Global Warming Giving Nuclear New Claim To Clean

It takes years to license and build a reactor. Construction costs billions of dollars. The nation has no long-term storage site for the 2,000 tons of radioactive waste being produced annually by the 104 reactors operating in 31 states.

While some environmental groups grudgingly accept nuclear power as part of the energy landscape, others continue to oppose it. Counting waste costs and government subsidies makes nuclear no more effective than a combination of efficiency measures, desert solar stations, wind power and geothermal energy, they say.

Last month, President Barack Obama called for a cap on greenhouse gas emissions that would almost certainly raise the cost to operate coal- and gas-fired plants. It was another arrow in the quiver of nuclear power advocates who argue that there is no other reliable source of power that is free of greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide.

In the last two years, 26 applications for new reactors been submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which expects to issue a license no earlier than 2011. No such application was filed in the 28 years following the Three Mile Island accident.

In red states and blue states, public officials are paving the way for new reactors to call their states home. Even lawmakers in fossil fuel-rich Oklahoma, are advancing a bill that would effectively lift a moratorium on nuclear power.