A bumper sticker occasion found on a vehicle reads, “Another Environmentalist for Nuclear Power.”  Right on!  Despite the ever present fear of nuclear power, it hasn’t gone away because after all is said and done, it just makes sense.
    Some notes: it’s cheap, it’s plentiful, it’s domestic, it’s safe, it’s reliable, it’s practical, it’s proven, and. . .oh yes. . . it’s clean!  Nuclear energy is an carbon/sulfur emission free source of energy that’s cheaper than all other sources of energy with the exception of hydro-electrical.  Newer reactors also offer the only practical means of producing hydrogen in a practical, environmentally friendly, economically competitive manner.  Hydrogen, we can agree, is good.  If as a country, we utilized nuclear power like the French do, we would not only being paying less for our electricity, but we would exceed standards set by the Kyoto treaty by a healthy margin.
    Other energy solutions like wind or solar would dry up tomorrow without government subsidies, while the thought of having to build thousands of windmills across the US is daunting and not very practical.
    Still there are some concerns about nuclear:
1) What about waste?  Current technologies pioneered right here in Idaho allow for waste to be reprocessed.  If the country were to focus on recycling all the current waste in storage, we would have enough to supply our needs for the next century without producing a drop of new waste material over what we already have.
2) You say it’s safe.  What about Chernobyl or Three Mile Island?  In view of the overarching history of the industry, nuclear power has a very good record of safety despite all the accidents that have occurred.  What industry doesn’t have accidents?  That said, the Three Mile Island meltdown resulted in nobody getting hurt, and only paltry amounts of radiation escaping from the reactor.  In Chernobyl, the worst thing that could have happened, did.  And although it was terrible, it wasn’t as bad as we have imagined it to be.  The industry has learned from their mistakes, and is better because of it.  Keep one thing in mind: a nuclear engineer isn’t ever afraid to walk into his own facility.

As it now sits, a brand new generation 4 nuclear reactor prototype is slated to be built here at the INL, promising a stronger economy for this region.  Licenses for new reactors (generation 3) are now being processed across the US for the first time in 30 years.  Unfortunately this is all far too political, and the next administration could easily undercut the progress being made.  Of the three major political candidates currently running for the presidency, only one (that I’m aware of) has voiced support for this technology.  The others avoid the subject because of fear of alienating their uniformed constituency.
Energy is America’s biggest weakness.  Here we have the solution to make ourselves more prosperous and secure.  So let’s go with it ALREADY!