Jack Dini ——Bio and Archives--February 5, 2026

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Global momentum is building around nuclear energy with the International Atomic Energy Agency estimating that the world’s nuclear power capacity could more than double by 2050.

In the US, a 2023 survey showed 57 percent want more nuclear plants, up from 43 percent in 2020. During the same period, support for nuclear in the Netherlands grew by half, with twice as many proponents now as opponents. 

In Poland, support grew even faster: from 39 to 75 percent in only one and a half years, largely due to the desire to gain energy independence from nearby Russia. In Belgium, 85 percent want to keep nuclear in the energy mix. In Sweden, 84 percent want to continue to use nuclear power or build more reactors. Only one in ten respondents want to shut down nuclear plants. (2) 

Nuclear plants shut down in Germany and Japan are being put on-line.

Today, the country that derives the highest proportion of its electricity from nuclear fission--64.8 percent as of 2023--is France, which built out its nuclear fleet starting in the 70s. We don’t exactly think of France as a radioactive dystopia of illness and death.

At COP 28, the climate conference held in Dubai in 2023, more than 20 countries, led by the US, pledged to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050. (3)

James Hansen co-authored a 2013 study claiming that nuclear energy had prevented an estimated 1.8 million deaths that would have otherwise resulted from fossil fuel pollution. He and his co-author, Pushker Kharecha, calculated that his number was 370 times greater than the number of lives........

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