Nuclear power: A dying industry?

It was supposed to be “the energy source of the future,” said John W. Schoen in MSNBC.com. But nuclear power now looks as if it will be relegated to the past. The triple meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, a year ago this week may prove to be the final nail in the U.S. nuclear industry’s coffin. As recently as 2005, Congress spoke of a “nuclear renaissance,” cutting red tape and offering loan guarantees to contractors wanting to build reactors. But the weak economy slowed the demand for energy, while natural gas became a viable, cheap alternative fuel. The disaster in Japan has only weakened the desire to build new reactors; just four are currently proposed or under construction in the U.S. Actually, that’s a relief, said Gwen L. DuBois in The Baltimore Sun. The 104 nuclear power plants in the U.S. are “no better designed than those in Japan,” and a serious natural disaster could cause a similar catastrophe here. Fukushima should be a wake-up call to end our nuclear ambitions for good.

That would be too hasty, said William Tucker in The Wall Street Journal. Our new generation of power stations is designed to protect against any risk of a Fukushima-style meltdown, and there’s no evidence to suggest that the low levels of radiation that typically linger after such an event are even harmful, let alone fatal. No one has yet died as a result of the Fukushima meltdown, and many people thrive in areas with radiation levels “much higher than are present in the evacuation zone.” The real danger comes from not using nuclear power, said Bryan Walsh in Time​.com. It is the only power source that provides constant, carbon-free energy. Take nuclear out of the picture, and “averting dangerous climate change—already an enormous challenge—[becomes] much more difficult.”

Nuclear power has a role to play in our energy future, said Richard Brodsky in The New York Times, but only if we heed Fukushima’s lessons. Sadly, our Nuclear Regulatory Commission seems reluctant to do so. It has exempted older plants from new regulations, no doubt at the industry’s bidding. The Indian Point plant, for example, lies on a fault line just 25 miles from the New York City area’s 19 million residents. There is still no evacuation plan, and no recent assessment of earthquake risks. We need improved standards for all plants. Atomic power only deserves to survive if the American public has “confidence in the industry and the government agencies that oversee it.”

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