“It’s sort of interesting,” remarked McCarthy. “We as a society tolerate coal mining accidents and natural gas explosions. It shows up in the news, but then it goes away in a few days.” The story for nuclear is different. “Three Mile Island was a testament to a technology working well despite everyone’s mistakes—and yet…” she trailed off. “We lost the capital investment, but there were no adverse health effects. I try to understand the fear.”

Time and again, scientists and researchers and insurance companies pointed me to data that suggests that nuclear power plants are not the horror-filled risk machines many think they are. For example, did you know that radiation emitted from a nuclear plant is actually lower than that from a coal power plant? Or have you seen charts like this one (based on this one), which show that the number of deaths attributable to coal plants (including air pollution) far outstrips the number of deaths associated with nuclear energy?

And even early studies (like this one) of the radiation exposures associated with the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan have been cautiously optimistic:

...this study at our educational institution located 57.8 km from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant suggests radiation doses at levels having no impact on health for students leading a typical student life on campus.

If you want a source that puts its money where its mouth is, look no further than American Nuclear Insurers (ANI). ANI provides third-party liability insurance for nuclear power from the point uranium ore is enriched for use in a reactor all the way through its final resting place in a waste disposal facility. “As an insurance company, we think it’s a good technology, a safe technology,” Cass told me. “It’s an industrial operation, and for an industrial operation it's been incredibly safe. We insure facilities for health, and it's been a very good business." That’s especially interesting once you realize that ANI insured the Three Mile Island plant.

“I’m not advocating,” Cass said. “This is just clear data. ‘This happened, it released this amount.’ The science behind radiation is very well documented; it’s one of the best known and studied carcinogens in the world, so there’s a lot of scientific background that comes to bear on these claims.” In the case of Three Mile Island, Cass said there were very few claims paid, and they were related almost exclusively to lost opportunities and business interruptions related to the regional evacuation.

Today, the company is looking for more opportunities to issue policies on nuclear power; since the mid-2000s ANI has had more interest from investors than it has had from customers. “We wouldn’t insure it if we didn’t think it was worth doing,” said Cass.

Yes, But Should We?

Today, the future of nuclear is far from certain.

While there are many advocates who see possible paths forward—as I’ve described above—whether we can and should follow those paths is another question that will need to be solved through national debate and policy. The economics of the industry are still extremely challenging.

Natural gas prices are likely to rise, though how quickly and steadily is another question. Infrastructure development and growing concern about the local environmental impacts of extraction are putting pressure on the booming industry. That bodes well for low-carbon energy sources that compete with gas, including both renewables, storage, and (of course) nuclear.

But even if those trends continue, new nuclear capacity will likely not be prepared to fill the energy gap without further public investment into both R&D, loan guarantees, and tax incentives. Supporters and detractors of nuclear energy both agree on this point. They also agree that, today, a significant increase in nuclear-related investment from the federal government is unlikely.

“What you’re asking is, should there be a Manhattan project to create the perfect nuclear power plant?,” said Lyman, the UCS senior scientist. “Unfortunately, there is no appetite for that in the federal government. … The ship has sailed for massive government funded R&D program.”

Whether that should change is likely to be a major policy debate in the coming months and years. Things seem to be heating up. Just this week, the Government Accountability Office recommended that the DOE find a way forward with the deployment phase of its advanced reactor pilot program in order to prepare for compliance with the EPA’s carbon regulation plan. That comes on the heels of a report released last month, in which Mark Cooper, Senior Fellow for Economic Analysis at the Vermont Law School Institute for Energy and the Environment, argues that “pursuing nuclear power as a focal point of climate policy diverts economic resources and policy development from critically important efforts to accelerate the deployment of solutions that are much more attractive – less costly, less risky, more environmentally benign.”

The impact of investing in nuclear, under Cooper’s analysis, would be to detract from investment in renewables and storage.

INL’s McCarthy disagreed. “What we’re talking about is nothing compared to our national defense budget,” she said. “We are a very rich country. Really, we are. It’s that we don’t have the will to do it.”