As the first new commercial nuclear reactor in three decades came online and achieved 100% power at Vogtle, Miss America, Grace Stanke, wrote that she was “skipping” after the news broke.

Ms. Stanke is 2023’s Miss America, studying nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her initiative as Miss America is called “Clean Energy, Cleaner Future.” She said that her biggest goals are changing public perception around the word NUCLEAR by working with today’s youth to understand how nuclear technology all around us is, and to advocate for nuclear policies that allow for the advancement of the technology and for nuclear power plants to stay open and continue to supply a zero-carbon baseload source of power for our energy grid.

In an opinion piece in Newsweek, Ms. Stanke wrote, “Supporting nuclear energy, after all, is a no-brainer. Whether you’re concerned about fighting climate change or energy security, nuclear energy must be a part of our energy portfolio moving forward…We each have a voice, and it’s our responsibility to use our voices to enact meaningful change. Gen Z could be the generation that champions nuclear energy and fights back against climate change. In fact, we have to. It’s time to seize this valuable opportunity to hold politicians accountable and take action to create reliable and zero-carbon energy.”