AFTER THE CHERNOBYL meltdown 25 years ago last Tuesday, the prospects for America’s nuclear energy industry were grim. But by 2008 nuclear had bounced back in the United States. Support for building more reactors reached 44 percent in public polling. In the works were innovative reactive designs, such as small, efficient “modular” units that would be extremely safe and that could be deployed with more flexibility and less overhead than their behemoth cousins. Improvements in regulation promised to bring down compliance costs. Prominent voices in both parties unapologetically insisted that nuclear had to be part of America’s energy future.
But now, after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan?
As robots begin cleaning up the mess, the good news is that the Fukushima accident doesn’t appear to have been another Chernobyl. Barring effects yet unseen, the number of people who will suffer is drastically lower.
Its effects on public opinion have been more modest, too. A new Post-ABC News poll indicates that a small majority of Americans still thinks nuclear power is safe. Just over half also say that Fukushima hasn’t fundamentally altered their confidence in American nuclear facilities. Politicians haven’t made a major effort to reverse pro-nuclear policies, at least not yet.
Still, The Post poll found, two-thirds of Americans now don’t want to see new plants built anywhere in the country, and 84 percent oppose building one close to them. Anti-nuclear activists are already cheering the first victim of renewed concerns. NRG, a major power company, this month decided to scrap plans to build two reactors. Part of the reason was simple economics: low wholesale power prices in Texas, where NRG wanted to put the plants. But part of the company’s concern came from regulatory uncertainties following the accident in Japan. Fukushima, certainly, hasn’t helped America’s nuclear renaissance.
Anti-nuclear advocates and commentators, no doubt, welcome this. The only reason nuclear is attractive, some insist, is concern over global warming. Yet, even if that is the only cause, it is compelling. As of now there is no other proven, scalable low-carbon source of electricity that produces the reliable, “always on” power that utilities require. America may never get as much of its electricity from nuclear plants as France, which generates 80 percent of its power that way. But if it is serious about cutting carbon emissions, the United States should keep nuclear on the table.
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