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Here’s why gasoline prices are spiking again

Prices at the gas pump are rising yet again as refiners turn to producing jet fuel and diesel instead of gasoline, and as demand jumps ahead of the summer driving season.

Prices across the country were already high before the most recent jumps. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit oil markets and global gas prices hard, driving up the price at the pump as governments turned away energy supplies from Moscow.

But prices are now going higher, and averaged $4.48 per gallon on Monday.

That’s up about 40 cents from a month ago, when prices stood at $4.08. Much of the most recent jump has come just in the past few days as prices rose 16 cents per gallon between May 9 and May 16.

Much as high gas prices colored the elections of 2008, when GOP Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin railed on Democratic energy policies, today’s prices are roiling this year’s political debate. Republicans are faulting President Biden’s policies, while Democrats are targeting companies for alleged price gouging. 

Experts say the latest jump is linked to a variety of factors including fewer oil refiners making crude oil into gasoline. 

Prices of both diesel and jet fuel, which are also made at refineries, are spiking, and experts say many refiners are turning toward making those more profitable products. 

“With the market currently really tight both in diesel and jet fuel, we’re actually seeing refineries choose to make less gasoline in favor of those more profitable molecules,” said Matt Kimmel, a senior research analyst for refining and oil markets at Wood Mackenzie.

Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at gas price app GasBuddy, said that even prior to the latest setbacks, recent refinery closures diminished the country’s ability to produce gasoline. 

In 2019, a refinery in Philadelphia caught fire; in 2020 a Canadian refinery closed because of COVID-19 and it has since been announced that it will convert into a biofuels operation; and last year, a refinery in Louisiana closed after flooding relating to Hurricane Ida. 

“The U.S. has now a million barrels a day less of refining capacity than we did in 2019 at a time when we need every barrel of capacity,” De Haan said. 

Analysts said that these supply issues are combining with higher demand to pinch drivers.

“Typically…refineries are making more gasoline ahead of the summer driving season,” said Suzanne Danforth, Wood Mackenzie’s research director for Americas downstream oil and natural gas liquids. 

“That’s usually the peak of the gasoline demand in the U.S. with folks going on the road, but because of that diesel price being so high…we’re seeing sort of this counter-seasonal trend,” Danforth added. 

Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, said gasoline trading also was playing a role. 

“In the last couple of days they’ve been buying gasoline futures and selling diesel futures, betting that gasoline’s coming into season and it’s going to need to fetch a price above diesel,” he said.

Futures contracts are agreements to buy or sell a particular amount of the product on a certain date in the future. Kloza described them as the “prime mover” of prices. 

The high prices come as the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve struggle with inflation generally. President Biden recently described handling inflation as his top issue.

Democrats are worried the rising prices on everything will make it harder for the party to hold on to its House and Senate majorities. The party holds slim leads in both chambers, and the president’s party typically loses seats in their first midterm election regardless of the economy.

House Democrats are trying to put the focus on price gouging. This week, the House is expected to vote on legislation that in an energy emergency would make it illegal to sell fuel at a price that is “unconscionably excessive” and “exploiting” the situation. 

The legislation would  empower the Federal Trade Commission to take legal action against companies that sell at such “excessive” prices. 

The legislation should pass the Democratic House but is unlikely to go anywhere in the Senate, where Democrats would need 10 GOP votes to clear procedural hurdles.

Kloza said that he is skeptical of Democratic claims of price gouging, calling it “posturing.”

“It’s all the people in the market — I mean thousands and thousands of people — that bid the price up. It’s not that ExxonMobil says ‘I’m going to sell my diesel for $200 a barrel,’” he said. 

But the Democrats who support the bill are pointing to immense company profits and recently announced shareholder buybacks. 

“If oil companies were merely passing costs onto consumers, we wouldn’t expect to see profits jump so significantly,” said a spokesperson for Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), a sponsor of the bill. “These companies are continuing to raise prices despite their record profits, squeezing families in the process.”

A spokesperson for fellow sponsor Kim Schrier (D-Wash.) also noted that “not every state has a price gouging law, so this will also ensure all Americans can be protected from price gouging.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Pentagon: Military bases 'not immune' to baby formula shortage

The nationwide baby formula shortage is taking its toll at U.S. military bases across the globe, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson said Monday. 

“We’re not immune to the same supply chain problems that other families across America are experiencing,” press secretary John Kirby told reporters. 

He said that current stock levels of available baby formula in the continental United States is at 50 percent at base commissaries — neighborhood grocery stores located on military installations — while overseas it stands at 70 percent.  

Kirby added that the Defense Commissary Agency (DECA) is monitoring the current market situation and “doing everything they can to keep things on the shelf as best they can,” including “working daily with distributors.”  

Supply chain and workforce issues, along with a recent safety recall and closure of a major plant, have caused a nationwide shortage of baby formula, with parents and guardians scrambling to find food for their infants. 

The House will take up a pair of bills this week to address the shortage, but the Biden administration has come under pressure from parents and lawmakers who are demanding more action.  

“The Defense Commissary Agency is already ahead of that problem and doing everything they can do to keep things on the shelf,” Kirby said. “We obviously take it very, very seriously, our responsibility to make sure that the kinds of things families need to take care of themselves to feed their children” they have.

Source: TEST FEED1

HHS to partner with National PTA to encourage child COVID-19 vaccination

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will be partnering with the National PTA to host a town hall event on Wednesday in order to encourage COVID-19 vaccination among children.

Part of HHS’s “We Can Do This” vaccination campaign, the event is aiming to increase shots among communities with low immunization rates.

Health leaders including Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); senior White House policy advisor Cameron Webb; and Ilan Shapiro from the American Academy of Pediatrics will be speaking at the event.

The HHS’s vaccination campaign has regularly partnered with community organizations, the majority of which served minority communities, the agency noted in its announcement.

The event will be aired on Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern on the National PTA’s Facebook page.

One HHS official noted that the agency’s campaign to encourage vaccinations had helped to close the vaccination gap between White communities and communities of color over the past year. In March of 2021, White adults had vaccination rates 10 percent higher than Black and Hispanic adults in the U.S., at 63.1 percent.

According to the most recent data from the CDC, these communities now share similar vaccination rates, with Hispanic adults now having a vaccination rate two points higher than White U.S. adults at 87.3 percent.

This upcoming event comes as childhood vaccination rates have slowed in the U.S. The most recent data from the CDC indicates that 28.6 percent of children aged 5 to 11 are considered to be fully vaccinated in the U.S., while about 60 percent of children aged 12 to 17 are fully vaccianted.

An April survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that among parents of children aged five to 11, 57 percent said they had no immediate plans of getting their children vaccinated, with about a third saying they would “definitely not” be immunizing their children.

Among the parents of children under five, who are not yet allowed to get vaccianted against COVID-19, 76 percent did not say they planned on getting their children vaccinated if and when a shot is approved for their children.

Thirty-eight percent said they would “wait and see,” 27 percent said they would definitely not get their children vaccinated and 11 percent said they would only do so if they were required to.

Source: TEST FEED1

Democrats hit GOP over 'replacement theory'

Democrats are taking Republicans to task this week following a racist mass shooting in western New York, accusing GOP lawmakers of fomenting violence by embracing the same white nationalist views as the alleged gunman.

Lawmakers in both parties have been horrified by the massacre in Buffalo, where a lone gunman shot 13 people — 10 of them fatally — at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood on Saturday afternoon. The suspect, an 18-year-old from Conklin, N.Y., a small rural town 200 miles east, had reportedly posted a long, online screed voicing fears that America’s white population is being overrun by growing numbers of minorities.

That conspiracy, known as “replacement theory,” has a long history at the fringes of American politics, reverberating for decades within the underground worlds of white nationalism and white supremacy. But it gained a recent mainstream foothold under former President Trump, whose “Make America Great Again” campaign launched with a blanket attack on Mexican immigrants, won legions of followers across the country and remains the single most animating force in the GOP even more than a year after Trump’s departure from public office.

In the wake of Saturday’s massacre in Buffalo, MAGA-loyal Republicans and their allies are now under sharp scrutiny for past comments suggesting, to various degrees, that Democrats and other elites have sought to empower minorities — largely through immigration policy — at the expense of white people.

Some of those conservative commentators have embraced replacement theory by name; others have avoided the term, but warn of an immigrant “insurrection” designed to keep Democrats perpetually in power. In either case, the critics say such rhetoric contributes directly to acts of nationalist violence, including Saturday’s massacre in Buffalo.

“What truly needs to be replaced in this country is ignorance and hate, which is driving division, perpetuating lies, and killing our neighbors,” Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), who represents Buffalo, said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Higgins is hardly alone. And among the loudest voices denouncing the GOP’s flirtation with fringe nationalism are a pair of Capitol Hill Republicans — Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) — who accused their own leadership of doing far too little to combat the bigotry in their own ranks.

“The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse,” Cheney wrote on Twitter. “@GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”

The debate over replacement theory has been thrust into the national spotlight following a string of violent episodes in recent years. The list includes the 2017 marches in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists yelled that “Jews will not replace us;” the 2018 shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, where Jews were targeted for supporting immigrants; and the 2019 massacre at a Walmart in Texas, where the shooter said he feared a “Hispanic invasion.”

The suspect in Saturday’s shooting in Buffalo, Payton Gendron, had aired similar grievances, writing online that the Black shoppers he targeted were a threat to “my own people” — a threat he equated to genocide.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) lamented that such views have become more mainstream in recent years, blaming “some MAGA Republicans and cable news pundits” for lending the theory a “purported legitimacy.”

“The message is not always explicit, but we’ve all seen the pattern,” he said Monday on the chamber floor.

In Trump’s absence from Washington, other prominent conservatives have stepped up their fight against what they perceive as a threat to America’s national identity.

Tucker Carlson, the popular Fox News host, has led that charge, saying on his show last year that “demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party’s political ambitions.” He then accused Democrats of trying “to replace the current electorate” with “more obedient voters from the third world.”

“I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate,” he said. “Why should I sit back and take that?”

Appearing on Carlson’s show in March, GOP Ohio Senate nominee J.D. Vance said that Democrats “have decided that they can’t win reelection in 2022 unless they bring in a large number of new voters to replace the voters that are already here.”

And Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a close Trump ally, has issued similar warnings about immigrants.

“For many Americans, what seems to be happening or what they believe right now is happening is — what appears to them is — we’re replacing national-born Americans, native-born Americans to permanently transform the landscape of this very nation,” Perry said in a committee hearing last year.

Among the lawmakers under the brightest spotlight since Saturday’s shooting is Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), a member of GOP leadership.

Stefanik was accused in a hometown paper editorial of subtly parroting tenets of replacement  theory with Facebook ads in September 2021 that said Democrats were plotting a “PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION” with the plan to give amnesty to undocumented immigrations for electoral purposes. Kinzinger resurfaced those posts in the wake of the shooting on Saturday, asserting that Stefanik “pushes white replacement theory.”

Those figures vigorously deny that their rhetoric is inherently racist or promotes the same kinds of worldviews as the Buffalo shooter, saying there exists a clear distinction between opposing legal rights for undocumented immigrants and elevating hatred toward minorities.

Carlson said on his show that critics were trying to make “a racial issue out of it,” but that it is a “voting right question.”

Stefanik adviser Alex deGrasse said in a statement that she is credited with diversifying the GOP, supports legal immigration, but opposes amnesty.

“Any implication or attempt to blame the heinous shooting in Buffalo on the Congresswoman is a new disgusting low for the Left, their Never Trump allies, and the sycophant stenographers in the media,” deGrasse said. “Despite sickening and false reporting, Congresswoman Stefanik has never advocated for any racist position or made a racist statement.”

Stefanik’s team also pointed to New York City approving a measure to allow noncitizens to vote in municipal elections, falsely saying that it would allow “illegal immigrants” to vote when the measure would apply to legal permanent residents and so-called Dreamers who were brought to the U.S. as children but legally allowed to remain under the DACA program.

GOP defenders also cite older research and news articles asserting that immigration is likely to lead to electoral gains for Democrats.

A 2013 article on a failed Gang of Eight immigration proposal said that its amnesty provisions would create an “electoral bonanza” for Democrats. The same year, the liberal Center for American Progress said that “supporting real immigration reform that contains a pathway to citizenship for our nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants is the only way to maintain electoral strength in the future.”

Those arguments, from Stefanik and others, have done nothing to satisfy their critics, some of whom are calling them out by name.

“Great Replacement Theory is a vile, racist and false conspiracy theory that the Buffalo murderer relied upon. GOP Rep Elise Stefanik ran ads promoting it,” tweeted Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.)

“Rep @EliseStefanik has now issued a statement and nowhere does she say ‘I condemn replacement theory.’ Why?”

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Gwen Moore opens up about her abortion: 'I was never sorry'

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) is opening up about her experience of getting an abortion amid backlash over the Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion striking down Roe v. Wade, saying she was “never sorry” about her choices. 

In a piece published by Elle magazine on Monday, Moore said that she went through the procedure after getting pregnant for the second time at 19 years old, citing financial struggles such as unemployment and her occupational preparedness to handle another pregnancy. 

Moore had given birth to her first child when she was a senior in high school. 

“This was pre-Roe, and by that point, I’d heard of women who had botched, self-induced abortions. I was two degrees of separation away from people who had died from abortions,” Moore said. “So I knew I wanted a safe procedure. I didn’t know how I was going to get it, but once I found out I was pregnant, I was on top of it day and night until I was able to secure help.” 

Moore, a domestic violence and sexual assault survivor, also said that with help from her college connections, she was able to contact an abortion care fund through her doctor, saying that the trip to her procedure in New York was a “surreal” experience. 

“The whole trip was surreal. I don’t have any memories of eating anything, drinking anything; I don’t remember a lot of details, except that I was on a mission. And the most important memory I have is that I had a safe abortion,” Moore told the magazine. “There were no complications, no problems, no difficulties. I never looked back, and I was never sorry.” 

“I never felt like I did something that was inappropriate for me or my family or my situation,” she concluded. “I was very, very grateful.”

Moore joins a list of prominent figures who have shared their personal experiences with abortion as the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn the constitutional right to the procedure.

“The leaked draft opinion argued that abortion is not an enumerated right,” Moore said. “So if this becomes the Court’s official decision, unless there’s an enumerated right in the Constitution, don’t count on it. That means birth control. That’s marrying outside your race or religion. That’s same sex marriage. If you don’t fight for abortion, your rights are on the chopping block next.”

Source: TEST FEED1

House Democrat calls on Pelosi to hold vote this week on domestic terrorism bill

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) on Monday called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to schedule a vote on a domestic terrorism bill this week after a gunman opened fire at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 people in what authorities are calling a hate crime.

In a statement on Monday, Schneider pushed for a vote on the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, which calls for creating domestic terrorism offices in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI that would watch for and examine domestic terrorist activity.

Schneider specifically referenced several recent shootings around the country. Over the weekend, 13 people were shot at a Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, 10 of whom died, and one person was killed in a shooting in Laguna Woods, Calif.

Eleven of the victims in the Buffalo shooting were Black. The suspected shooter in that incident — 18-year-old Payton Gendron of Conklin, N.Y. — had reportedly espoused ideas related to the “great replacement” theory, which is a racist, far-right conspiracy.

The Illinois Democrat said passing the bill, which he reintroduced in the House in January, is one way to help prevent future massacres. A version of the bill previously passed in a voice vote in 2020.

“The rise of racially motivated violent extremism is a serious threat to Americans across the country,” Schneider wrote.

“The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act is what Congress can do this week to try to prevent future Buffalo shootings – to prevent future California shootings, future El Paso shootings, future Charleston shootings, future Pittsburgh shootings, future Wisconsin shootings. We need to ensure that federal law enforcement has the resources they need to best preemptively identify and thwart extremist violence wherever the threat appears,” he added.

Schneider also noted “warning signs” linked to Gendron, including that he made a threat in high school.

“The government and law enforcement have failed to catch these signs, just as Congress has failed to appropriately combat domestic terrorism. As a result, ten people, most of them Black, are dead at a Buffalo supermarket,” Schneider wrote. “We cannot continue making excuses.”

The bill specifically advocates for a Domestic Terrorism Unit in the Office of Intelligence an Analysis at DHS, which would monitor and analyze domestic terrorism activity, and a Domestic Terrorism Office in the Counterrorism Section of the National Security Division of the DOJ, which would investigate and prosecute domestic terrorism occurrences and be in contact with the Civil Right Division for situation that may be hate crimes.

Additionally, the legislation urges the creation of a Domestic Terrorism Section in the FBI’s Counterrorism Division, which would investigate activity connected to domestic terrorism.

The offices would remain open for 10 years after the legislation is enacted, and would be required to submit a report to top law enforcement officials every six months. The reports, according to the bill, would include assessments of domestic terrorism threats posed by white supremacists and neo-Nazis and analyses of domestic terrorism occurances or attempted instances.

The offices would also be required to review all federal hate crime charges and convictions to decide if the incident also has a connection to domestic terrorism.

Additionally, the legislation would compel the federal government to take actions that would help stop domestic terrorism.

The bill also calls for the creation of a Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, which would be required to meet at least four times a year “to coordinate with United States Attorneys and other key public safety officials across the country to promote information sharing and ensure an effective, responsive, and organized joint effort to combat domestic terrorism.”

Additionally, the legislation calls for the creation of an interagency task force, which would be required to “analyze and combat White supremacist and neo-Nazi infiltration of the uniformed services and Federal law enforcement agencies,” then present a report to top law enforcement figures and key congressional committees.

Source: TEST FEED1

Schumer headed to Buffalo in wake of mass shooting

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Monday that he will be heading to Buffalo with President Biden on Tuesday in the wake of a racist mass shooting in a predominantly Black neighborhood that left 10 people dead.

“Today, we hold in our hearts every single New Yorker whose life was tragically cut short during Saturday’s violence. We weep knowing nothing, nothing will ever be able to bring them back. We mourn with their families and with their friends, with the entire community still shell shocked by this shooting,” he said on the floor.

“Tomorrow, I will join with President Biden, the first lady and others to travel to Buffalo in order to pay my respects to those who died as well as to visit the families and visit with local officials still investigating the attack,” he said. “We also, of course, thank our brave first responders who were at the scene moments after the shooting. Without them, more would have undoubtedly been killed.”

Schumer described the shooting as the “deadliest shooting in the history of Buffalo and the worst mass shooting in America this year.”

Ten people were fatally shot and three were wounded after a gunman opened fire at a Tops supermarket in east Buffalo on Saturday afternoon in an attack that local officials have said was motivated by racist hatred. 

Officials say the shooting suspect, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, pointed to the so-called great replacement theory in writings ahead of the shooting. The Anti-Defamation League defines the ideology as a racist conspiracy theory “about the impending destruction of the white race” that falsely purports the replacement of white Americans with non-white immigrants.

The suspect, who is white, has pleaded not guilty first-degree murder charges in the attack, in which eleven of the victims were Black.

According to CNN, officials are planning to bring more charges against Gendron, who reportedly livestreamed on Twitch during the shooting.

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Sierra Club presses Senate Democrats for climate investments

The Sierra Club is poised to launch an ad campaign in nine states as part of an effort to encourage Senate Democrats to take climate-related action by investing in communities facing systemic injustice and economic inequity. 

The ad campaign will feature digital advertisements on social media in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington. 

The ads specifically call for Democrats such as Sens. Bob Casey (Pa.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), John Hickenlooper (Colo.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) to “deliver on climate, care, jobs, and justice.”

The Sierra Club’s effort comes as the Senate attempts to revive attempts to pass climate-related legislation that stalled out in the 50-50 chamber last year.

“Time is running out for the Senate to pass a budget reconciliation package that includes at least $555 billion in investments in climate, care, jobs, and justice,” Sierra Club Legislative Director Melinda Pierce said in a statement.

“All this must be accomplished in a way that prioritizes communities of color and low-income communities that are hit hardest by pollution, climate-fueled disasters, and racial injustice. The time is now,” Pierce added.

For the Senate’s policy bill to pass, it would require the support of every Democrat. 

But Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has recently pushed for a bipartisan energy and climate package, which some Democrats say is an effort to sidestep negotiating a broader budget reconciliation package. 

“We’re running out of time. The calendar is staring us in the face, and I’m concerned we have no time to waste on conversations that are futile,” one Democratic senator said earlier this month. 

The Sierra Club’s advertising campaign will not run in West Virginia, with the group believing its ads will be more effective in the states it chose to target.

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An energy-independent India requires a nuclear revolution

With global energy markets roiled by the Russians invading Ukraine and turning off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria, and now electricity to Finland, it’s time for every nation to rethink its dependence on foreign energy and its domestic production. 

While some countries are endowed with abundant fossil fuels such as the United States and Russia, many are not and must turn to a mix of emerging energy technologies to fuel their energy needs to insulate themselves from global catastrophes. The good news is we are in a golden era of emerging energy technologies that allow for multiple paths to energy independence and decarbonization of the environment.  

We think of India specifically, an energy-consuming giant that relies heavily on coal and imported Middle East fossil fuels for its energy needs. An energy-independent India will help India secure its future global ambitions by having to compete less with or be threatened by China for Middle East oil. Both India and China are building gas and oil pipelines and major ports in Iran and Pakistan. India’s energy supply is not only at risk from possible rogue actions in those two countries, but China can easily block or disrupt India’s energy flow in a future conflict, or as they vie for influence in the region. 

After China, India has the second-highest number of coal plants in the world at 281 — these are not “clean” coal plants — and even with this many India will not meet the energy demands required for the nation’s ambitious growth agenda. If India is to keep its climate pledge made at COP26 in Glasgow for net-zero emissions by 2070 by installing 500 gigawatts of non-fossil energy by 2030, they must produce massive amounts of domestic energy, and quick.  

Last summer, Elon Musk caused a stir in India by rightly tweeting about the outrageous import duties of up to 100 percent India imposes on foreign autos as the reason behind Tesla not yet entering the Indian market. This led to India’s national government going on the offensive against the world’s wealthiest man, while several state chief ministers publicly wooed Musk to build Teslas in their states and called on the national government to ease off on tariffs for electric vehicles to jumpstart the EV market there. 

Before Tesla builds Gigafactory Mumbai, it must ponder how India will provide the electricity to power its cars and the hundreds of millions of EVs someday made by domestic producers. More importantly, how will India continue to power the schools, hospitals and factories critical to lifting millions out of poverty and pollution? 

The current plan seems to focus on the rapid growth of renewables, mainly solar and wind. India is certainly blessed with their respective natural resources. However, the electricity grid was never designed for such fluctuating and intermittent generation. While storage over hours to weeks can potentially address this challenge, it is needed at the scale of terawatt-hours. It is noteworthy that long-duration storage has not been demonstrated anywhere in the world, especially at the needed costs of roughly $10-20 per kilowatt-hour. To complement the renewables, it is prudent to also focus on dispatchable carbon-free firm power. 

In the early 2000s, both President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s administrations understood India’s future growth requires energy on a scale realizable only by nuclear. Their vision was one the world got behind, and in 2008 the global nuclear supplier’s group, which includes the United States, ratified treaties and changed U.S. law to make it possible for India to reprocess spent nuclear fuel for nuclear energy. 

Yet 14 years later, only one new nuclear reactor has come online, and that was the Kudankulam 1 in Tamil Nadu built by Russia. While building reactors takes years of planning and billions of dollars, India’s efforts have been hampered by cost overruns, red tape, technological glitches, land rights obstacles and unwarranted safety fears. Now the war with Ukraine is delaying the construction of reactors by the Russians. 

These obstacles are in no way unique to India. The United States’ existing fleet of reactors is in shambles and needs Build Back Better funds just to remain operable. The last nuclear plant in America, Watts Bar 1 in Tennessee, was built in 1996 and building it took 20 years. No country or energy company goes into nuclear for short-term gains. Nuclear is a century-long investment and a commitment to fuel a nation’s future by providing clean energy critical to economic security and long-term growth.  

The payoff is clear. One nuclear reactor has the capacity factor to produce one gigawatt (enough to power a mid-size city), is incredibly safe and reliable, and has near-zero emissions. India has proven the nuclear model with 22 legacy plants they are expanding that uniquely reprocess fuel in a method perfected by Indian nuclear scientists.  

India needs hundreds — not tens — of nuclear reactors within the next decade to meet its domestic energy and environmental demands while maintaining its global commitments. There have been several days where the air in interior cities like Delhi is unbreathable, leading schools and businesses to close their doors, and last year the Indian Supreme Court ordered the government to find a solution to the air quality problem.  

To put into perspective the audacity of the challenge to build this many reactors, China currently has plans to build 150 new nuclear reactors in the next 15 years and will soon become the world’s largest nuclear power producer at a reported cost of $440 billion. If India is to build reactors at the same scale as China, it should be their top domestic priority, and they would benefit from investment and assistance from reliable partners such as South Korea, Japan, America and Europe.  

India can take the lead in global nuclear power modernization by partnering with private sector players innovating in the space such as Nuscale, which produces small modular reactors, or Bill Gates’ TerraPower. Smaller, less expensive, safer, easier and faster to build nuclear power plants cooled with new technologies such as Natrium can power entire mid-sized cities. Terrapower is currently proving out this technology in Wyoming with the U.S. Department of Energy, and India should consider them to build modern plants in India. 

When Tesla does decide to sell their cars in India, let’s hope the charging stations are powered by nuclear. 

David C. Mulford is a former U.S. ambassador to India and distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. John Rivera-Dirks is a former U.S. Diplomat to India and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

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