Dani Zigon

My daughter was born January 16, 2021.

On February 16, 2021, Winter Storm Uri took out the power to my home and millions of other Texans’ homes. If you’ve had a child recently, you know the internet is obsessed with “safe sleep.” You’re inundated with messages about how “back is best,” the dangers of pillows, warning you that you should never fall asleep with your baby in your arms. My daughter laying in her bassinet that night, the house was around 40degF, and I remember thinking to myself “is she more likely to freeze to death in her bassinet or suffocate in my arms if I sleep with her in a rocking chair covered in blankets.”

We were some of the lucky ones. Our power returned quickly relative to most, my daughter and I both warm, healthy, and happy, but I was left thinking what energy poverty means in modern society. In most Western countries, it’s evaluated as a chronic phenomenon based on costs as a percentage of stable household income over a long period of time. This is different. It’s acute energy poverty. You can’t control when it happens. When it does, prices can skyrocket leading to ruin. People die from lack of ability to heat or cool themselves and unsafe, irregular conversions to fuel sources they’re not equipped to run (think carbon monoxide poisoning in the middle of Texas from running a wood-burning fire during a snowpocalypse in a fireplace that never gets inspected).

And it’s not just happening in Texas, it’s happening across the country and the world. Energy security means when you go to flip a switch, you’re confident the light will come on. I no longer have that during extreme weather, and with large load growth forecasted to outpace supply by a factor of 2, my family’s livelihood is deeply tied to how fast we can bring online new, firm, clean, reliable energy supply.

I’m a Mother for Nuclear because this generation deserves certainty they can power the forces that keep them alive and the next generation deserves clean air and land to build their lives upon. Nuclear power is the backbone that will make both reasonable visions for the future a possibility so no other new mother has to experience what I did in 2021.

Dani Zigon is Director for Nuclear Policy at UT Austin, holds a MS in Energy Policy from UT Austin, BS in Nuclear Engineering from Purdue, and has spent the last 15 years professionally pursuing energy security everywhere. She lives in Austin, TX with her daughter, Eve, and rocket scientist husband, Carter.