Cornell Students Rally 200 for Nuclear Energy Future

Diana Michaelson spent two years convincing California's Long Beach Unified School District to dump fossil fuels by 2030, attending every board meeting and organizing rallies until they said yes. Now the Cornell sophomore is bringing that same persistence to nuclear energy, and an entire generation is listening.

Michaelson co-founded Cornell Nuclear is Clean Energy (NiCE) last August with two classmates after learning how nuclear power could solve what wind and solar can't: providing clean energy 24/7, not just when the sun shines or wind blows. Forty students showed up to their first meeting, and by December they'd organized a symposium that drew 200 attendees and 15 speakers, including Miss America 2023 Grace Stanke, who also happens to be a nuclear engineer.

The timing couldn't be better. Governor Kathy Hochul committed in June 2025 to building a new zero-emission nuclear plant in Upstate New York, signaling a major shift in how the state thinks about clean energy.

"Renewables like wind and solar are essential, but they're variable," explains Shaun Doherty from Cornell's Atkinson Center for Sustainability. "Firm, carbon-free power like nuclear can reduce the amount of excess renewable capacity, storage and transmission needed in a clean grid."

The students aren't just talking about it on campus. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority invited them to symposia in Syracuse and New York City. Representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy, major law firms, and nuclear medicine professionals now speak to the group regularly.

Michaelson's passion comes from watching her Long Beach neighbors along Interstate 710 lose 10 years of life expectancy from truck pollution. Rates of asthma, diabetes and heart disease soared simply because of ZIP codes. She saw environmental health as human health and decided to act.

The Ripple Effect

The generation gap on nuclear energy is real. Michaelson's grandmother, who grew up in the Soviet Union during Chernobyl, was skeptical. But young people see different numbers: nuclear's modern safety record outperforms coal, and climate change poses bigger risks than well-regulated reactors.

The group now spans multiple Cornell schools, from public policy majors to engineering students like Juliette Tonnel, who wants to work on nuclear applications in space exploration. "Nuclear energy is either going to save our planet or it's going to help us escape it," Tonnel says.

Industry leaders are paying attention too. "These are busy, important people who have decided that it's worth their time to talk to Cornell students," notes faculty adviser Jack Hare, "which shows how important the next generation is to the nuclear industry."

What started as three students and a lunch conversation about challenging assumptions has become a movement that's reshaping how young people think about solving climate change without giving up reliable power.