Protect Minnesota’s Nuclear Moratorium!

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am very concerned about S718 / S350 / HF9 / HF8 or any other legislation that would lift the moratorium on new nuclear power plants in Minnesota. I ask you to stand with taxpayers, ratepayers, and the public by voting against any legislation that would allow, support, or more easily permit nuclear power plants.

Since the 1950s the nuclear industry has been promising electricity “too cheap to meter”, yet instead nuclear electricity costs more. Every nuclear power plant built in the U.S. has cost more than promised. Every state with nuclear power plants has burdened households with high electricity rates. Wind and solar power — harvesting nature’s free energy — lowers energy costs and saves ratepayers money.

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) — the latest nuclear technology “miracle” — are unproven and not financially viable — even with taxpayer subsidies. No SMR has been commercialized in the U.S., the one attempt  — NuScale SMR — ended in bankruptcy. NuScale lost $4.2 billion in taxpayer funds when it failed.

Nuclear power’s cost burden on ratepayers does not include the costs we pay as taxpayers. U.S. and state subsidies for expensive nuclear research, construction, operations, bad debt, security threats, and other risks are a huge waste of tax dollars when solar, wind, geothermal, water and wave power, and batteries together provide much cheaper, cleaner, and safer energy. The U.S. Energy Information Agency’s 2024 comparison of energy sources calculated that nuclear power costs three to four times more than the combination of renewable wind and solar power plus back-up batteries.

Radiation leaks cause health damage. Radioactive waste is a 200,000 year nightmare that has yet to be solved. Native communities and communities with low incomes are more often forced to live next to and suffer unfair burdens of illness and risk.

Nuclear power has become even more high-risk than before. Nuclear plants and radioactive storage sites are vulnerable to terrorists and a target in warfare. Nuclear facilities — and the electricity that runs reactor cooling — are vulnerable to failure when droughts, floods, heat, cold, storms, and other extreme weather increasingly hit.

If all these risks and higher costs for ratepayers and taxpayers were not enough, building nuclear power plants takes too long — even in authoritarian countries like China — to prevent the worst catastrophes of climate destabilization. In Western countries, new nuclear power plants are taking 17+ years. Scientists are extremely worried about the deterioration of our planet’s weather stability and biological support system due to rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions. They warn that we must cut emissions by 80% by 2030. We at last have affordable, truly renewable, safe, clean, job-creating energy — the combination of wind, water, solar, ground energy plus storage and energy efficient electric technologies that enable us to transition. We could make the shift in 1-3 years. Yet instead we are being led down a fantasy path with unproven SMRs based on a dangerous, expensive, health-damaging, and high-risk nuclear technology.

I ask you to strongly oppose all versions of highly expensive nuclear fission energy. It is worse in every way than the wind, solar, energy efficient technology plus storage solutions that are the leading choice of businesses, investors, and countries around the world.

Thank you,