How Nuclear Power Could Be A Game Changer For Puerto Rico

Residents say it may be time to reconsider one of the U.S. territory's most universal political taboos.

This story is the third installment of a three-part series on Puerto Rico’s energy transition. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

RINCÓN, Puerto Rico — At the end of a dirt road leading to a prime surfing spot in this vacation town on the northwest coast sits a giant, hemispheric bulb bulging out from between the palm trees. When the structure popped up more than six decades ago, federal scientists called it the “dome of the future.”

Beneath its rounded concrete exterior lie the remains of the only nuclear power reactor ever built in the Caribbean — an early experimental model the U.S. government started testing in 1960 to see if superheating steam to higher temperatures could unlock ways to make atomic energy cheaper.

Due to technical challenges and high maintenance costs, Puerto Rico’s state-owned utility ended operations at the nuclear plant in 1968. The site eventually became a museum open to the public — until Hurricane María, the Category 5 storm that pulverized the island in 2017. Today it’s locked behind a guarded chain-link fence, an artifact of a bygone era when the United States’ most populous unincorporated territory was at the vanguard of Space Age technological discoveries.

For Angel Manuel Ciordia, however, the remnants of the nuclear reactor offer hope — hope for a modern Puerto Rico whose residents can finally emerge from the hardships of a life without steady access to electricity, and hope that he won’t have to fear every day that the machines keeping him alive will stop working.