Marc Fisher on Nuclear Energy

Recently, columnist Marc Fisher of the Washington Post took a visit to the North Anna Nuclear Station in Virginia to get a look at Dominion Virginia's possible plans to build a new reactor:

"The nuclear issue has hardly even come up" in the local debate over expanding North Anna, says the Dominion executive who runs the plant, Dan Stoddard. "The only real issue was the impact on the lake. People who live here often say, 'We're not opposed to the plant as long as we can't see it, hear it or smell it.' "

There is still great concern about the nation's failure to figure out what to do with the spent fuel rods that emerge from nuclear plants. But the path toward the new reactors seems relatively smooth. For now, all of the spent fuel ever produced at Lake Anna sits in rows of 14-foot-high concrete and steel canisters on an open-air concrete pad behind a barbed-wire fence near the power plant.

That's just too obvious an environmental problem -- and too easy a terrorism target -- for many people. But as I walk through the North Anna facility with Dominion executives, watched constantly by black-clad men toting machine guns, I hear something the nuclear power industry has been short on for decades: confidence.

"If you're going to do something about CO2," Grecheck says, "and it's pretty clear that the politics of the situation are heading in that direction, you're going to have to look at nuclear."

Kudos to Fisher for giving us an even break, but what's disturbing is the discussion string that's developing below it. Be sure to stop by and add your two cents -- or more if need be -- to counter what's becoming a rather twisted discussion.