Have your say by November 16

The current “Minnesota Nuclear Energy Study” (MNES) has extended the original period for public comments from August 14 to September 14 through until November 16, 2026. Please have your say by then, whether for the first time, or for the second time or more.

Nuclear power study

There is a dedicated website for the MNES, which is hosted by the Great Plains Institute (GPI). GPI have been contracted to undertake this study by the MN Department of Commerce at the direction of the MN Legislature under HF 2438. The GPI MNES website states:

The formal Request for Information period, open from August 14, 2026, through September 14, 2026, has ended. Submissions of relevant information may still be submitted until November 16, 2026 using the online form linked below. After November 16, no new information will be able to be submitted through the online form.

Secondly, there is also a dedicated website, with an online form, under the heading of “Request for Information” (RFI). The GPI RFI website states:

The formal Request for Information period, open from August 14, 2026, through September 14, 2026, has ended. Submissions of relevant information may still be submitted until November 16, 2026. Information submitted between September 14, 2026 and November 16, 2026 will be considered, as time permits, but cannot be guaranteed the same level of review or incorporation as materials received during the formal response period. Questions about this RFI may be submitted by email to GPI at [email protected].

Thirdly, there is a download link to the RFI document itself, that includes 32 guiding questions that sit underneath the following 13 topic headings:

Federal licensing => Q1
Technology and costs => Q2 to Q8
Small modular reactors and other advanced technologies => Q9
Siting and infrastructure => Q10 to Q16
Nuclear waste => Q17 to Q20
Host community economic impacts => Q21
Public safety and emergency planning => Q22
Minnesota energy and climate goals => Q23
Development timelines => Q24
Minnesota laws and regulations => Q25
Replacement of retiring generation => Q26
Workforce and training => Q27 to Q29
Additional Information => Q30 to Q32

Nuclear power submission

My MNES RFI submission to RPI, on behalf of American Experiment, was published here on September 14, 2026. All 32 questions were addressed. My summary of that submission was published the next day here on September 15. Highlights from my submission follow next:

“It was a serious strategic mistake to exit nuclear energy,” admitted Friedrich Merz, the Chancellor of Germany, on January 15, 2026. “We’re now making the most expensive energy transition in the entire world.”

The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) [in MN shows] nuclear is: 1.3x less expensive than combined cycle; 2.4x less expensive than coal; 3.1x less expensive than natural gas; 7.9x less expensive than wind; and 13.3x less expensive than solar.

[US] renewables caused not just 11% electricity price increases 7 years later, but also 17% after 12 years. These increases were driven by unreliability, distance and displacement.

Nuclear power could be a game-changer for energy affordability, grid reliability, and carbon reduction. However, it’s been stifled for decades based on one deeply flawed scientific model: the linear no-threshold (LNT) model … which assumes a tiny dose of radiation gives a risk in direct proportion to a fatal dose. But this is known to be wrong.

In the 70-year history of civil nuclear power generation, with over 20,000 cumulative reactor-years across 36 countries, there have been only three significant accidents at nuclear power plants [including Three Mile Island].

Your body generates its own radiation from elements such as potassium-40 that you acquire from foods such as bananas. Annual self-generated radiation is about a third of the maximum dose one could have received from being next to the Three Mile Island nuclear “disaster”.

While “waste” is a popular way to refer to it, “spent fuel” is more accurate. The uranium removed from reactors still contains as much as 90% of its potential energy and can be recycled many times over.

Currently, nuclear power plants in the US store their spent fuel on site in what are called dry-cask storage facilities. In fact, all of the waste produced in the United States since the 1950s could be stored on a single football field at a depth of less than 10 yards.

Debates about the feasibility and desirability of an “energy transition” should include the negative [environmental] impacts of wind and solar. [For example] they require at least 10 times as much land per unit of power produced as coal or natural gas[.]

All forms of energy make waste, even renewables. Solar panels, for example, create 300 times more waste than a nuclear reactor does per unit of energy produced.

Thanks to nuclear, the total emissions avoided in 2025 in the United States was the equivalent of: 2.4 million railcars’ worth of coal burned; or the annual transportation sector emissions for California, New York, and Texas combined.

Rather than establishing new sites, transitioning operational CPPs [coal power plants] to nuclear plants can save time and money by using existing equipment like transmission lines and power system components.

About six-in-ten US adults now say they favor more nuclear power plants to generate electricity. That’s up from 43% in 2020, driven by increasing support among both Republicans and Democrats.

Support for new nuclear power, almost overnight, went from coming almost exclusively from the right, to including many in the center and on the left too. What changed? Big Tech needed and want cheap, reliable and ‘clean’ electricity for hyperscale data centers. Wind and solar cannot provide all three. Nuclear can and will.

Nuclear power is fundamental to a discussion of energy because it establishes the long-run ceiling to [efficient and reliable] energy costs. No matter how much any other source of energy costs us, we can turn to nuclear power at any time to supply virtually all our energy needs for a very long time.”

Nuclear power context

The first important context is the clean sweep for the DFL in the recent election. Governor-elect Klobuchar didn’t have a nuclear stance but her party did as can be seen below:

We Oppose: Nuclear power, as it is not a viable energy source. We Support: Increased use of renewable energy sources. – MN DFL

And I’ll hold the line on utility bills by modernizing Minnesota’s power grid and adding more affordable, renewable energy. – Amy Klobuchar

Right now, Minnesotans are telling anyone who will listen that they want a better chance to afford their lives — and more than that, to prosper. It’s hard to afford your life if you can’t afford your electric bill. – Keith Ellison

The second important context is the 2021 MN Natural Gas Innovation Act (NGIA). Highlights from my first NGIA submission to the MN Public Utilities Commission (PUC) include:

The NGIA is a very bad idea. It is all about moving towards effectively banning natural gas use for residential and commercial customers, but not industrials and generators, and in an opaque manner and unspecified timeframe.

Minnesota’s electricity affordability has worsened due to the meteoric rise in renewables generation, especially that of wind, and to a much lesser degree solar. However, this has been mitigated, to some extent, by the almost parallel rise in natural gas generation[.] But natural gas is far better suited to peak-load generation. Coal and nuclear are best suited for base-load.

MN electricity prices, in dollars per one million British thermal units ($/MMBtu), rose by +118% from $16.99 in 2002 to $37.12 in 2025. MN natural gas prices ($/MMBtu) fell by -9% from $5.33 in 2002 to $4.86 in 2025. The ratio of electricity to natural gas prices skyrocketed by 3.5x from 216% in 2005 to 763% in 2025.

The third important context is the 2026-27 energy affordability investigation by the PUC. Highlights from my second submission to the PUC on energy affordability include:

Wind and solar renewables are still, as of 2024, vastly more costly than nuclear, coal or natural gas reliables (see Chart 1 below).

MN renewables went from an afterthought prior to the 21st century to the top generation source nowadays along with natural gas not far behind (see Chart 2 below).

MN electricity rates have inflated by well over 100% in the 21st century for residential, commercial, industrial and total combined customer classes (see Chart 3 below).

These heavily inflating MN electricity rates have translated into skyrocketing electricity bills, on average for the three main customer classes combined (see Chart 4 below).

MN electricity bills inflation is being driven up by increased rates and not by increased uses[.] (see Chart 5 below).

MN electricity uses peaked in 2008 and has sunk since, and given the Jevons paradox and Khazzoom-Brookes postulate, this strongly suggests not electricity cost efficiency but electricity price inflation (see Chart 6 below).

Chart 1