oper­at­ing back­up gen­er­a­tors and dis­pos­ing of waste all pro­duce emis­sions. Still, nuclear presents far less of a threat to the cli­mate than oil and fracked gas, and advo­cates say that the oppo­si­tion is more ide­o­log­i­cal than evidence-based.

Poten­tial safe­ty threats are anoth­er mat­ter: The Cher­nobyl explo­sion and melt­down, which took place 30 years ago, as well as the 2011 dis­as­ter at Fukushi­ma cast a long shad­ow over the nuclear-ener­gy debate. Ura­ni­um min­ing can also be haz­ardous to work­ers and the envi­ron­ment. And then there’s the prob­lem of where to store spent fuel rods.

Is Bernie right to call for a phase-out of Indi­an Point and push for 100 per­cent renew­ables? Or do we need nuclear, for now, to pow­er us to a low-car­bon future? To dis­cuss, In These Times invit­ed Will Boisvert, a jour­nal­ist who writes on ener­gy, envi­ron­men­tal and urban pol­i­cy for The New York Observ­er, Dis­sent and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions, and Jim Ric­cio, a nuclear pol­i­cy ana­lyst at Green­peace USA.

WILL: As a left­ist, I’ve cheered on Bernie Sanders’ eco­nom­ic poli­cies, health­care plan and Wall Street bash­ing. But as an envi­ron­men­tal­ist, I cringe at his crazy cam­paign against nuclear pow­er. Here’s how crazy it is: With cli­mate change inten­si­fy­ing, Bernie would trash America’s biggest source of clean energy.

Nuclear pow­er pro­duces 20 per­cent of America’s elec­tric­i­ty and 59 per­cent of its low-car­bon elec­tric­i­ty. That’s 42 per­cent more than all renew­ables and three times as much as the nation’s wind and solar sec­tors com­bined. So what would Bernie’s plan do with that gush­er of emis­sions-free energy?

Shut it down, that’s what. He plans to ban the reli­cens­ing of reac­tors, which would cut 20 to 40 years off the ser­vice life of nuclear plants, on the way to com­plete­ly erad­i­cat­ing atom­ic energy.

The result would be a wind­fall for King Coal and fracked gas. Even if nukes were nom­i­nal­ly replaced by renew­able capac­i­ty, every kilo­watt-hour of renew­able elec­tric­i­ty that’s used to replace lost nuclear pow­er is a kilo­watt-hour that’s not avail­able to dis­place fos­sil fuels from the grid. Under Sanders’ plan, coal and gas plants would blaze on while renew­ables fruit­less­ly plug the gap left by a nuclear phase-out. Decar­boniza­tion would make no head­way for decades. The cli­mate will def­i­nite­ly feel the burn: Clos­ing a typ­i­cal 1,000-megawatt reac­tor would direct­ly or indi­rect­ly put an extra 3 mil­lion to 8 mil­lion tons of car­bon diox­ide into the air each year, by my cal­cu­la­tion. A nuclear shut­down would cause bil­lions of tons of need­less green­house emissions.

Bernie and oth­ers on the Left some­times trum­pet all this as a pop­ulist insur­rec­tion against a par­a­sitic nuclear indus­try depen­dent on gov­ern­ment bailouts. But the real issue is safe­ty fears, voiced in Bernie’s many com­ments about the Fukushi­ma nuclear acci­dent, which play to a famil­iar green theme that nuclear pow­er is a unique threat to pub­lic health that must be abol­ished. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, these anx­i­eties have grown dras­ti­cal­ly out of pro­por­tion to actu­al risks while ignor­ing the health ben­e­fits nuclear con­fers by replac­ing pol­lut­ing coal-fired pow­er. (Cli­mate sci­en­tist James Hansen reck­ons the total num­ber of lives saved by nuclear pow­er at 1.8 mil­lion.) We should wor­ry less about van­ish­ing­ly like­ly nuclear acci­dents and more about coal plants, whose pol­lu­tion kills 7,500 Amer­i­cans annu­al­ly — sev­en times the total Fukushi­ma toll every year.

A pol­i­tics of exag­ger­at­ed fear has stoked the anti-nuclear move­ment for decades, and Bernie’s most recent anti-nuclear cru­sade is a left-wing ana­log to the Trumped-up fears — of Mus­lims, immi­grants, WMDs — that dis­fig­ure right-wing pol­i­tics. Luck­i­ly, many pro­gres­sives are start­ing to reject that fear, and to accept nuclear power’s cru­cial role in reduc­ing the real risks of glob­al warm­ing, pol­lu­tion and ener­gy poverty.

JIM: Belit­tling the dam­age from the Fukushi­ma fias­co ignores the very real impacts of radioac­tive land con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and the fact that 80 per­cent of the Fukushi­ma fall­out blew into the Pacif­ic rather than over Tokyo. Despite avoid­ing most of the Fukushi­ma fall­out, the nuclear cri­sis is esti­mat­ed to cost Japan over $100 bil­lion. Fall­out from a melt­down on U.S. soil could be even worse.

Five years after the fias­co at Fukushi­ma in Japan and 30 years after the explo­sion of the Cher­nobyl reac­tor in Ukraine, nuclear pow­er in the Unit­ed States is fad­ing and fad­ing fast. Despite the nuclear industry’s hype around a so-called renais­sance, more new nuclear capac­i­ty has been shelved than is actu­al­ly under con­struc­tion in the Unit­ed States.

Rub­ber-stamped renewals extend­ed many nuclear plant licens­es an addi­tion­al 20 years, but many nuclear reac­tors are now fac­ing shut­downs due to increased oper­at­ing costs and abysmal eco­nom­ics. Old nuclear reac­tors are find­ing it hard to com­pete with the low cost of renew­able ener­gy and nat­ur­al gas, and as a result are announc­ing their ​“ear­ly” retirements.

Mean­while, new nuclear reac­tors are so stu­pid­ly expen­sive that few will ever be built. Despite U.S. gov­ern­ment loan guar­an­tees and years of gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for nuclear pow­er, there are only two new plants, with five nuclear reac­tors, cur­rent­ly under con­struc­tion in the Unit­ed States. Both of the new nuclear plant projects in Geor­gia and South Car­oli­na are already well over bud­get and behind sched­ule. Accord­ing to the Atlanta Jour­nal & Con­sti­tu­tion, the Vog­tle nuclear plant expan­sion in Geor­gia is three years behind sched­ule and $3 bil­lion over budget.

Util­i­ty com­pa­nies are also get­ting out of the nuclear game — since 2008, they have sus­pend­ed more new nuclear reac­tor license reviews than they’ve com­plet­ed, after wast­ing hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, of hours of nuclear reg­u­la­tors’ time and effort. In Vir­ginia, the attor­ney general’s office has called for Domin­ion Pow­er to aban­don its plans for a third reac­tor at the North Anna nuclear plant site, in order to avoid wast­ing bil­lions of dol­lars on this exces­sive­ly expen­sive source of pow­er. Expert tes­ti­mo­ny for the attor­ney general’s office shows that Domin­ion would spend over $19 bil­lion on the new reac­tor at the North Anna site near Fred­er­icks­burg, which would cause elec­tric rates in the state to rise by 25 percent.

With old nuclear reac­tors fac­ing stiff eco­nom­ic com­pe­ti­tion and new reac­tors unable to com­pete on cost, nuclear pow­er is expe­ri­enc­ing a de fac­to phase out. Almost a decade ago, Green­peace released a report show­ing that we can phase out nuclear pow­er while reduc­ing car­bon pol­lu­tion with afford­able, renew­able ener­gy. The report shows how we could phase out nuclear reac­tors at the end of their 40-year licensed life, scale up renew­able ener­gy and ener­gy effi­cien­cy to replace coal and nuclear pow­er, and reach near­ly 100 per­cent renew­able ener­gy by mid­cen­tu­ry. Since then, the cost of renew­able ener­gy has con­tin­ued to plum­met while the cost of new nuclear pow­er has reached unprece­dent­ed heights.

Phas­ing out old and eco­nom­i­cal­ly chal­lenged nuclear plants is the right thing to do, espe­cial­ly if we are to avoid a Fukushi­ma or a Cher­nobyl on U.S. soil. Replac­ing those retired reac­tors with safe and afford­able renew­able ener­gy will allow us to abate the most cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences of cli­mate change.

WILL: It’s hard­er to replace nuclear in the real world than it is in a Green­peace man­i­festo. Despite large sub­si­dies, over the last five years renew­able gen­er­a­tion in the Unit­ed States rose just 49 ter­awatt-hours. At that rate, ​“fast to deploy” renew­ables will grow enough to replace the cur­rent 797 ter­awatt-hours of nuclear out­put in 81 years — with none of that increase dis­plac­ing fos­sil-fueled elec­tric­i­ty. That’s the math: Less nuclear equals more coal, more frack­ing, more glob­al warming.

Pro­gres­sives shouldn’t invoke mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion to defend biased poli­cies that squan­der low-car­bon capac­i­ty. Yes, a few nuclear plants in dereg­u­lat­ed elec­tric­i­ty mar­kets have been ham­mered by cheap gas-fired pow­er that depress­es prices. They need a sub­sidy of a pen­ny per kilo­watt-hour to stay afloat. It’s hard­ly more ​“afford­able” to close them and build wind tur­bines, which get 2.3 cents per kilo­watt-hour in fed­er­al sub­si­dies (or a 30 per­cent sub­sidy of con­struc­tion costs) on top of state subsidies.

As for new nuclear plants, they are com­pet­i­tive glob­al­ly: last year’s crop of reac­tors added as much effec­tive capac­i­ty as the wind or solar sec­tors did, at one-third the cost. Some pro­posed Amer­i­can projects are too expen­sive, but most are finan­cial­ly pret­ty smart con­sid­er­ing their phe­nom­e­nal pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Elec­tric­i­ty from the Vog­tle reac­tors will cost $65 bil­lion over 60 years; but spread over their colos­sal out­put of 1,056 ter­awatt-hours, that comes to a rea­son­able 6.2 cents per kilo­watt-hour. And Vogtle’s 24⁄ 7 pow­er won’t conk out when­ev­er the wind dies or the sun sets. Thanks to that reli­a­bil­i­ty, the five reac­tors under con­struc­tion in the Unit­ed States will gen­er­ate more elec­tric­i­ty each year than the entire Amer­i­can solar sec­tor did in 2015. If nuclear got the same sub­si­dies as renew­ables, more would get built.

Let’s sup­port sub­si­dies and man­dates for all clean ener­gy, renew­able and nuclear, until our ener­gy is clean.

JIM: We need fast, safe, afford­able cli­mate solu­tions — that rules out nuclear.

Run­ning old, dan­ger­ous and eco­nom­i­cal­ly chal­lenged nuclear reac­tors like Indi­an Point on a shoe­string bud­get tempts fate. Con­tin­u­ing to run reac­tors for 60 and 80 years, even if safe­ty goals are achieved, is like play­ing Russ­ian roulette with a nuclear reac­tor. How many times does the nuclear indus­try expect Amer­i­cans to pull the trig­ger? Phas­ing out reac­tors that have oper­at­ed for 40 years and replac­ing them with clean, safe and renew­able ener­gy makes sense and is the respon­si­ble thing to do.

U.S. ener­gy pol­i­cy need not be a choice between nuclear pow­er, coal or fracked gas, and all the risks each brings. Bloomberg New Ener­gy Finance (BNEF) pro­jec­tions show that renew­able ener­gy from wind and solar is expect­ed to increase 59 per­cent and 233 per­cent respec­tive­ly by the end of 2021. BNEF projects 103 GW of elec­tric­i­ty from new solar and wind projects in just the next five years. And 68 per­cent of all new elec­tric­i­ty added to the grid last year was from renew­able ener­gy. The ener­gy rev­o­lu­tion is under­way, and nuclear pow­er just can’t compete.

Edi­tor’s note: The intro­duc­tion of this piece has been cor­rect­ed to clar­i­fy that Bernie Sanders’ ener­gy pro­pos­al involves invest­ing in wind, solar and geothermal.