In a break with his Democratic opponents and the leftists dominating the debate in the House, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey is an unapologetic supporter of using nuclear energy to displace carbon fuels.
“If we want to move quickly toward a carbon-free future, nuclear has to be part of the equation,” Booker told the Washington Examiner at a campaign stop in Columbia, South Carolina, over the weekend.
His pro-nuclear power stance runs contrary to other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates who are skeptical of nuclear energy. Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York voted against a bill in 2017 that aimed to help develop new nuclear reactors. It became law anyway in December 2018.
“A lot of people are, I think, against nuclear energy because their mind and imaginations [are] on the nuclear power plants of the 1950s and 1960s,” Booker said. “The next generation of nuclear power plants that should be built in this country are profoundly more safe. In fact, they take those spent fuel rods, the old ones, and they reuse them for energy today.”
Sanders in the past has praised California for closing nuclear power plants and criticized a Vermont nuclear plant’s handling of spent fuel.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, said in a 2012 Huffington Post op-ed that she would “work to ensure that none of us will be forced to bear the burden of nuclear energy by seeking to slash federal funding that nuclear depends on for research and development.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has voiced concerns about the safety of a nuclear power plant in Massachusetts, but she did vote for an amendment — co-sponsored by Booker — to increase research into nuclear energy technology.
Booker’s surprising support for nuclear power may be influenced by the electric structure in his home state. Nuclear plants in New Jersey generated 45.7 percent of the state’s electricity in 2017, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Other congressional Democrats, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the lead sponsor of the Green New Deal, advocate a move toward 100 percent renewable energy — and no nuclear power.
“A Green New Deal is a massive investment in renewable energy production and would not include creating new nuclear plants,” according to an FAQ on the Green New Deal provided to NPR from Ocasio-Cortez’s office in February. “It’s unclear if we will be able to decommission every nuclear plant within 10 years, but the plan is to transition off of nuclear and all fossil fuels as soon as possible.”
Booker is a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, but the text of the resolution does not specifically mention nuclear energy.
Booker knows that other Democrats and some voters are anti-nuclear power, but he is not worried about how his position on nuclear energy will affect his chances in the Democratic primaries.
“I think that this party is not looking for someone that checks every one of their boxes,” Booker told the Washington Examiner. “If you don’t like my views, it doesn’t mean I’m going to contort myself to fit some kind of view of what somebody somewhere might want.
“This is not an election for people who are fearful and faint of heart,” Booker said.
