POLITICS: Democrats bow to nuclear reality — leaving the left behind

The Biden-era climate-activist class may be the last to accept that there’s no clean energy future without nuclear power.

At least some politicians — even in the bluest corridors — are conceding.

Reliably progressive New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has instructed the state’s public power authority to build no less than one gigawatt of advanced nuclear power.

Her announcement came just weeks after President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders to bring back America’s nuclear-energy dominance.

Site assessments, private-sector partnerships and labor support are already in motion.

Hochul and Trump come from opposite political universes, but both understand that nuclear delivers what wind and solar never will.

It’s the only zero-emission energy source that can power today’s energy requirements reliably at scale.

Modern life depends on uninterrupted electricity — AI computing, chip manufacturing, electric vehicles and data centers can’t run on “weather permitting” power.

Storage for excess energy from wind and solar resources is still too expensive. Sunlight and wind are still too unreliable.

Nuclear is the only clean option that runs 24/7.

Trump’s directives reflect that reality: They speed up permitting timelines, reauthorize shuttered reactors, rebuild domestic uranium supply chains and fast-track next-generation reactors for military bases and AI infrastructure.

The goal is 300 gigawatts of new capacity by 2050, ensuring that nuclear power is the center of American competitiveness and security.

Hochul, for her part, recognizes that New York can’t meet its electrification targets without nuclear, either.

The state’s phase-out of fossil fuels has created demand spikes the current grid can’t handle, made worse by the premature shutdown of plants like Indian Point in Westchester.

She may never admit it publicly, but her plan rests entirely on the foundation Trump laid over the past months.

His leadership — combined with streamlined Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviews, rebuilt supply chains and rising bipartisan support — cleared the way.

But while some Democrats have begun to evolve, the institutional climate-activist left has not.

Groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club and the Nuclear Threat Initiative have cycled millions of dollars through projects meant to thwart nuclear power.

They reflexively oppose every new reactor proposal, every licensing reform and every effort to restore fuel production on American soil.

UCS has spent years pushing climate litigation to “hold bad actors accountable” for “climate change,” recover “damages” and “limit future climate harms,” while taking money from far-left donors like the Tides Foundation and the Energy Foundation — which has longstanding links to the Chinese Communist Party.

Edwin Lyman, a UCS director and frequent critic of nuclear power, has shockingly urged the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to disobey Trump’s executive orders.

The Sierra Club, once a conservationist group, now donates millions almost exclusively to Democratic campaigns, and supported President Joe Biden’s push to ban gas stoves.

NTI, co-founded by CNN’s Ted Turner and run by former President Barack Obama’s energy secretary, is bankrolled by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Arabella Advisors’ dark-money network.

These groups are increasingly out of sync with global science, public opinion — and now, even the Democratic officials they once helped elect.

They portray themselves as scientific, civic-minded watchdogs, but their only function is to spend millions injecting a radical, unpopular left-wing agenda into American politics, one that benefits America’s adversaries more than the environment.

The rest of the world is advancing its nuclear energy capabilities: China is developing small, modular reactors to export globally, while Russia is financing nuclear plants across Africa and Eastern Europe.

These countries are not paralyzed by activist lawsuits or donor-driven campaigns, so they are free to invest in the most powerful tool available to cut emissions and expand growth.

Finally, thanks to an increasing groundswell of support, so is the United States.

The future of energy is nuclear, whether the climate lobby likes it or not.

America is fortunate to have a president who understands this fact and is willing to lead.

The alternative is to let out-of-touch donor-backed litigators and left-wing dark money behemoths dictate US nuclear policy, just as they did in the Biden White House.

The country can’t afford that kind of nostalgia.

Steve Forbes is chairman and editor -n- chief of Forbes Media.