Fewer clean nuclear power plants led to increased air pollution from fossil fuel-fired plants. That extra air pollution killed far more people than the meltdown, by several orders of magnitude. This is the preliminary conclusion of a recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study by three applied economists.
The researchers found that new nuclear plant construction flatlined immediately after Chernobyl. Had previous trends continued, the study indicates that the United States would have built more than 170 new reactors by now. In the late 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission anticipated that 1,000 mostly fast breeder reactors would supply 70 percent of America's electricity by 2000. Sadly, only 20 percent of U.S. electricity is currently generated by nuclear plants, chiefly old-fashioned light-water reactors that were built decades ago.
This story is from the January 2025 edition of Reason magazine.
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This story is from the January 2025 edition of Reason magazine.
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