A comeback for nuclear power? After a 30-year hiatus, nuclear energy in the U.S. may be getting another chance.

• Author: Wald, Matthew L.
• Position: NATIONAL

Mention nuclear energy and you're likely to hear wildly different opinions about the role it should play in the nation's future.

Proponents say it has the potential to free the United States from its dependency on foreign oil and nudge the nation toward a cleaner, less carbon-intensive energy future.

Critics focus on the possibility of potentially disastrous accidents and the difficult issue of how to safely dispose of nuclear waste--a toxic by-product that must be isolated from humans for thousands of years. For nearly three decades, these concerns have kept the nuclear power industry in the U.S. frozen in place, with no new plants built.

But all that may be changing. In February, President Obama unveiled an energy policy that includes plans for "a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants." The Energy Department has announced loan guarantees of $8.3 billion to help build two reactors in Georgia and is working on financing for three other nuclear projects, in South Carolina, Maryland, and Texas.

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Other countries have already embraced nuclear power. There are currently 436 working reactors in 30 other countries. France gets almost 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear plants, and almost 25 percent of Japan's electricity comes from nuclear power.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS RECONSIDER

Nuclear reactors harness the enormous energy released when atoms split apart in nuclear chain reactions. That energy is used to heat water, which produces steam to drive a turbine generator, creating electricity. But unlike conventional power plants, which burn coal, oil, or natural gas to make the steam--and emit greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming--nuclear energy produces no carbon emissions. That's one reason some environmentalists who once opposed nuclear energy now see it as a key part of any plan to address climate change.

Patrick Moore, a co-founder of the environmental group Greenpeace, now says "nuclear energy is the most important technology we have" to "reduce greenhouse-gas emissions."

Currently, the 104 operating nuclear plants in the U.S. generate about 20 percent of our electricity and account for 9 percent of the nation's total energy consumption (see graph).

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"If we're looking over the next 25 to 30 years to meet rising demand," says Steven Kerekes of the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, "we do have to start building new facilities."

When the first commercial U.S. reactor...