As President Biden travels the West this week to promote his net-zero emissions goal, one of the largest generators of clean energy in the country is powering through its second week of operation in Georgia — but it doesn’t involve windmills or solar panels and doesn’t fit neatly into the left’s climate change agenda.

Plant Vogtle, the nation’s first nuclear power station to come online in seven years, began commercial operation on July 31. The reactor, located about 30 miles south of Augusta, is generating enough power for half a million homes and may herald a renaissance for the U.S. nuclear power industry which has been on the decline since 1991.

While the Biden administration is not putting the advancement of nuclear energy at the top of its agenda, it has poured billions of dollars into helping maintain existing nuclear reactors and is providing funding for a new generation of nuclear power plants to help fulfill Mr. Biden’s clean energy goals by backing up wind and solar.

“The Biden administration has embraced nuclear in a way that previous Democratic administrations haven’t,” said John Kotek, senior vice president of policy development and public affairs for the Nuclear Energy Institute.

The Department of Energy earlier this year identified nuclear power as one of three emerging technologies to help reach Mr. Biden’s goal of cutting emissions in half by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Katheryn Huff, Mr. Biden’s top administrator for Nuclear energy told Inside Climate News that building new reactors and keeping older ones running will allow “really large scale-out and build-out of renewables.”

The reactors will provide energy when the wind and solar aren’t supplying any power, which, she said, will ensure a grid “that’s also stable.”

Nuclear reactors use nuclear fission to heat water and produce steam that generates electricity without emitting carbon dioxide or pollutants while operating.

They have powered the U.S. energy grid for decades, but older plants are shuttering, reducing nuclear’s overall energy output. Thirteen nuclear power plants have closed down since 2013. There are now roughly 94 commercial nuclear reactors operating at 55 power plants in 28 states, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The Biden administration recently acted to save two more reactors from closure in energy-starved California by providing $1.1 billion to keep them operating.

It has become nearly impossible, however, to win federal approval for new nuclear power plant projects, and the stations can take more than a decade to build at a cost of billions of dollars.

Construction of the Vogtle project, which includes two reactors, began in 2009, suffered repeated delays and ultimately cost roughly $30 billion, more than double the original estimated price tag.

Despite the decline in construction and the closure of plants, nuclear power generates nearly 20% of all energy in the U.S. and makes up half of all clean energy production. By comparison, wind supplies about 10% and solar about 3% of electricity in the U.S.

When Vogtle begins operating a second new reactor by the end of the year, the plant will be the nation’s largest generator of clean energy and will power a million homes for up to 80 years.

The Energy Department is now promoting next-generation, advanced nuclear power reactors like the Vogtle plant as well as smaller, less expensive nuclear power plants that can be built more quickly.

The plants will help deliver much of the 550 to 770 gigawatts of clean power that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said will be needed to reach Mr. Biden’s net-zero goal.

“Nuclear power is one of the few proven options that could deliver this at scale, while creating high-paying jobs with concentrated economic benefits for communities most impacted by the energy transition,” Energy Department officials said in a recent presentation.

But critics say Mr. Biden has done little to lift the regulatory hurdles that hobble the nuclear power industry or reverse several decades of Democratic administrations appointing opponents of nuclear energy to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Earlier this year, Mr. Biden nominated Jeff Baran to a third term on the NRC despite the objections of pro-nuclear energy organizations and Republicans.

The objections include that Mr. Baran voted to block updated regulations to help modernize and speed up the approval of advanced nuclear reactors, and he has pushed for maintaining a regulatory regime that was designed for older nuclear reactors and that does not reflect nuclear’s long safety record.

He’s also been a leading opponent of the proposed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in the Nevada desert, which has been stalled for decades and has further hobbled the nuclear power industry by forcing plants to store waste on-site.

Jack Spencer, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate and Environment, said the NRC has crippled nuclear power plant construction by micromanaging it over outdated safety concerns.

“The primary reason is they operate within the context of the public and cultural narrative that nuclear is really dangerous, and the result of that is there’s too much of a mindset of government bureaucrats know best,” Mr. Spencer said. “That culture of regulating translates into inefficiency, things taking too long and things costing too much.”

Tim Cavanaugh, a senior editor at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said Mr. Biden’s nuclear energy agenda is merely paying “lip service” to the industry now that administration officials are seeing the limitations of intermittent solar and wind, which have threatened or caused brownouts and blackouts during heatwaves and extremely cold weather.

“The industry needs more than quick fixes,” Mr. Cavanaugh said. “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which inflicts a 32-step construction licensing process, has blocked almost all new nuclear power generation since Gerald Ford was president. Neither Biden nor Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm is trying to reform the regulatory framework for what is already the safest form of energy on the planet.”

Nuclear energy has been viewed skeptically and fearfully by Americans since the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania.

One of the reactors partially melted down and was destroyed, emitting radioactive gas.

According to the World Nuclear Association, the radiation level was below “background levels,” and the accident did not cause any injuries or deaths.

But it caused widespread fear and nearly froze the nuclear power plant industry in the U.S.

According to the Energy Information Agency, 67 planned nuclear reactor projects were scrapped between 1979 and 1988.

Other accidents have hindered nuclear power in the U.S.

The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine ultimately killed 30 workers at the plant and spread dangerous levels of radiation, injuring hundreds more.

The World Nuclear Association blamed the accident on “a flawed Soviet reactor design coupled with serious mistakes made by the plant operators [that was] a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture.”

The 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, caused by an earthquake and tsunami, injured 16 workers but otherwise had no physical health impact on the area’s residents, though it led to new fears about existing nuclear plants.

California began the now-halted plans to shut down its Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant after Fukushima, fearing a similar accident if the state experiences a large earthquake and tsunami.

Amid rising energy prices and the push to eliminate fossil fuels, Americans now view nuclear power more favorably than in the past.

A March 2023 Gallup poll found 55% of Americans either strongly or somewhat favor nuclear energy, up from 44% in 2016.

The new poll found 44% strongly or somewhat oppose nuclear power, a 10% drop in opposition from 2016.

Along party lines, 62% of Republicans, 46% of Democrats and 56% of independents now favor the use of nuclear energy to power the grid.

Steven Biegalski, chair of the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics Program at Georgia Institute of Technology, told The Times he’s seeing a shift among young people, who are studying nuclear engineering in significant numbers.

Georgia Tech saw a 40% increase in freshman applications for its nuclear engineering program, he said.

“What it tells me is that the views of our 17-year-old and 18-year-old high school seniors are significantly changing to have a positive view of nuclear,” Mr. Biegalski said. “They see nuclear as being a clean energy source, vital to our future. They see a lot of other nuclear technologies, including nuclear medicine as being very beneficial to society. And these all are adding together to have a sort of resurgence that we’re seeing here directly.”

New nuclear power plants are in the works in Texas, Idaho and Wyoming while major energy providers, including Duke Energy and Dominion Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority, are beginning the planning process for new nuclear power generation or have included nuclear in their resource planning scenarios for future power generation.

Power providers see nuclear as an essential part of an energy mix that is increasingly moving away from fossil fuels. And unlike wind and solar, it can run without interruption.

“I do think nuclear is on the upswing and will remain that way,” the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Mr. Kotek said.

• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.