Nuclear Power: Time to Choose

As energy needs rocket, America must face down old demons and decide on a role for nuclear power. Surprise: it's gaining new respect.

Nuclear power. The words conjure first the hellish explosion at Chernobyl that spewed a radioactive cloud across the Ukraine and Europe five years ago this week, poisoning crops, spawning bizarre mutant livestock, killing dozens of people and exposing millions more to dangerous fallout. Then the words summon up Three Mile Island (shown here) and the threat of a meltdown that spread panic across Pennsylvania's rolling countryside seven years earlier. From these grew the alarming television programs, the doomsday books, the terrifying movies, even the jokes (What's served on rice and glows in the dark? Chicken Kiev). Could any technology survive all...

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