Nuclear power and natural gas aren’t ‘clean energy.’

Cre­at­ing a law declar­ing something is true doesn’t mean that it is.

Take what law­makers are try­ing to do with the word “clean” at the State­house.

Save Ohio Parks is among the envir­on­mental organ­iz­a­tions opposed to Sen­ate Bill 294. The bill addresses energy project sit­ing decisions, but it con­tains a major flaw. It declares nuc­lear power and nat­ural gas to be “clean” ener­gies.

They are not.

While nuc­lear power may be emis­sions-free, the prob­lem is the same today as it was in 1951: man­aging and stor­ing its dan­ger­ous, radio­act­ive nuc­lear waste.

We know the dangers of nuc­lear power

Nuc­lear acci­dents are rare, but when they occur, res­ults are dev­ast­at­ing and unfor­giv­ing. Chernobyl, in Ukraine, has a 1,000-square-mile exclu­sion zone still in effect. It is unin­hab­it­able today because of radi­ation pois­on­ing from the plant explo­sion in 1986.

Caused by an earth­quake and a tsunami in 2011, the Fukushima dis­aster man­dated dis­place­ment of 164,000 people, 41,000 who remain evacu­ees today. The costs of both acci­dents are in the hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars.

Radium is often present in nuc­lear waste and its decay products. Just the half-life of Radium 226, which is bone-seek­ing and cause can­cer in humans, is 1,600 years.

Ohioans know nuc­lear energy isn’t clean

In Ports­mouth, we wit­ness the ongo­ing effects poor fed­eral nuc­lear waste man­age­ment has had on people liv­ing near the Ports­mouth Gaseous Dif­fu­sion Plant, which pro­cessed uranium dur­ing the Cold War.

Piketon’s radi­ation expos­ure levels from plant oper­a­tions con­tinue to risk the health of res­id­ents. Radi­ation has con­tam­in­ated the sur­round­ing area’s air, soils and water, caus­ing a pre­ma­ture death rate in Pike County for people 74 years and younger to be 107% higher than the U.S. aver­age.

That’s 750 early deaths from can­cers and other dis­ease in a county pop­u­lated by 27,088 people. Can­cer clusters and early death rates in the area from radi­ation expos­ure have been repor­ted for years by local and regional media.

Nuc­lear energy can­not be called “clean” when human expos­ure to its radio­act­ive waste clearly causes can­cer and early deaths.

The sci­ence is clear about nat­ural gas

Nat­ural gas, which we also know as meth­ane gas, or fracked gas, is dirtier and more dan­ger­ous than nuc­lear energy. Meth­ane gas emis­sions, leaks, flares and vent­ing from nat­ural gas pro­duc­tion over the past 30 years have accel­er­ated global warm­ing and cli­mate change like a hockey stick.

This is not news. Fifty years ago, Amer­ic­ans were told nat­ural gas was a less-pol­lut­ing altern­at­ive to coal and oil while the trans­ition to renew­able energy occurred.

But time has passed; it’s time for the trans­ition part to hap­pen.

The sci­ence is clear and the world around us is embra­cing renew­able ener­gies like cheap, reli­able wind, solar to mit­ig­ate the worst effects of cli­mate warm­ing and cli­mate change.

Why isn’t Ohio?

Why Ohio should lean into renew­able ener­gies

• The planet breached 1.5 degrees Fahren­heit, warm­ing glob­ally the last three years in a row. Sci­ent­ists say climb­ing car­bon diox­ide and green­house gas emis­sions put the planet on a tra­ject­ory where the cli­mate sys­tem will likely move into an era of accel­er­ated warm­ing that may be impossible to halt.
• Frack­ing con­tam­in­ates our fresh drink­ing water, too. It depletes around 40 mil­lion gal­lons of fresh water from lakes, streams and rivers for each fracked well and con­verts it into toxic, radio­act­ive wastewa­ter brine.
• The Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources has already closed six gas and oil waste injec­tion wells in Noble and Athens counties because of immin­ent threats to local drink­ing water.
• Buckeye Environmental Network is suing ODNR for approv­ing two injec­tion wells under older, lax rules. These wells are near Mari­etta’s ground­wa­ter. Cit­izens are con­cerned leak­ing injec­tion well wastewa­ter brine will migrate into ground­wa­ter, con­tam­in­at­ing fresh drink­ing water for their life­times, if not forever.
• Lastly, gas and oil drilling waste is often stored in poorly reg­u­lated Ohio land­fills, where tox­ins can leach into local water and soil, caus­ing health and con­tam­in­a­tion issues for people liv­ing nearby.

To call nat­ural gas “clean” is not just laugh­able. It’s tra­gic. Nat­ural gas frack­ing is a main driver of our loom­ing envir­on­mental crisis.

Law­makers should stop pre­tend­ing. Ohio needs an eth­ical, 21st-cen­tury energy policy that includes wind, solar and other truly clean, emis­sions-free, renew­able energy sources.

Any­thing less harms our health; our clean air, water and arable farm­land; biod­iversity in our state parks and pub­lic lands; and our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren’s sur­vival on a liv­able planet.

Melinda Zem­per is a board mem­ber at Save Ohio Parks, a non­profit organ­iz­a­tion ded­ic­ated to pro­tect­ing Ohio’s state parks and pub­lic lands from frack­ing. For more inform­a­tion, visit save­o­hioparks.org.

This op-ed originally appeared in the Columbus Dispatch on February 12, 2026.