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The ‘Nuclear Nightmare’ That Was Manufactured by the Media

John Stossel is seen in front of a nuclear power plant | Stossel TV

A few years ago, nuclear power looked doomed.

Plants were shutting down.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo won applause bragging about closing a nuclear plant “14 years ahead of schedule.”

“Why would they applaud?” asks former nuclear engineer Ray Rothrock in my new video. “They shut down New York’s finest source of clean energy.”

Rothrock has met with presidents, trying to persuade them to embrace nuclear power, but “nothing was ever addressed.”

Until now.

President Donald Trump ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to speed up licensing of new plants.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D–R.I.) called that a “flagrant disregard for nuclear safety.”

“Not conducive to nuclear safety,” complained Sen. Adam Schiff (D–Calif.).

“That’s just a bunch of crap,” says Rothrock. “They’re afraid of something that they don’t need to be afraid of.”

We don’t? What about that meltdown at Three Mile Island?

Time magazine called it a “nuclear nightmare.” The Washington Post: “nuclear crisis.”

“The result…should be the abandonment of nuclear power!” said a widely quoted “analyst.”

It was the usual media hysteria.

“Nobody was hurt!” Rothrock points out.

It didn’t matter. Media still called nuclear energy an unacceptable risk.

Then there was another accident in Fukushima, Japan.

People did die there, but not from radiation. Not one. People died because the government’s required evacuation disrupted their medical care.

The United Nations reported “no discernible increased incidence of radiation-related health effects.”

But my media colleagues, as usual, made radiation the villain. Nuclear power was set back further.

It’s why more countries didn’t do what France does: get most of its power from nuclear reactors.

People in France are OK with that, but in most of the rest of the world, anti-nuclear protesters persuaded people to be frightened about “radiation leaks.”

The scare works because most people don’t realize that radiation is everywhere.

Just flying in a plane exposes you to it. So does living in Denver.

A beach in Brazil has natural radiation levels much higher than our government’s safety standards.

“Thirty times the safety standard!” says Rothrock.

People who use that beach don’t get more cancer. Our bodies can handle low levels of radiation.

“Why take any risks?” I ask Rothrock. “Why don’t we just use solar and wind?”

“Wind stops blowing sometimes….You need a lot of land for solar and wind. Throw in all those costs and it’s pretty darn expensive.”

In America, new nuclear plants are pretty darn expensive, too. But that’s mainly because of the NRC’s cumbersome rules.

“‘Thou shall do it this way,'” complains Rothrock. “Thou all shall have that. Thou shall have this.’ The regulators said, ‘If it takes a 3-foot, 6-inch wall to protect from the radiation…why don’t you make it 4? Better still, why don’t you make it 10?'”

Regulators rarely adjust rules to account for new technology.

The NRC required plants to be covered by a dome. But some new reactors, says Rothrock, are “not pressurized! There’s no need for a dome. But the rules say you have to build a dome!”

Just to get approval for a new plant “got to be five, six, seven years. Then people stopped completely. For literally 30 years, the NRC has not seen a new reactor proposal.”

Only now have the rules been changed, and for the first time in 10 years, a new reactor has been approved.

So protestors shout: “This nuclear nightmare is back!…You can have a full-blown reactor core meltdown!”

This time, they are losing.

Eighteen reactors have had operating licenses extended. Many new reactors are in development.

Private entrepreneurs are making better fuels and reactors that are easier to install.

If bureaucrats get out of the way, we should soon have cheap, clean energy.

The post The 'Nuclear Nightmare' That Was Manufactured by the Media appeared first on Reason.com.

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D.C. Wants To Charge Robotaxis $6 Million. Unions Still Say No.

A Waymo driverless vehicle drives through a tunnel | Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom

The District of Columbia is considering a bill that would permit the commercial use of autonomous vehicles (A.V.s), such as Waymo, so long as operators pay a multimillion-dollar fee.

The Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Authorization Amendment Act of 2026, introduced in May by Democratic Councilmember Charles Allen, would create the first legal pathway for companies to operate driverless taxis and delivery vehicles in the district. “People want AVs as an option to get around, and I want DC to be a city that embraces innovation,” Allen said in a press release.

Legalizing these vehicles would be a positive not only for D.C.’s residents but also for safety. Where autonomous vehicles have been allowed, initial evidence suggests that they are far better than human drivers at avoiding crashes that result in injuries. According to Waymo’s analysis of over 220 million driverless miles, A.V.s were involved in 94 percent fewer serious-injury crashes, 93 percent fewer pedestrian crashes with injuries, and 84 percent fewer cyclist crashes with injuries than human drivers covering comparable roads.

The proposed bill would, however, introduce a tight and costly regulatory framework that will cause the city to forgo some of the crashes, injuries, and deaths A.V.s could prevent. Some of the restrictions include the requirement for operators to complete 250,000 miles of testing, pay $6 million for a three-year permit, carry $5 million in insurance, accept an initial 200-vehicle cap, file extensive reports, and pay an additional 15-cent tax on every mile driven. The multimillion-dollar fees would partly fund training programs for ride-share drivers deemed vulnerable to automation.

However, this extraordinarily expensive framework is not enough for union campaigners. Before a hearing on the bill on Monday, protesters and members of the Teamsters Union, 32BJ SEIU, the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers gathered outside as the D.C. Council heard testimony, arguing that legalizing A.V.s would cost jobs.

“We support innovation 100% when it strengthens public services and creates good union jobs,” Jaime Contreras, executive vice president of 32BJ SEIU, the nation’s largest property service union, tells Reason. “As it stands now, the bill would funnel money to Waymo executives in Silicon Valley that could otherwise go into the pockets of DC residents and [the] economy.”

Perhaps some drivers will be displaced by the introduction of autonomous vehicles, but protecting jobs today should surely not be the basis on which we create laws for the future. If it were, farming machinery would have been outlawed because it would result in fewer farmers, ATMs would have been rejected on the basis that they would result in fewer bank tellers, and the car itself would have been opposed on the basis that it would displace horse-drawn carriage drivers.

Indeed, this was the argument made by Marissa Tuell, senior manager of autonomous vehicle policy at Lyft. At the hearing on Monday, Tool argued that “the disruption drivers feel from automation isn’t new,” and that “ATMs” and “self-checkouts” did not “eliminate tellers and cashiers,” but “gave customers more ways to bank and shop, with both options continuing to operate side by side.” Tuell said that she expected the same to be the case with automated vehicles, resulting in “A.V.s and human drivers coexisting and complementing each other to meet more rider needs than either could alone.”

Union representatives did not share Tuell’s optimism. Brian Wivell of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 argued before the council that adopting A.V.s would push people to live farther from their workplaces by allowing them to work from these vehicles. He seemed to suggest that the convenience afforded by Waymos and other A.V.s is something that should be fought: “As we consider allowing a technology that will allow someone to do a 30- to 45- minute drive without having to talk to a single human being and they can work the entire time, we are going to watch sprawl on a level we have never seen before.”

“One of the things that stood out to me the most was how many people seemed to say that delivery or driving jobs required a human touch,” Lucas Pombo, a research fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation who testified in person at the hearing, tells Reason. “One witness claimed that part of being an Uber driver is talking to people who weren’t being talked to at other points in the day,” effectively serving as “a kind of mental health/person-to-talk-to service in addition to being drivers,” which Pombo calls “plainly ridiculous.” He adds that one union representative “went so far as to say that having drivers in delivery trucks led to more efficient routing,” which Pombo says is “just a factually incorrect statement about how delivery routes get planned.”

Pombo argues that in the future, as A.V.s become more affordable, the opportunities to increase convenience are endless: “Kids could visit their friends’ houses without dragging their parents along, Amazon could dispatch a car with just your package directly from the warehouse when you order it,” and “you could order food from a far away restaurant you really like.”

The opportunities are truly endless. Unfortunately, across all levels of government, there exists a pervasive idea that technological change, which may affect jobs, must be treated with disdain. While it is unclear how the bill will fare in the D.C. Council, the stringent regulations and steep costs tied to potential A.V. legalization are likely to prevent D.C. from realizing the full potential of self-driving vehicles.

The post D.C. Wants To Charge Robotaxis $6 Million. Unions Still Say No. appeared first on Reason.com.

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