1. Time for nukes?

2. A safe reactor

3. On a bed of pebbles

4. Nuclear willies

Unsafe at any price
New, "passively safe" reactor designs are unlikely to convert the staunchest opponents of nuclear power, who still say it's too expensive and too dangerous. We can't get into every detail in the argument over the wisdom of nuclear power, but the fact that some utilities are interested in buying reactors does not necessarily make them safe or sane.

Chernobyl: aftermath of the explosion and meltdown. Thirty-one firefighters died trying to control the blaze in Unit 4.
Courtesy International Nuclear Safety Program, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Critics like David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, point to a questionable safety record for nuclear, particularly to the enforcement of regulations. "If the regulations were consistently enforced, I'd be out of a job."

Part of his job is to scour public records of safety lapses in the industry. Each year, he says, there "are more than 1,000 violations of technical specifications and regulatory requirements" at nuclear generators. That's disturbing, he writes, because risk assessments assume that reactors meet specifications.

On the bright side, Lochbaum says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Reactor Oversight Process, inaugurated in 2000, gives a more current picture of safety problems.

Invisible. Always dangerous?
Ever since Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X-rays in 1895, radiation has been mysterious, possessed with fearsome powers to "see" invisible bones, cause cancer and lay waste to cities in milliseconds.

Granted: being invisible and scary does not make radiation automatically dangerous. But even counting the nuclear death toll is extremely difficult. Few people have died making nuclear power and bombs -- but cancer deaths among former uranium workers have never been counted comprehensively. Want more on health and radiation?

In the final analysis, nuclear power should be judged not in a vacuum but by comparison to other ways of getting the benefits of electricity.

Perhaps not. Is it more dangerous than energy efficiency and wind power? Perhaps so.

Make waste, not haste
One clear requirement for a flourishing of nuclear power is a solution to the endless debate over storing the highly radioactive fuel remaining from nuclear reactors. Radwaste is a lot more radioactive than uranium fuel, and still controversial. Opponents in Germany recently obstructed nuclear waste caravans, and shipments of plutonium-bearing waste to Japan for reprocessing are still the subject of dispute.

U.S. nuclear utilities, which now store radioactive waste at more than 70 locations, are impatiently awaiting the opening of the underground repository they have been funding for decades. But more than 20 years after the federal government began investigating Yucca Mountain in Nevada, it's still not decided whether to open the site.

While nuclear engineer Michael Corradini says all studies indicate that storage will be safe at Yucca Mountain," politics, as much as any scientific analysis, may determine the outcome in Nevada. "The real issue now," he says, "is that the federal government has sat on the back end of the fuel cycle for 10 years, has not gone forward with what legislation said in 1980: 'Open a repository.'"

In 1979, Three Mile Island symbolized fears over nuclear power. How much have times changed? Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration

Economics, obviously, plays a key role in energy decisions. As the nuclear industry touts the falling price of its power, critics note some of the role reduction comes from the relicensing of reactors that were designed and licensed for 40 years. By operating for another 20 years, utilities can slash costs.

The numbers debate
As the nuclear industry celebrates a record year for power generation, energy conservation expert Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute still considers it an economic disaster. "Nuclear has suffered the greatest collapse of any enterprise in the industrial history of the world."

The industry, he writes, has less than 10 percent of the lowest capacity predicted just 25 years ago by the International Atomic Energy Agency. "No one has made money selling reactors. U.S. investments exceeding a trillion dollars are delivering only about as much energy as biofuels" like waste wood and ethanol.

Lovins, who has long maintained that efficiency is the cheapest source of "energy services," says even poorly designed residential energy-saving programs can save a kilowatt-hour for just 2 cents -- about the lowest price cited for nuclear electricity.

Nuclear Lazarus?
Will nuclear make a comeback? They don't pay us Why Filers enough to answer that question, but the current combination of good operating records, a thirst for electricity, and worries about global warming, make nuclear's prospects seem brighter than any time since Three Mile Island melted down. "I'd be willing to bet that in one or two years somebody will order a nuclear power plant," says nuclear engineer Michael Corradini. "The utilities are trying to decide which one has the guts enough to do it."

In the last analysis, ordering new reactors will rest more on economics than on public sentiment, says Lochbaum. "There are 433 nuclear reactors in the world, and the public fear did not arise after the last one was built. There was the same fear during much of the construction. That fear has been overcome in the past, and if the economics were right, it will be overcome in the future."

React to the reactor story by reading our radioactive bibliography.