One of my favorite television shows of all time is “Dragnet.” Sergeant Joe Friday almost always solved his cases, based on true Los Angeles crimes. His famous line when confronted by a talkative witness was, “All we want are the facts. Just the facts.” We would be well-served by remembering this line and applying it to much of life today.

This is especially true in nuclear energy matters. Far too often, we get caught up in emotion and fiction. Take, for instance, the Three Mile Island nuclear energy generation facility incident that occurred in the early morning hours of March 28, 1979. 

This incident became a foundation for fear-mongering about nuclear energy throughout the world, because it picked up widespread media attention with little attention to facts. The reporting errors, or mere ignoring of facts, spread falsehoods and near hysteria throughout the world about the danger of nuclear energy. Even today, the facts surrounding this incident are hard to uncover. 

As stated in numerous investigations, especially the respected Kemeny Commission, “The [nuclear] reactor vessel…maintained integrity and contained the damaged [nuclear] fuel with nearly all of the radioactive isotopes [isolated] in the core.” Likewise, numerous initial reports of a dangerous “hydrogen explosion” inside the reactor have been fully debunked.

In other words, despite numerous human and other failures, the safety systems designed for and built into the reactor maintained integrity and did what they were designed to do: avoid the release of harmful amounts of radiation into the atmosphere.

Alarmists continue to report that some radiation was released into the atmosphere. While technically correct, this must be viewed in the context of danger imposed upon the public. An International Atomic Energy Agency study disclosed that the two million people living within a 50-mile radius of Three Mile Island were exposed to approximately 1.7 millirems of radiation. That’s equal to the additional radiation a person living in New York City or Denver receives compared to someone living in Boston or Chicago. Put in even clearer perspective, 100 millirems annually is considered safe for the general public. We receive 1 millirem for every 1,000 miles we travel in a jet plane.

OK, let’s accept that it’s hard to excavate facts and understand hard science, and reporters are no better at it than the rest of us. Nonetheless, it is essential for us to do so when it comes to important matters such as America’s energy. This is especially true when it comes to our ever-advancing energy technology. 

For example, the development of new fuels and the advancement in small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) present broad opportunities for advancing our delivery of electricity and heat energy. SMRs are nothing truly new—nearly the entire developed world’s navies have been powering ships this way for decades—the development of new, highly efficient, incredibly safe fuels can take us from “great” to “magnificent” in energy advancement.

Most SMRs are walk-away safe, meaning the physics behind many of the new fuel configurations requires no human interaction to shut down a reactor should anything go wrong. They can be made small enough to transport on a road vehicle to a site where electricity has been interrupted or to military installations where power may not be needed permanently. 

Similarly, they can power smaller residential developments or data centers with reliable, clean energy for decades to come, all the while reducing the cost and unsightliness associated with transmission lines. 

All of this is possible if our decision-making process is driven by facts rather than fight-promotion. You can bet that our international adversaries will continue their full-court press to provide electricity by any means possible. We have the opportunity to pursue our (and much of the rest of the world’s) energy needs through clean, reliable, and immensely safe nuclear power. 

Will we follow the facts and science, or be drawn to the bark of the fight promoters? The choice is ours. We must make the right one.

Bud Albright served as the Undersecretary of Energy and President & CEO of the US Nuclear Industry Council.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.