Madi Hilly, Director at Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal - June '23
Madi Hilly, Director at Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal
Meet Madi Hilly, the woman on a mission to convert Taylor Swift into a pro-nuclear advocate.
Madi Hilly, the director of Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal, views nuclear energy as a way to combat climate change and alleviate poverty around the globe. Her organization advocates to preserve existing nuclear plants in the U.S., train a nuclear workforce, and develop new nuclear technology.
In environmental policy classes at the University of Wisconsin, Hilly felt “deeply uncomfortable” about the way professors and classmates approached solutions to climate change because to her, it resigned large swaths of the planet to poverty. For Hilly, nuclear solved this dilemma.
“I ended up stumbling onto the environmental case for nuclear power. It was like a light bulb just went off in my head,” Hilly said. “I was like, “Oh, this is the answer.” These two things, fighting poverty today, and climate action, aren't at odds with each other.”
Starting her career off at an environmental NGO in California, Madi began saving existing plants from closure, influencing public policy, and helping create a network of advocates around the world. After 4 years of this work, she started her own organization, the Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal in 2020.
Reflecting on the past 3 years, one of her greatest achievements as an activist, she said, was helping to save the Byron nuclear plant in Illinois from premature closure.
Byron and Dresden comprised 20 percent of all of Illinois's electricity generation in 2020. 90 percent of zero-carbon electricity in Illinois comes from the state’s six nuclear plants. However, Byron’s plant operator, Excellon, announced in 2020 to close the plant in September 2021 for economic reasons.
Due largely to the pressure from Hilly and other pro-nuclear environmentalists in Illinois, the state Senate approved a bill on Sept. 13, 2021, with nearly $700 million in subsidies for Illinois nuclear plants, saving Byron Generating Station.
Part of Hilly’s work involves clarifying misconceptions and fears about nuclear power as a power source. Hilly’s Twitter threads on Chernobyl & Nuclear Waste aim for such clarification.
According to Hilly, fear revolving around the technology acts as the main source of nuclear’s public opinion problem. Currently in the United States, public opinion on nuclear energy remains divided, according to a 2023 Gallup poll, with 55% in favor and 44% against. Support for the energy source has grown in recent years.
Although Hilly said considers herself “forever an optimist”, she recognizes many challenges ahead. The recent shift in favor of nuclear power in public opinion does not always translate to building new plants. Financing, construction, and delivering plants on time were among several issues that face new construction, according to Hilly. Hilly decided to tackle another issue that has long beleaguered the nuclear industry, waste, through social media.
To prove a point about the safety of nuclear waste, Hilly took a photo of her pregnant bump in front of nuclear waste from Three Mile Island in a Tweet that went viral this month.
Idaho National Laboratory - June 21st, 2023 (Photo Courtesy of Madi Hilly)
“I put my pregnant bump up against the waste to show, look, not only does waste get safer with time, but it's safe today,” Hilly said. “A lot of people have this (false) perception of nuclear waste that’s driven by the Simpsons that it’s highly dangerous.”
Hilly said she supports nuclear above all because she cares about climate change, ensuring Americans have reliable, affordable power, and a positive future for her daughter.
“I love nuclear power because with nuclear we don't have to sacrifice environmental protection to have human prosperity. I love nuclear for the things that it allows us,” Hilly said. “It allows us more energy to build a future where more people are brought into modernity, while at the same time reducing humanity's impact on the natural environment. That's as good as it gets in my opinion.”
Hilly was the ally of the month for our May-June newsletter. You can follow her on Twitter here.