Educating the nuclear workforce: the nuclear renaissance.

Nuclear energy never died in the United States. As of August, the country's 104 nuclear reactors produced more than 20% of the electricity used in the country. They accounted for more than 30% of worldwide nuclear generation of electricity.

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But there's no denying the industry went into a coma beginning March 28, 1979. That's the morning a double-tone claxon sounded in the control room of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, just downriver from Harrisburg, Pa. It sounded the call for what was the worst accident ever to strike the U.S. nuclear industry. And it nearly delivered a death blow. No new nuclear reactors were ordered in the United States for nearly 30 years. But the industry is snapping out of that long coma, and some key parts of the recovery are ongoing in the Carolinas.

S.C. Electric & Gas, a subsidiary of Caycc. S.C.-based SCANA, and Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility based in Moncks Corner, S.C., are building two reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station near Jenkinsville. S.C. The state is home to seven reactors at four nuclear power plants. North Carolina has live reactors at three locations. Its two utilities. Raleigh-based Progress Energy and Charlotte-based Duke Energy, also have applied for permission to start new projects.

Progress has filed an application to build two more reactors at its Shearon Harris plant in Wake County. Duke has filed an application to build a nuclear plant, with two reactors, near Gaffney, S.C. They could get...