Nuclear in my backyard: A Nebraska utility is skirting the public backlash that plagues wind and solar

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