As the nuclear emergency in Japan unfolds, Congress has begun expressing caution about America's use of the technology going forward.
Over the weekend, for example, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman said we should "put the brakes on" construction of any new nuclear energy plants in the US, until we understand what happened in Japan and what we can do to make the technology safer:
"I've been a big supporter of nuclear power because it's domestic, it's ours and it's clean," Lieberman said on Face The Nation. "We've had a good safety with nuclear power plants here in the United States... I don't want to stop the building of nuclear power plants, but I think we've got to kind of quietly, quickly put the brakes on until we can absorb what has happened in Japan as a result of the earthquake and the tsunami and then see what more, if anything, we can demand of the new power plants that are coming online."
Three Mile Island meltdown in Pennsylvania in 1979, effectively killed the nuclear industry in America.� Dozens of plants under construction at the time have come on line, but not a single new facility has been commissioned since the disaster.
Sentiment had been shifting back towards nuclear in recent years. The government has set aside $18 billion for new nuclear plants, and President Obama wants to spend an additional $36 billion.� Now all that is in question.
The emergency in Japan is still unfolding, so it's hard to draw any conclusions from it yet.� At least one nuclear expert, Josef Oehmen of MIT, says that fears of a massive radiation accident are overblown.� But this hasn't stopped perception that the situation is continuing to get worse.
Whatever happens in Japan, there's no free lunch. As we saw vividly in the Gulf oil spill last year, conventional fuels come with their own risks and costs, so it's a question of which risks the country (and world) prefer to bear.
Another thing that has unfortunately become clear is that, in the absence of an emergency, Americans are above all committed to keeping energy as cheap as possible, which has made establishing a long-term sustainable energy plan for the country politically difficult (if not impossible). Sources of safe, renewable energy are still considerably more expensive than fossil-fuels and nuclear power, and when there isn't a crisis front and center, short-term price concerns seem to carry the day.
Perhaps memories of the oil spill, combined with the disaster in Japan, will begin to change that. But I'm not waiting on the edge of my seat.
See Also: You Can Stop Worrying About A Massive Radiation Leak In Japan -- Here's Why
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