Connor Cantrell | 8/28/2026
Nuclear energy is re-emerging as a strategy for energy independence and a strategy for combatting climate change in the United States. New York State directed the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to “develop at least one new nuclear energy facility with a combined capacity of no less than one gigawatt of electricity,” in June 2025 and, at the federal level, the U.S. Department of Energy, awarded $2.7 billion in contracts to build domestic uranium enrichment capacity in January 2026.
Supporters describe nuclear energy as ‘clean’, ‘zero-emission’ and essential to compensating the variable amounts of electricity that come from renewable sources. Given the urgency of climate change and the substantial and increasing burden borne by disadvantaged communities, it is crucial that we spend our time and resources on effective and equitable climate strategies, so let’s examine nuclear energy as a climate strategy.
Is Nuclear Power Emissionless?
Nuclear power produces no direct greenhouse gas emissions during operation, and its lifecycle emissions (the total emissions from every step of construction and development) are far lower than fossil fuels. This assessment from The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment found a range of emission rates for nuclear power comparing carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e – aka emissions) per kilowatt hour generated (kWh aka – energy made). In short, what is the emission cost of electricity?
- The minimum was 3.09 g CO2e/kWh
- The maximum 43.2 g CO2e/kWh
- And the average 12.4 g CO2e/kWh
These rates are substantially lower than their fossil fuel counterparts. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal produces 1,047 g CO2e/kWh and natural gas produces 435 g CO2e/kWh. For this narrow measure, the “zero-emission” label holds up.
For comparison, utility scale solar paired with batteries for reliability average 123.8 g CO2e/kWh (with half of emissions coming from the production of batteries) and utility scale wind power produces 11 g CO2e/kWh.
The Financial Cost of Nuclear Power
This study of construction costs, in $/kW, or dollars per kilowatt, discerns between the construction costs of nuclear projects completed in the United States before and after the Three Mile Island partial meltdown in 1979. As we can see below, projects completed after the incident show a steep increase in project costs per kilowatt over time.
The most recent nuclear facility construction in the United States, an expansion of the Vogtle nuclear power plant near Augusta, Georgia, is another expensive, long term project. The addition of two new reactors was expected to cost $14 billion with an estimated completion date in 2017. The price, ultimately, ballooned to $37 billion with the project reaching completion seven years late, in 2024. The result is two additional gigawatts (GW) of electricity added to Georgia’s grid.
Compare this new generation to the progress of solar energy in New York from 2021 to 2025. According to NYSERDA, new solar generation averaged around 1 GW per year over the time period. And, from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), in total the United States added 30 GW of solar in 2024 at a cost of $57.5 billion. Roughly $2 billion per GW for solar as opposed to the Georgia project’s $18.5 billion per GW for nuclear.
The Human Cost of Nuclear Power
Beyond dollars and time, nuclear power carries a cost that rarely makes it into mainstream policy conversations: the cost borne by communities near uranium mines, processing facilities, and power plants themselves.
In the United States, mining uranium historically happens on or near indigenous land. You can see the abandoned uranium mines left on Diné (Navajo) land with this map from the Environmental Protection Agency. While reservation land in the United States represents around 6% of total U.S. land area, one in five Native American Reservations are within six miles of an abandoned mine, and more than 75% are within fifty miles.
Furthermore, uranium mining, enrichment, the construction, and use of nuclear power plants are often developed against the wishes of local indigenous groups. See this paper from the Onondaga Nation, Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force, and American Indian Law Alliance that outlines a long history of the impact of the nuclear sector on indigenous communities in the United States.
The placement of uranium mining, enrichment, and the construction of actual power plants in or near indigenous communities means the consequences of mining uranium are all left to indigenous communities. In 1979, “the largest by volume radioactive spill in US history took place [at Church Rock] in Diné Bikéyah (Navajo Nation) in northwestern New Mexico. This was both a mining disaster and nuclear disaster that happened when an earthen dam collapsed at the United Nuclear Corporation’s uranium mill tailings pond, releasing 94 million gallons of radioactive, toxic, and acidic slurry into the Puerco River Basin.” Communities there are still living with the disruption to their community. Crops and sheep died and land Dine people had been living on for generations was declared a superfund site and put under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency, forcing displacement.
Environmental justice has always asked: who bears the cost of energy choices? With uranium mining, the answer has been consistent for decades in the United States: indigenous communities.
The concerns with nuclear power do not stop at the mining of uranium nor do they stop at the danger to indigenous communities. The effects of nuclear power plants, although emissionless while in use, are still felt by the communities that host them. This 2025 study on the relationship between nuclear power plants and cancer rates found that “[p]roximity to plants significantly increased cancer incidence, with risk declining by distance.” So, the health impacts to humans are not just during development. While the nuclear power plant produces electricity without emissions when it’s running, the danger to nearby humans is continuous.
In Conclusion
Nuclear energy is framed as a way to avoid greenhouse gas emissions and that statement on its own is technically correct. But that framing avoids the extraction, the processing, the waste, the decade-plus construction timelines, the expanding budgets, and, most importantly, the communities that absorb the consequences at every stage of the development process.
Investment in nuclear energy, especially domestic uranium mining and enrichment, further invests in inequity and if we are to have a just, managed transition away from fossil fuels, we have to use the energy transition as a vehicle for justice, not the entrenchment of injustice.
We are driven to transition away from fossil fuels and the emissions they cause because of the cost to humans and to the planet. A just and equitable energy transition should remove that harm, not relocate it.