The production of nuclear energy does not emit carbon – the supposed bogey-element causing climate change. Yet talk of nuclear energy is markedly absent from most discussions about the production of clean energy.
 
Does this aversion to nuclear power go back to the old-fashioned fear of nuclear power plant accidents? Maybe for some, but research indicates that most people have a non-paranoid perspective on nuclear power. Around three-quarters of the American people favor the use of nuclear power as one of the ways to provide electricity.
 
Additionally, a close look at nuclear plant accidents reveals a couple of key things:
 
1)    The U.S. has never had a catastrophic event. Our “worst” accident was a partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, and extensive research done at the time and since indicates that there were virtually no public health effects.
2)    Accidents globally are very rare and significant health threats from those accidents even more rare. (Granted, the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 led to the release of enough radiation that there was a traumatic impact on the lives and health of thousands of people who were most highly exposed. However, the Chernobyl disaster speaks more to the poor quality of the engineering and safety standards of the old Soviet Union than it does about modern nuclear energy technology. Experience shows that if we don’t follow the model used under Soviet communism, we’ll be fine.)
 
Another potential question about nuclear energy is fair enough: what to do with the radioactive waste?
 
For this – and for other nuclear answers – we might look to France, a nation that produces the majority of its energy using nuclear power and is also the largest electricity exporter in the world – selling 18 percent of their electricity to Italy, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Germany. These countries turn to France because they know that France’s nuclear-power-generated electricity is among the most affordable in Europe.
 
France is a leader in reprocessing their nuclear waste – a method of re-using and reducing nuclear waste. Perhaps we should be more forward-thinking on that front. There are ways to do it and we need to address the technical, commercial, economic and legal issues to allow a reprocessing industry to develop in the U.S.
 
Is nuclear energy without challenges? No. Is any method of producing enemy without challenges? Of course not. But nuclear energy needs to be given a fair chance. It is a “green” technology that is available and affordable now.

Jean Card has been a professional writer in Washington, D.C. for more than a dozen years. After serving for several years as the top writer for one of the country’s top business associations, she spent half a dozen years as a cabinet-level speechwriter (at the Departments of Justice, Treasury and Labor) and then as a communications consultant with a boutique PR firm. Today, she is freelance writing and consulting, full-time.