Imagine a world where electricity is so abundant and inexpensive that energy scarcity ceases to exist. A world where every home, every town, every factory and data center has access to reliable, carbon-free power 24 hours a day. Where desalination plants turn seawater into fresh water for drought-stricken regions. Where synthetic fuels such as hydrogen are made cleanly, cheaply, and at scale. Where heavy industries—steel, cement, ammonia—emit almost no carbon, supporting a clean energy future. Where the price of energy no longer constrains economic opportunity anywhere on Earth.

This future is not speculative. It is not distant. It is technically available today.

The technologies required to deliver effectively limitless clean energy exist. We have known how to build safe, high-output nuclear reactors for well more than half a century. Moreover, the hundreds of reactors that have been running for the last 70 years have a better safety record than any other power source—that’s right, even better than solar and wind. Modern designs are even safer and simpler than what came before, and they can be built modularly, quickly, and at costs low enough to transform the global economy. We know how to build them; other countries are doing it.

What stands between us and abundant clean energy is not physics, engineering, or economics. It is a cultural fear—a deep, reflexive anxiety about the danger of radiation that has shaped public opinion, education, regulatory frameworks, and policy choices for three generations.

This fear has cost humanity more than almost any other scientific misunderstanding of the modern age.

The Promise We’ve Postponed for a Clean Energy Future

If nuclear energy had been allowed to scale naturally after the 1970s, analysts estimate that:

  • atmospheric carbon might be almost 100 gigatons lower,
  • millions of lives lost to air pollution would have been saved,
  • energy prices would be lower and far more stable,
  • and nations would be less dependent on volatile fuel markets.

Every credible study shows the same thing: Nuclear energy is the safest, cleanest, and most reliable high-density power source humanity has discovered. In the late 1970s, France nuclearized almost all of its fossil-fueled generation. Their experience—abundant clean electricity, minimal carbon emissions, low household power costs—is just a modest glimpse of what widespread nuclear adoption could have provided globally.

Read the full article about a clean energy future by William D. Budinger, Ray Rothrock, and Paul Bauman at Democracy Journal.