Michael Brissenden reported this story on Sunday, March 27, 2011 08:04:00

ELIZABETH JACKSON: The crisis in Japan is causing many countries elsewhere in the world to look again at their nuclear industry - the United States is certainly one of them.



Of the 104 reactors in operation, 23 of them in the US are similar to the stricken Fukushima plant, and two of them are also perched precariously over a Pacific Rim fault line.



Nuclear power provides 20 per cent of America’s electricity needs, but as Michael Brissenden reports from Washington, the Fukushima crisis may price the nuclear option out of Americas energy future.



MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: In the past few years here in the US, nuclear energy had been enjoying something of a resurrection, brought back into favour with a new image as the clean energy of the future.



And the nuclear industry has also been working hard to increase its share of the market, hiring armies of lobbyists to press their case with power brokers on Capitol Hill.



But as it became clear the Japanese, one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth, had lost control of the deteriorating situation at Fukushima, lobbyists all over Washington began to sense a change of mood almost immediately. The so called 'Nuclear Renaissance' that had taken years to build up steam disappeared in a day.



Until the Fukushima crisis Nuclear power was in fact one of the rare areas of bipartisan agreement in this country at a time of bitter ideological division over almost everything, although the cause of this bonhomie was itself deeply political.



For some reason it seems that if you're a Republican you are ipso-facto an enthusiastic and determined supporter of nuclear power. The lobbying skills of the nuclear power industry can't be the only reason.



For many Republicans the nuclear industry is good not just because it's an alternative to fossil fuels but also because it's not a power source that's identified with those alternative renewable power sources like wind and solar.



There is a considerable section of the Republican congress who just doesn't buy the whole global warming argument anyway and their support for nuclear power is more about saving the planet from greenies than it is about saving the planet.



Democrats were also enthusiastic about the nuclear option in part because it could easily fit into the energy mix of a less carbon intensive future and also because any hope of ever getting Republican agreement in congress for any sort of energy bill would have been dead before it began without nuclear.



As it turns out the energy bill is dead anyway and so, many suspect, are the future plans of the nuclear industry.



And it's not politics that's killed them, it's economics.



Even before the meltdown at Fukushima the nuclear industry here was struggling to get finance. It's a surprise to some but the fact is that no new nuclear power plant has been commissioned in this country since before the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island plant in 1979.



That created a crisis of confidence in the public’s trust of the nuclear power industry and a significant tightening of safety requirements followed that made building reactors an even more expensive proposition than it had been.



In the words of one long term industry analyst, "Three mile island turned from a $1 billion dollar asset into a $2 billion liability in just 90 minutes."



Wall Street was spooked then and it's even more spooked now.



Already the discussion is turning to how this latest crisis will tighten safety standards even further. That in turn is going to make nuclear power even more expensive and the industry had already been struggling to find funding for any new developments.



In the United States it's the economics of safety, not the politics of climate that appears to be determining the place of nuclear power in the future energy market.



This is Michael Brissenden in Washington for Correspondents Report.