Nuclear power was the energy of Tomorrowland — in the 1950s it was going to make electricity too cheap to meter — until it came to a standstill over the past couple decades. It's now poised to make a dramatic comeback. At least, that's what many politicians and the media say. As the Senate this week debated the Warner-Lieberman carbon cap-and-trade bill, which would put a federal limit on greenhouse gas emissions, many doubtful senators said they wouldn't vote for the measure unless massive subsidies for nuclear were included. (The bill was shelved.) Even some veteran greens who were once dead set against atomic power, like Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, now see nukes as the only way to save civilization from climate change. And last month Wired magazine urged environmentalists to "Go Nuclear," claiming, "there's no question that nuclear power is the most climate-friendly industrial-scale energy source."

That's debatable, to say the least. There's no question that a nuclear plant, once it's up and running, produces comparatively little carbon dioxide — a British government report last year found that a nuclear plant emits just 2% to 6% of the CO2 per kilowatt-hour as natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel — but nuclear energy still seems like the power of yesterday. After a burst of construction between the 1950s and late 1970s, a new nuclear power plant hasn't come on line in the U.S. since 1996, and some nations like Germany are looking to phase out existing atomic plants. That reverse is chiefly due to safety concerns — the lingering Chernobyl fears of nuclear meltdown, or the fact that we still have yet to devise a long-term method for the disposal of atomic waste.

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