America’s green nuclear age?

A new generation of nuclear reactors is pitched as the solution to our energy and climate problems

“The Greens” have kept us from developing new nuclear power since the Three Mile Island disaster, said venture capitalist Bob Metcalfe in The Wall Street Journal, but they can’t stop America’s “new nuclear revolution.” Nor should they want to. A new generation of small, “far safer” nuclear fission reactors could provide us with plenty of “cheap and clean energy,” if the government would only lower the “astronomical” costs and regulatory risks of building new reactors.

Energy companies are “open” to safe, cheap new nuclear technologies, said Sara Patton in The Seattle Times, but “the nuclear industry simply isn’t there yet.” Increasing efficiency and focusing on renewable energy are safer and cheaper ways of meeting our growing energy needs than placing “another high-risk bet on nuclear power”—and they avoid the problem of nuclear waste.

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