In wake of the recent election, news of Donald Trump’s picks for cabinet and senior staff has been trickling in over the past few weeks. Among these picks is Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Energy, Chris Wright.

As The New York Times reported, Wright has expressly denied the climate crisis as well as shifting energy goals. Such statements may worry the majority of Americans — and rightfully so — who recognize the climate crisis’s reality and support counteracting it through the development of more renewable energy sources, as Pew Research Center found in 2022. 

Despite the public’s anxieties about climate progress, hope for a near future with renewable energy is not lost.

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While Wright, who is the CEO of a fracking company, does not necessarily fit the environmentally-conscious progressive’s ideal mold for secretary of energy, he does support some energy solutions that are not fossil fuel-dependent, including geothermal energy and  nuclear power. 

With Wright’s expressed preferences leaning toward geothermal and nuclear energy sources and away from wind and solar, it seems like if the Senate confirms him for his nominated position, his energy agenda will focus on expanding these alternative sources. 

Accordingly, the expansion of nuclear energy is the most viable route toward renewable energy and sustainability during the new administration.

In the past, nuclear tragedies such as Chernobyl — where a nuclear power plant in the former Soviet Union malfunctioned and released vast amounts of radiation into the environment, consequently killing many living in the area and exposing others to radiation — as well as the more recent Fukushima incident in Japan, have resulted in public concern about the safety of nuclear power. 

However, nuclear power has gained the public’s favor over the past few years. Survey results from Pew Research Center in 2024 indicate that since 2020, adults in the United States have continuously supported more nuclear power to generate electricity, and that the support for nuclear power has less of a partisan divide than other energy sources, such as fracking. 

Despite the changing tide of public approval, the number of operational nuclear power reactors has decreased steadily since the 1990s. 

This decline is perhaps attributed to permanent shut-downs of older plants due to safety concerns about the negative consequences of worn-down infrastructure. These apprehensions have influenced the decommissioning of California’s very own San Onofre Nuclear Generation Center on the Southern California coast, leaving only one operating nuclear power plant in the state. 

Even with these justifications for decommissioning, nuclear power plant closures are harmful. According to The Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center, premature nuclear plant shut-downs led to over 138 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, which is almost as much as the combined total emissions of 37 African countries.

As the institute highlights, this is the case because the energy generation lost from phasing out nuclear power is often replaced with less renewable energy forms. Even when renewable energy sources fill in the gap, they merely swap one renewable energy form for another without growing the total renewable energy infrastructure, so de-carbonization isn’t maximized.

This doesn’t mean that nuclear power plants should never be shut down, as certain outdated designs are dangerous enough to warrant closing. However, expanding nuclear power — as long as the process is treated with due safety considerations — can be a renewable energy win for the U.S.

The Department of Energy has detailed various benefits of nuclear energy, which currently produces close to 20% of the country’s electricity. These benefits include preserving air quality, reducing waste and using less land than other energy sources.

Nuclear power plants have allowed the U.S. to avoid over 16,000 million metric tons of carbon dioxide since 1995, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

Because of how dense nuclear fuel is, less of it is needed to generate high amounts of energy, compared to other fuel forms, leading to lower waste. And when it comes to land usage, nuclear power requires 75 times less land than solar and 360 times less land than wind to generate the same amount of electricity.

The advantages of nuclear power when it is done correctly are clear. Citizens and leaders alike should endorse nuclear power expansion as a feasible and valuable renewable energy solution for the near future.