This story is made possible through a partnership between Grist and The Flatwater Free Press, Nebraska’s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories.
Applause echoed through the halls of the Gage County courthouse. The county board had just approved new, more stringent wind energy regulations, and the overflow crowd of residents couldn’t contain themselves.
Few in the crowded courthouse that day in September 2020 beamed brighter than Larry Allder. The Cortland-area resident helped lead the yearslong charge against wind energy’s looming expansion into the county.
“It’s been a long road,” he told The Voice News after the vote.
Now six years later, another historically controversial energy source — nuclear power — could be coming. Last month, the Nebraska Public Power District, or NPPD, announced a list of four potential sites for a new nuclear power plant. Gage County, south of Lincoln on the border with Kansas, is on it. This time, though, Allder has no plans to mount an opposition.
“I think that’s a great idea. I like nuclear energy,” Allder said. “I think it’s the way of the future.”
Despite a legacy that often invokes fear, there are signs nuclear development won’t face the backlash that other energy sources, especially renewables, have generated for Nebraskans in recent years. “They were just trying to stick the wind turbines really close to my property, and I do not like wind energy,” Allder said. He considers the turbines to be “ugly.” More substantively, Allder thinks that wind and solar projects produce “very inefficient and very costly and very intermittent power.” Nuclear, however, he said, is “clean and it doesn’t take up much land space.”
Grist spoke with leaders in the four communities identified by NPPD — Beatrice, Sutherland, Norfolk, and Brownville— and most said their communities are open to a new nuclear project.
“I think the general consensus is still that we’re supportive of nuclear energy,” Madison County Commissioner Troy Uhlir said. “There’s definitely more people speaking up and saying, ‘No, not here,’ (but) it’s not overwhelming.”
Beatrice Mayor Bob Morgan said his community is excited to be in the top four site options.
In Sutherland, a few residents have voiced questions on safety, said Scott Meyer, chairman of the village board. Both Uhlir and Meyer believe those concerns can be calmed by education.
“What I find pleasing and reinforcing is that there is a lot of support out there,” NPPD CEO Tom Kent told Grist. “Those communities are really interested in hosting and being a location for this kind of development, and Nebraska has always been a state that’s been very supportive of nuclear power.”
Nationally, lawmakers in both parties have begun embracing nuclear power, as have everyday people like Allder. It also is being eyed by utilities, lured — amid growing demand for electricity — by its ability to generate large amounts of power without spewing climate-warming greenhouse gases.
Technological advancements offer another selling point. The next generation of nuclear power plants aims to solve problems the industry has historically grappled with, including their high costs, lengthy constructions, and safety concerns.
Proponents of nuclear say that advanced reactor plants like small modular reactors, or SMRs, could solve those problems that have long beset the industry. These reactors are also expected to be flexible, generating more or less power as needed, which can work well with renewables, said Joseph Giitter, a former senior executive at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And the latest innovation wave has generated a massive amount of support from private tech companies and investors who are betting on nuclear as a solution for the spike in electricity demand from data centers.
While projects involving new nuclear designs have started in Tennessee, Wyoming, and Washington, Nebraska is probably a decade away from seeing a new nuclear plant, which is why it’s important to start research now, Kent said.
“When nuclear takes off, it’s going to take off quick. So we want to be ready to be in that first set of fast follower orders, right? Or we’ll miss the middle of the next decade,” he said.
NPPD was recently awarded over $27 million in cost-shared funding by the Department of Energy to apply for a federal permit needed to site a new nuclear plant. According to Kent, the funding will cover less than half of the application costs. In terms of designs, Kent says NPPD is considering designs similar to the small reactors being tested in Wyoming and Tennessee. But it remains to be seen whether this next generation of nuclear reactors can deliver what its proponents promise.
The utility is also open to large-scale reactors, like the ones installed at Plant Vogtle in Georgia — a cautionary tale for Nebraska.
Georgia’s two new nuclear reactors started producing power in 2023 and 2024, 15 years after the utility applied for a license, according to the Associated Press. These reactors are more advanced than most operating in the U.S.. The project wrapped up years behind schedule and, at more than $30 billion, was over budget. In the end, the new reactors led to rate hikes for power customers, which fueled public backlash.
Southern Company’s CEO, Chris Womack noted its subsidiary Georgia Power faced unique obstacles, including a nearly nonexistent workforce and supply chain, complications posed by the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in 2011 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and the bankruptcy of the design contractor.
But nuclear projects have historically run into significant delays and gone way over budget, said Edward Kee, CEO of Nuclear Economics Consulting Group. Large or small, these projects in the U.S. can be a gamble for utilities and their rate payers.
For context, NPPD’s Cooper Nuclear Station, which opened in 1974 and is the state’s only commercial nuclear plant in operation, cost about $313 million to build. Adjusted for inflation, that price tag translates to roughly $2.1 billion in today’s dollars. Omaha Public Power District’s now-retired Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station, which started operating in 1973, cost about $165 million to build. That would be roughly $1.2 billion today.
Sometimes, that gamble pays off, as happened in south Texas where, 20 years later, customers are experiencing lower power rates, Kee said. But in other cases, the projects never made it to completion. Since 2010, there have been at least 11 canceled commercial nuclear power reactor plans, according to the NRC.
While new advanced reactors may minimize issues seen in Georgia, they too carry financial risks because they haven’t been tested, Giitter said.
“The promise of the technology is there, but it hasn’t been proven yet,” Giitter said.
