Fifty years ago nuclear power was touted as the “fuel of the future.” Then fears of radioactive waste, contamination and safety catastrophes changed all that. These days nuclear power is increasingly attractive. Power is not monopolized as it once was, and investors want in on this supposedly cheap alternative to the high-priced fossil fuels we consume today. Dramatic improvements in power-plant safety have also been made, at least in most Western nations, quelling fears of doomsayers worldwide. Nuclear power reduces dependence on diminishing resources like oil and coal and creates less–albeit more deadly–waste than any other major energy-producing process. And Bush proposes to reprocess nuclear fuel abandoned in the early 1980s, thus reducing the amount of waste currently stored in controversial repositories near plant sites.
Nuclear energy even reduces the emission of greenhouse gases; it accounted for 70 percent of U.S. emission-free energy generation in 1999. Finally, there’s nuclear output: uranium-235, the isotope used in nuclear reactors, produces 3.7 million times as much energy as the same amount of coal. And plutonium–a byproduct of the nuclear process–can be used as a fuel.
But none of this is to say nuclear power has become a magic fix. Nuclear energy may be cheap to produce, but new plants face inevitably long construction phases. Construction and licensing–not to mention creating viable long-term depositories for nuclear waste–will face protests and endless legal challenges. In other words, there’s a reason no private business has applied for a nuclear power permit in 20 years.
