Episode 38: The Resurgence of Nuclear Power with Arjun Makhijani

In the final episode of Season 3, we return to one of the most enduring debates in the environmental community: nuclear power. In 2026, we’re seeing a resurgence of interest and investment in nuclear power across the Congressional aisle and among environmental groups. Nuclear power has repeatedly failed to deliver on the promise of clean and cost-efficient energy, and this summer, nuclear plants were shut down across Europe following extreme heat and drought. As the climate crisis worsens, nuclear power creates the risk of losing electricity when it’s most needed. Nuclear power plants use millions of gallons of freshwater every day to generate energy, disrupting ecosystems, releasing toxic waste, and diverting water resources from communities when the global freshwater supply is already threatened by climate change. Radioactivity from nuclear power projects has caused ongoing public health disasters from the Navajo Nation to Fukushima, with wide-ranging intergenerational impacts. Despite the documented risks and harms, the US government loosened nuclear regulations this year and made plans for nuclear expansion. In this episode, we bring back Dr. Arjun Makhijani, Senior Fellow at Just Solutions, who breaks down the science and ideologies behind the nuclear resurgence and shares his new paper on the impacts of nuclear power on water. While you can listen to this episode as a standalone, we highly encourage you to listen to our conversation with Arjun from Season 2, where we discussed nuclear energy, its history, the challenges, and why it's not a viable option for a clean energy transition. Guest: Arjun Makhijani, PhD. (he/him), Senior Fellow at Just Solutions, is President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Maryland. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley in 1972. A recognized authority on energy issues, Dr. Makhijani is the author and co-author of numerous reports and books on energy and environment related issues, including Prosperous, Renewable Maryland: Roadmap for a Healthy, Economical, and Equitable Energy Future (2016). More recently, in 2021, he authored Exploring Farming and Solar Synergies. Dr. Makhijani has testified before Congress and has appeared on ABC World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News, CBS 60 Minutes, NPR, CNN, and BBC, among others. He has served as a consultant on energy issues to utilities, including the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Edison Electric Institute, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and several agencies of the United Nations.