Enthusiasm for spreading reactors among new nations should remind us that the Shah of Iran's nuclear-power program was featured in 1970s nuclear-industry advertisements.
WSJ: Should the World Increase Its Reliance on Nuclear Energy?
But he acknowledged that the long-dormant nuclear power industry faces not only technical but political hurdles -- particularly over how to dispose of nuclear waste.
Appearing alongside his two rivals on the BBC News Channel, Lord Elis-Thomas underlined his support for nuclear power - an industry that employs 600 people at a decommissioning site in his Dwyfor Meirionnydd constituency.
It has moved speedily to revive the nuclear-power industry, by contrast.
But handing out public money to the nuclear-power industry (through production or investment tax credits, for example) is an inefficient way for governments to discourage global warming.
Yet the German government, for one, has been reluctant to spend money on reactors to burn Russian plutonium at a time when it aims to wind down Germany's own nuclear-power industry.
Yet suspicions have mounted as Iran has invested in expensive technologies for enriching uranium and making plutonium (both possible bomb ingredients) before having a civilian nuclear-power industry that can make peaceful use of them.
The Japanese nuclear accident has come at a delicate time for the nuclear-power industry, growing globally, for the first time in decades as a new generation of "passive" designs is being embraced as offering more safety.
Seoul has been pushing for a green light to enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear-reactor fuel to develop its nuclear power industry, but Washington has been opposed out of concern it could spur nuclear weapons proliferation.
The Clinton Administration's party line -- and that of others with an interest in having the U.S. nuclear power industry make sales to Communist China -- is that Beijing has made "real progress" on all these scores.
The long-term impact on the nuclear power industry is yet to be seen, but what is clear is that natural disasters like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan have profound effects on governments and on businesses, directly or indirectly.
The administration also wants to encourage the growth of the nuclear power industry and exploration of new stores of coal, oil and natural gas -- notably in the now off-limits Arctic National Wildlife refuge.
Such decisions would nevertheless reflect a view shared by many, both from within the industry and among nuclear power opponents, namely that old nuclear power stations are considerably less safe - or more dangerous - than new ones.
The December election of Mr. Abe, however, has bred new life into Japan's nuclear-power program and the prospects for the Rokkasho facility, said government and industry officials.
Following the 1979 near-meltdown of a reactor at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island, the nuclear power industry suddenly had all the appeal of Dr. Strangelove in his doomsday bunker.
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