IBD: Make Nuclear Part of Comprehensive Energy Policy

Investor's Business Daily is calling for a comprehensive national energy policy that must include nuclear energy:

The White House also should be taking the argument for increased nuclear power to Congress and the public. Atomic energy now provides nearly 20% of our electricity needs, but that's far less than what it could be delivering. Nuclear power accounts for about 80% of France's electricity, 55% of Belgium's, half of Sweden's and 40% of Switzerland's and South Korea's. Why are we behind?

Atomic energy makes sense. It is efficient. It takes only 0.0007 of a pound of uranium in a commercial reactor to burn a 100-watt light bulb for one year. That same bulb would require 876 pounds of coal or 508 pounds of oil to get the same results, the Nuclear Energy Institute says.

And it is clean. There are no harmful emissions created when nuclear material produces power. Unlike plants fueled by fossil fuels, nuclear plants don't blow smoke when making electricity.

To their credit, some environmentalists have come around to conceding that atomic energy is clean and support, for environmental reasons, the development of more U.S. plants.

But resistance remains. Much of the blame for the weak effort in the U.S. to take advantage of nuclear power should be placed on eco-Luddites still gripped by a paralyzing fear of nuclear power.

None of them, however, can point to a single death in any of those countries that resulted from a nuclear power accident. Yes, 47 died in the former Soviet Union in the 1986 Chernobyl incident. But that was a product of wretched Soviet engineering, not proof that nuclear power is by its nature dangerous.