Republicans and democrats confront one another with daggers drawn in Congress on a variety of issues, from immigration to taxes to the nomination of Neil Gorsuch as a Supreme Court justice. But a bi-partisan consensus seems to have developed around a bill that would simplify the process to approve a Nuclear Power plant in the United States. While much of the rest of the world is rethinking nuclear power thanks to the accident at Fukushima, Japan, Americans are looking at the technology as the solution to a number of problems.
Liberal Democrats like nuclear power because it does not emit greenhouse gasses.
The left has become obsessed on the subject of climate change, believing that the use of fossil fuels, even natural gas, is relentlessly warming the planet. While they still like renewable energy such as solar and wind, nuclear has become more attractive as well. Modern nuclear power plant design mitigates against the sort of accidents that have proven to be catastrophic at Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island.
The environmental movement, which had campaigned relentlessly against nuclear energy in the 1970s and 1980s, has warmed to some extent to the technology largely on climate change concerns.
Conservatives like nuclear energy because, unlike solar and wind, it is reliable. Nuclear plants hum along 24/7, day and night, in windy conditions and calm days.
The drawback against nuclear power, aside from safety concerns, has been that plants with the technology have been expensive and slow to build. The approval process can take many years, and environmentalists have become adroit at delaying new nuclear power stations in court. The legislation will cut the approval time and bring more plants online, replacing dirtier coal-fired plants and removing the incentive to build solar arrays and wind farms.
Newer plants will also replace aging, decades old generators that are due to end their operational lives.
The best part, from advocates of nuclear power, is that President Donald Trump is likely to sign the bill into law once it reaches his desk. It would have been by no means certain that President Obama, fixated as he was on renewable energy, would have viewed the bill with as much favor. Hillary Clinton, for what it was worth, embraced nuclear power while on the campaign trail.
