She wants what's best for you . . .
Moms protect their children. For better or worse, she does what she thinks best, given her means. She sees to our needs, supports us when we struggle and helps us develop into self-reliant adults, often at great personal sacrifice.
But we are now at a critical junction in human history, perhaps one of the most crucial moments that will determine our trajectory. Our moms, for all their superpowers, may not fully recognize the new threat we face—because it is entirely invisible.
CO2, the waste emission created by our growing energy usage, is both colorless and odorless. Yet, it is impacting our future. Unlike with most types of toxic emissions that contribute to smog, moms can't see that the emissions from powering things we love—cars, boats, planes, televisions, computers, refridgerators, washing machines, phones, the Internet, websites and especially our homes—has filled our atmosphere with large molecules that serve to turn the heat up on the planet.
Can moms adapt to defending us from the risks posed by climate change?
For eons, moms have been perfectly evolved to meet their primary job qualifications: to provide for her child's physical and psychological safety. For as long as we have had recorded history, moms' love has helped populations thrive. But things have changed dramatically. Humanity, empowered with technologies unimaginable mere decades ago, are causing profound changes to our climate and ecosystems for the worse. Weather patterns are changing. Days are hotter and there are more of them. Trees flower earlier in the season. There is less and less rain, more severe droughts and forest fires. Areas that could once be farmed, can no longer grow crops. Fish populations that fed millions have declined. Bees, bats and insects are disappearing. Hurricanes and tornadoes arrive more frequently and fiercely. How can moms defend their children from a heating planet and all of its related effects? The job of protecting children from these climate threats is not straight-forward and may seem quite impossible, yet there are important things moms can and should do.
Focus on root causes and support an effective energy transition.
Many moms are already concerned about climate and fighting back. She may be planting trees, using less paper, fussing to close lights and turning down the heat. She's also probably recycling, refusing plastic straws and plastic bags and composting. Moms with excess resources are likely donating to stem deforestation, habitat loss and species extinction. She may even opt to invest in ESG and impact-focused funds. While laudable, none of these activities directly target the cause of the problem and so are not a good use of moms' time or talents.
Mom, like the rest of us, must focus on the root cause of climate change. Which is the CO2 emissions from humanity's collective burning of over 100 million gallons of oil per day, 25 million tons of coal and a comparable amount of natural gas each day. It is these daily energy choices that generate over 100 million tonnes of CO2 emissions waste daily and over 40 billion tonnes annually—an enormous amount that goes almost entirely into the atmosphere and heats the planet. This is the real problem and the only way to lessen the threat we're facing is to transition away from CO2-emitting fossil fuels to other types of energy that don't emit CO2.
The good news: Over 200 countries agreed that transitioning away from fossil fuels is a global imperative. As recently as 2023, world leaders met in Abu Dhabi, Dubai at COP 28 and specifically agreed on this. It won't surprise Mom at all that it took all 28 of these week-long annual "Conference of the Parties" gatherings to arrive at this agreement. It was every bit as difficult as getting a child to agree to clean up his room. But, they got it done. Some thirty countries further committed at that time to triple the amount of nuclear they use. Others committed to increasing wind and solar. So, with the new agreement in place, the fighting over how to effect this transition has begun in earnest.
The bad news: Wind and solar haven't lived up to the hype that they can solve the problem. Everyone hoped they would and, yes, we love getting free energy from the sun and the wind. Sadly, the actual technologies required to capture and convert that natural energy into power are neither free nor efficient. In the "you get what you pay for" department, renewables are cheap but so unreliable that even where they've been fully built out, we still need to burn fossil fuels to meet the 24/7 level of energy demanded by customers. It turns out that our near constant energy demand doesn't pair well with highly intermittent sources like wind and solar. Adding them to the grid has increased costs to end users largely because of the need for significant further expenditures on peaker gas plants and batteries to try to firm up their very low generation capacity.
What other clean energy options are there?
There aren't many, which is why we need better options. And we need them urgently. Among the options we have are hydro power, geothermal power and nuclear power. Hydro and geothermal power are currently limited to specific geographies, most of which areas are already fully exploited. Traditional grid-scale nuclear is pretty darn good (despite its reputation) but has historically come in a "one-size-fits-all" configuration that can cost billions and take a decade or more to build. Against this backdrop, there's more good news.
Entrepreneurs are working to innovate to make nuclear power smaller, modular and safer. And, best of all, these new advanced designs are on the verge of being commercialized, so adding exciting new energy options that can directly replace smaller coal and gas plants. Meanwhile, they are rapidly becoming the most compelling medium-term solution to our energy problems. Just recently, Google, Amazon, Dow Chemical, Nucor and other large companies have begun to place orders for power from advanced nuclear because they see it as helping them meet both their energy growth and decarbonization goals.
Tech companies have but will Moms go Nuclear to protect their children?
For most of our lives, our moms opposed nuclear power. They feared nuclear bombs and believed that nuclear power plants posed similar risks. The idea that a melt-down accident at a nuclear power plant could explode and contaminate huge swaths of land seemed like an existential threat that had moms everywhere up in arms. Accidents like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima seemed only to prove them right. Protesting moms did their thing and eventually succeeded in preventing new nuclear power plants from being built for most of the last 40 years. At the time, with their then limited understanding of the risks, this seemed like the right thing to do, so it is easy to understand the rationale. But was it?
Now, more than 40 years later, we actually have a much better understanding. And it turns out it was a huge mistake. Had the original plans developed by Presidents Eisenhower and, later, John F. Kennedy to build out a fleet of nuclear power plants to meet all US energy needs succeeded, we would not have a climate catastrophe on our hands. But, because of public opposition, nuclear grew only to be 20% of our electricity needs and then its growth was halted.
In its place, the fossil fuel industry was allowed to grow unchecked, vastly accelerating CO2 emissions and turning global warming into a full blown catastrophe. We've already seen 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) of confirmed warming and there much more to come, as more emissions are added to the existing molecular blanket trapping solar radiation and heating the planet. It is as bad for the health of our planet as it would be if your child had a fever of 102.7 that just continued rising.
While the worst impacts of our use of fossil fuels may still be a ways off, even the current level poses an existential risk to humanity. We are failing to meet our initial goal of reducing emissions by 50% by 2030, which is five years away and emissions have not declined at all. Not solving this problem by greatly reducing our level of emissions is causing tremendous psychological stress in younger generations. This is why moms everywhere need to act and fast. They need to show their children that they are doing what it takes, which requires thinking outside the box and being willing to do things we may not be comfortable with.
Next-generation nuclear is the disruptive, scalable solution we need.
Things seem bad right now. The Trump Administration is in denial about climate change and the very topic of climate change has become terribly polarized. Progressives want to end fossil fuel use but demand that we replace it with renewables, which clearly aren't up to the job. Conservatives are rightly worried about rising energy prices and energy reliability and love nuclear but they've shown little concern about addressing climate. While thsese differences cause political dysfunction, there is considerable bipartisan agreement about the need to accelerate advanced nuclear. Somehow, between climate doom and climate denial, both sides for vastly different reasons, agree on the importance of accelerating next-generation nuclear.
This bipartisan support is not new It started with the Obama Administration, which set the stage to support nuclear innovation. Thereafter, the first Trump Administration signed several pieces of legislation passed by the Congress aimed at accelerating the commercialization of next-generation nuclear. Then, in the lead-up to the IRA, President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act, which set up the Civil Nuclear Credit Program, with funding to help prevent the premature closure of nuclear power plants. The IRA provided further support for nuclear by levelling the playing field and allowing nuclear power to qualify for the same clean energy tax benefits that wind and solar could. Biden also signed the Advance Act, which again sought to accelerate the commercialization of nuclear with a series of reforms of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In each instance, Congress supported efforts to accelerate the commercialization of next-generation with huge bipartisan majorities, and often just a few nay votes. This shows just how much attitudes have changed around nuclear energy, which has one of the lowest carbon intensities—so is a top solution to climate change—while at the same time, providing energy security, job creation and national security. At the moment, although the Trump Administration has shown no interest in supporting climate goals, the DOE recently re-issued a $900 million funding solicitation left over from the Biden era for advanced nuclear. Nuclear energy is the middle ground we need to solve climate.
Mom will likely be thrilled to support a true climate solution
Supporting the growth of advanced nuclear energy is the ideal pathway for those seeking to solve climate change. Next-gen nuclear is already in demand by tech hyperscalers and others seeking clean and reliable sources of energy. The innovations underway are working to make these new designs safer, cheaper and easier to deploy. The whole nuclear industry is hard at work increasing capacity factors, improving materials, fabricating safer fuels, making operations more efficient and training workers. This makes it the perfect time to invest into these ventures, so that new designs can finally get to market and energy buyers can begin to displace fossil fuels.
A pregnant Maddy Hilly standing next to a dry cask storage tank holding nuclear waste.
So, for Mother's Day, help your mother get caught up with nuclear's incomparable safety record. Explain the many amazing benefits of nuclear. Show her that nuclear helps reduce ecologic impacts and cleans the air. Clarify why concerns about nuclear waste are a political red herring, since nuclear's waste is already safely stored on site—hurting no one and definitely not causing climate change, in stark contrast to fossil fuel waste, which pollutes the air, contributes to millions of premature deaths annually and causes our slow-moving global climate disaster.
Help your Mom go Nuclear on Mother's Day
Help mom become one of the growing numbers of women supporting nuclear. Introduce her to groups like Mothers for Nuclear, and show her how working mothers have launched pronuclear non-profits and permeated the nuclear industry because of their concerns about climate change. It doesn't take a mom to recognize that fossil fuels are well past their "Sell by" dates and need to go! But before that transition can happen, there has to be a much better way to generate reliable energy. That's next-generation nuclear power.
Mom will appreciate learning about next-gen nuclear and the many ways that she can help, whether by joining or supporting an organization like Mothers for Nuclear, investing into this sector and funding the companies developing innovative solutions or just by talking to her friends about nuclear power—it will all help. Almost nothing else she can do will be as effective at the global scale. But helping next-generation nuclear succeed can have a direct future impact on reducing carbon emissions.
She already loves you forever. You can now help her do her job to protect your future.
Happy Mother's Day from the Nucleation team!
Thank you for reading this. Love of our children and deep appreciation of what nuclear offers humanity is why we have worked to build the first venture fund that invest in advanced nuclear and deep decarbonization innovations. Nucleation's Fund I is in its fourth year and still accepting new accredited investors every quarter. We have made it easy and affordable. If you or your mom subscribe between Mother's Day and May 30th, 2025 and reference this Mother's Day post, we will send you your choice of a Nucleation Capital T-shirt, vest or baseball cap. Learn more and subscribe here.
