Few aspects of energy policy are as controversial as nuclear power. Once promising energy "too cheap to meter", then delivering Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, nuclear power still provides a large share of American needs, and a larger share of other countries with fewer carbon-fuel resources.
We progressives have generally opposed nuclear power, for good reason. It is potentially dangerous, and is associated closely with nuclear weaponry. The nuclear fuel cycle is incomplete; there is still no permanent storage solution for detritus of 50-year-old reactors.
But are the alternatives worse? It's not a simple answer. To some extent, it may be because the nuclear industry is its own worst enemy.
We baby boomers grew up surrounded by pro-nuclear power propaganda. Radiation wasn't all that scary when we were kids; we were promised that it wouldn't harm us if we didn't do something stupid, like carry a piece of radium in our pocket (which didn't do Marie Curie much good). At the 1964 New York Worlds Fair, a pavillion would stick a silver (yes, they still were) dime next to something or other, then hand it back in a plastic holder showing off our "irradiated dime". To a kid, this was a cool artifact.
A lot of things after that changed public perception. We became more aware of the risks of radiation, especially from above-ground nuclear tests. We had more risk of nuclear annihilation, as the USA and the Soviet Union faced off with ever more and ever bigger weapons. The environmental movement was growing. The price of nuclear power turned out to be high too.
By the mid-1970s, anti-nuclear-power sentiment was strong. Public Service Co. of New Hampshire built its Seabrook plant, wanted to build a second, and faced strong opposition from a grassroots group called the Clamshell Alliance. Public opposition to its financing helped shift New Hampshire's politics; the state did not grant them "construction work in progress" (CWIP) financing, and PSNH went bankrupt. Then TMI happened, and no new nukes were built. That was the end of an era.
Now, with a stronger sense of concern over carbon-based fuels and their impact on global warming, nuclear power is back on the table. But has its time returned? I'm not sure that it hasn't, but there's real concern for just how it's making a comeback. Will it be more of the same, or has the industry made real progress?
Most nuclear power reactors are based on designs that come from the Cold War weapons race. These designs weren't just optimized to make power; they produced plutonium for bombs. I've long suspected that the "Atoms for Peace" program of the 1950s, which promoted nuclear power, was a cover for weapons development. And the Soviets were no doubt even worse. The reactors were expensive, too, but that was well suited to the rate-of-return regulation of utility companies. Nowadays generation is largely a market-priced for-profit industry, so higher costs don't guarantee higher profits as they used to.
Building more of these 1950s-style reactors today would be folly. They're frightfully expensive, of course, and they produce plenty of high-level waste (or bomb feedstock). Surely the technology thrown together during and immediately after WWII is not the best for today. If nuclear power is to play a role in the future, it should be a newer design, one that recognizes the weaknesses of past designs. Perhaps the pebble bed reactor is worth considering -- it seems immune to meltdowns and its fuel units ("pebbles" of low-enriched uranium encapsulated in graphite) seems easier to deal with. And it looks simple, and thus relatively cheap and less likely to fail. But I'm sure it has its own risks. Perhaps a new thorium-based reactor concept would be better. I am not a physicist and don't understand the details. The point is that half a century should have turned out some better ideas, but they seem fairly scarce.
Fusion is everybody's long-term favorite idea, and maybe it'll be ready in 10-20 years. Alas, that statement has been true for a long time. We have big-physics designs like tokamaks, and some clever small-scale ideas based on plasma and the like, but all have serious gaps before they can become net power generators. And fusion has risks too. So it's worthy of research, but probably won't help produce power for many years to come. If ever.
Before we go building new nukes, a lot of questions remain to be answered. The whole fuel cycle, from mining to refining to long-term disposal, needs to be worked out. The transport and storage of fuel need to be guaranteed safe. The reactor needs to be safe against air attack, so at worst it doesn't leak much. And the industry has to become honest -- we're just now learning some scary facts about TMI that were covered up at the time with big lies. That last part is the hardest.
So I'm willing to entertain proposals for new nuclear power. But the burden of proof is with the proponents, not the opponents. Show me a whole package, not recycled bomb plants with swimming pool waste storage. Let scientists have more say than lobbyists. Don't ignore risks; prevent them. I'm not terribly optimistic that we'll see it happen, but it's not impossible to imagine.