Technically, AOC was never firmly against nuclear power. Back when she was promoting the Green New Deal she made a point of saying she was not taking a stance for or against it but saw it as a discussion that still needed to take place. However, she also did say she believed Indian Point, the last nuclear reactor in New York, needed to go. “We have nuclear facilities now that I’m frankly very concerned about, like Indian Point that should have been shut down a long time ago,” she said in October 2019.

Indian Point, which had been generating about 25% of the power used by New York City, was shut down in April 2021 in keeping with an agreement reached in 2017 by Gov. Cuomo. The energy needed to replace that loss was mostly made up for by natural gas plants, something progressive environmentalists also oppose. In fact, three states that shuttered nuclear plants—Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania—all saw their CO2 output rise afterwards.

Recently there have been some indications that environmentalists around the world are coming around on nuclear power. Germany, where Greens has long been at the forefront of the anti-nuclear movement, seems to have reversed course last year and so did California. Now, maybe even AOC is becoming more open to the idea as well. She’s part of congressional delegation that traveled to Japan this week. Part of her visit included a trip to the Fukushima nuclear plant which was seriously damaged and suffered a meltdown after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

A pro-nuclear energy consultant named Mark Nelson highlighted some statements AOC posted on her Instagram account this week which seemed to be, if not pro-nuclear, at discussing it somewhat reasonably.

Massive cultural shift: superstar Democratic congresswomen @AOC describes how she safely visited a triple-meltdown site in Japan.

She further describes French nuclear waste recycling as a good thing.

She has 9 million followers, many of whom are young women.

This is wild: pic.twitter.com/SWHpcAiFah

— Mark Nelson (@energybants) February 23, 2023

Here are both responses to questions she received, one about Fukushima and one about nuclear power in France (where the majority of electricity is generated by nuclear power).

I guess you care read this as a neutral description but pointing out that even the scene of one of the world’s worse nuclear accidents can be visited safely does seem like she’s making a point. Here’s the second question about France.

I looked through some of AOC’s recent YouTube videos in which she included the Instagram story messages she’d put out in the last few days. I have to say she still sounds like she’s on the fence to me. “My intention is neither to fearmonger or sugarcoat,” she said.

She then discussed what happened at Fukushima in detail. This is just one of several slides she posted about that.

On the other hand, she did reference the point I made above, i.e. shutting down nuclear plants ultimately means burning more fossil fuels. This is the kind of thing you don’t hear much from anti-nuclear activists.

I’m honestly not sure how to read all of this. It does sound like she’s still staking out a middle-ground with no clear commitment to either side. But maybe by discussing this for a very left-leaning audience she is laying the groundwork to move toward more acceptance of nuclear. That is what Japan is doing more than a decade after the disaster. On the other hand, she knows her audience of environmentalists are still sensitive about this issue so she’s trying not to move too quickly. Some of her fans might be ready for a change but probably not all of them.

Generally speaking, concern about reducing CO2 in the atmosphere would be a lot more credible coming from people who were proponents of actual, workable substitutes like nuclear power. AOC isn’t there yet but maybe one day.