Elon Musk on Nuclear Energy

Elon Musk advocates for the increased use of nuclear energy, especially in response to geopolitical instability impacting fossil fuel supplies. He explicitly called on European nations to restart dormant nuclear power stations and increase the output of existing ones, stressing that this is critical to national and international security.

Musk considers the shutdown of operational nuclear plants to be “total madness,” provided the location is not prone to major natural disasters like tsunamis or severe earthquakes. He has sought to counter the historical stigma surrounding nuclear power by offering to publicly eat food grown near a reactor to demonstrate its safety, having done a similar act in Japan after the Fukushima incident.

More recently, Elon Musk has sharply pivoted his focus within the nuclear sphere, dismissing terrestrial nuclear fusion as “super dumb.” He argues that humanity should instead focus its massive investment potential on harnessing the Sun, which he describes as the planet’s “most powerful fusion reactor” and an abundant, clean energy source that is currently vastly underused.