Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk on Sunday said Europe must reboot its nuclear power stations for the sake of national and international security.
“Hopefully, it is now extremely obvious that Europe should restart dormant nuclear power stations and increase power output of existing ones,” Musk tweeted. “This is *critical* to national and international security.”
Musk said the fears of radiation are overblown. Demonstrating his commitment to the idea, Musk vowed to eat locally grown food near a nuclear power plant on television.
“I did this in Japan many years ago, shortly after Fukushima,” he said. “Radiation risk is much, much lower than most people believe.”
Musk’s tweet comes just days after Russian troops, invading Ukraine, attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the southeastern city of Enerhodar. Musk has also called for the United States to drill more oil domestically, in order to offset Russia’s energy exports and their role in Putin’s ability to wage war on Ukraine.
The attack on the Zaporizhzhia plant triggered global alarm of a catastrophe that could dwarf the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Ukraine’s Chernobyl in 1986. Ukraine has 15 nuclear reactors at four power plants and was the scene of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Meanwhile, the fighting in Ukraine has upended global oil markets, with Europe poised to be hit the hardest. Germany has canceled Nord Stream 2, a multi-billionaire pipeline that would have carried natural gas from Russia to Germany.
The 764-mile pipeline is owner and operated by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Russia state company Gazprom.
On January 1, 2022, Germany shut down three of the last of its nuclear power plants.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
