Digital Journal: Clean Energy Could Mean More Nuclear

From Digital Journal.Com
January 17, 2009
by Joan Firstenberg

Nuclear Energy - we haven't talked about it for 30 years in this country. But now it's the talk of the town as far as clean energy is concerned and it could be the perfect solution to President-Elect Obama's goal of reducing carbon emissions.

Nuclear power is back in vogue. A number of big U.S. companies are banking on President-elect Barack Obama's goal to reduce carbon emissions in this country by 80-percent by 2050 to propel the nation into a nuclear-power building boom. In fact, Barrons reports that nuclear plants produce the most amount of energy without emitting any greenhouse gases. And there are plans to build 26 new nuclear plants. No new plants have been built in the U.S. for 30 years.

Some scientists are approving of the idea. Tom Neff, a physicist and research affiliate at MIT's Center for International Studies says,
"Nuclear power is in a renaissance."

Nuclear energy has re-emerged as a good energy source as fears about its safety have eased. Exelon, the biggest nuclear-power generator in the U.S. and other operators have addressed the problem of nuclear-waste disposal with "dry-cask storage" -- high-tech sealed containers that they keep on their sites. Because of innovations like that, many of the safety concerns that arose after accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 and Chernobyl in Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) in 1986 have eased.

Nuclear plants now have the stamp of approval from a founding member of Greenpeace. Patrick Moore, a scientist who began supporting nuclear energy a few years ago, says,

"It's safer to work in a nuclear plant than it is in real estate."

Moore points to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and says that a Columbia University study published in 2004, which followed 54,000 nuclear-plant workers for 15 years, found that they had fewer cancers, less disease and lived longer than the average person.

The only fly in the ointment of getting these plants going could be obtaining the financing necessary because of the recent credit crisis. But Sheila Slocum Hollis, a partner at the Washington law firm of Duane Morris, which specializes in energy law says,

"If you honestly believe that greenhouse gas is the seminal issue of the day, as world population and economic growth continue to expand, so will the need for electric capacity. Whether to power electric vehicles or for general manufacturing needs, ultimately people are looking toward nuclear as the big power source. I have seen a sea change in public acceptance of nuclear power. People have seen it for 35 years now, and it's working and it has a lot of jobs associated with it in many communities."

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