Obama's nuclear renaissance

Liberal environmentalists are beginning to feel about President Barack Obama the way Glenn Beck and his supporters do. That was especially evident last week after the president announced $8.3 billion in loan guarantees to help build two large (gasp!) nuclear power reactors in Georgia — the first such plants in this country in three decades.

But a quick look at Obama's positions as a senator and presidential candidate will reveal that he has long supported nuclear power. And on this issue he is absolutely right.

The global warming scare has made coal-fired power generators untenable. But even if global warming is shown to be a ruse, these plants still emit too much pollution. Perhaps expensive carbon sequestration technology could change that, but that technology could be prohibitively expensive and speculative. Wind, solar, wave and other renewable energy sources are providing a growing share of the nation's energy needs, but nothing approaching what really would be necessary to satisfy demands.

We're not thrilled with the amount of federal subsidy that will be required to jump-start the nuclear industry, but we're thrilled the president is serious about moving in that direction, and we're encouraged by new technologies that may make such power more affordable and efficient.

Bill Gates thinks so, too. He has invested tens of millions of dollars from his computer-generated empire into a company in Washington state that is working on a new type of reactor that slowly burns existing nuclear waste to create new energy. The promise of this technology is that it would generate energy without the enrichment process that could be used to create nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal last week reported that the Tennessee Valley Authority, First Energy Corp. and Oglethorpe Power Corp., three utility giants, have signed an agreement with McDermott International Inc.'s Babcock & Wilcox subsidiary to build nuclear reactors that are no larger than the size of a railroad boxcar. These would be capable of generating 135 to 140 megawatts of power, and their cost would be much less than a traditional reactor. They could be built quickly and installed at existing nuclear plants.

Critics scoff at these ideas. But critics have scoffed at innovations throughout history. Americans are demanding more and more electricity each year as the economy continues to produce more computer products, iPads, smart phones and other devices, and no one seems to have a clean-energy solution to compete with nuclear power.

Americans in general seem to have an irrational fear of nuclear power. It is a safe energy source, especially compared to the hundreds who die each year worldwide in coal mine accidents. The Three Mile Island mishap is often cited as a nuclear caution, but no one died in that incident. Chernobyl stands as the worst nuclear disaster, but it was triggered by lax Soviet standards.

Because of his support base and a Democratic majority in Congress, Obama is in a position to take the politics out of the nuclear power debate, which has tended to be a Republican issue. For the good of the nation's energy future, we hope that happens.