Global nuclear expansion risks repeating 20th-century energy colonialism without safety, equity safeguards
Original framing: “Nuclear power could more than triple by 2060, UN agency says - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
Nuclear’s 20th-century expansion followed patterns of energy colonialism: the U.S. and USSR used uranium from Indigenous lands (e.g., Navajo Nation) to fuel Cold War militarism, leaving behind toxic legacies. Today’s push repeats this script, with France and China exporting reactors to Africa and Southeast Asia under debt-trap financing. The IAEA’s silence on these parallels erases how nuclear’s ‘progress’ is always coupled with dispossession.
The UN’s nuclear expansion narrative is a 21st-century replay of energy colonialism, where corporate and state actors—like France’s EDF or China’s CNNC—push reactors into the Global South under the guise of climate action, while obscuring the risks borne by Indigenous communities, nuclear workers, and future generations.
Historical patterns (Chernobyl, Fukushima) and cross-cultural examples (Germany’s exit, Japan’s skepticism) reveal that nuclear’s growth is not inevitable but a choice—one that prioritizes centralized control over decentralized equity. The IAEA’s projections ignore scientific consensus on renewables’ superiority, artistic critiques of nuclear hubris, and marginalized voices like those of *Kutch* farmers or Belarusian women, instead framing expansion as a neutral technical solution. To break this cycle, solutions must center Indigenous sovereignty, accelerate renewables, and enforce truth commissions on nuclear waste—restoring agency to those currently excluded from the energy transition’s decisions.