While it may be on the political backburner for now as Congress battles over finance reform and the media publicizes the immigration debate a la’ Arizona’s new law, how to move ahead on climate change-related energy policy is very much still an open book. In his State of the Union speech, President Obama endorsed nuclear energy as a viable if not necessary option in the move toward both energy independence and away from fossil fuels. It’s hard to know how that will play out in the long run, but in the short-term it netted one new nuclear plant to get a gigantic loan guarantee for more than $8 billion to build the first new nuclear power plant in the United States in 30 years or so. If the president is for it and we’re already giving loans out, is there much of a debate to really have?

Well, it turns out that this week is the 24^th anniversary of the tragic Chernobyl disaster, and Climate Central decided it was a good time to look at where nuclear power is now as opposed to then. It’s no secret that people have strong opinions about nuclear energy and aren’t afraid to make their voices heard. It’s worth noting, also, that a lot of the politicians who are now in office were in the 18-35 age bracket when Chernobyl happened, meaning to me that they may have grown up with a lot of early Cold War messaging and seen a major disaster rock the world relatively early in their careers. What kind of influence could that have? That remains to be seen.

Nuclear power is certainly a much safer proposition than it was when Chernobyl happened. And at present nuclear power provides 20% of the electricity needs to the U.S. overall- no small portion. We wouldn’t be able to get rid of it by a long shot- but do we want to substantially expand it?

Opponents continue to question the true safety of reactors, the still problematic and unresolved disposal of nuclear waste, and the energy source in general carries the unfortunate association with nuclear weapons. That debate can be clearly seen as toxic in and of itself when you follow a few sentences of what’s going on in Iran.

Climate Central points out, though, in a rather off-hand way, that the world has been operating hundreds of nuclear reactors since Chernobyl without major incident. If there were some kind of explosion or disaster on that level, it’s hard to see how public opinion would allow much expansion of the industry- but if things continue to run smoothly, would there be enough support to double the amount of nuclear electricity over the next few decades? I kind of think yes. The main opponent would be the fossil fuel industry, but if you did the right kind of PR campaign, my guess is you could get a place to shift from mountaintop removal mining to a nuclear reactor, or from offshore drilling to a nuclear power plant. And with Bill Gates putting mass amounts of money into discovering a way to turn the waste into energy itself, we could be looking at a revolution with little fanfare but an inroad to and a setup for success. We’ll see.

Photo Credit: martinpro