Both Republican politicians support, and Progressive-Democrat politicians profess support, for nuclear power as a major source of energy for our economy. Progressive-Democrats, though, seems superficial. Here, for instance is Congressman Frank Pallone (D, NJ):

I’ve been supportive of [nuclear], and we’ve been supportive of it as Democrats mostly on a bipartisan basis, but all that is linked to safety. If anything happens that gives the impression or actually makes it so that people’s lives are at risk, or we have some kind of incident, that’s going to be the end of it. I’ll speak for myself but I won’t be able to support it anymore.

Safety matters in nuclear power, just as it does in handling electricity, natural gas, gasoline—and driving down the street and grilling on the patio. There have been three major incidents involving nuclear power. They were Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

The Three Mile Island incident involved a partial meltdown stemming from a stuck valve resulting in loss of coolant to the reactor and operators failing to recognize the fact of the loss of coolant soon enough. Despite those failures, the reactor’s overall design prevented further damage, and radiation release was minimal—generally equivalent to the amount a patient receives during a chest X-ray—and there were no fatalities.

The Chernobyl incident resulted in several immediate casualties and a number of follow-on casualties, and it was the result of serious operator error and poor design. The incident occurred during a test of power-out shutdown procedures that was carried out despite an existing serious power drop during ongoing operations. The design failure was demonstrated by the attempt to shut down the reactor during those conditions resulting in a large power surge that the system could not handle.

The Fukushima incident was driven by a well-offshore earthquake followed by a tsunami, and it had a reactor meltdown, which would seem an especially dangerous and lethal failure. However, the reactor was designed and built to handle all of that but the tsunami, which flooding caused loss of power, leading to the meltdown. By design, the meltdown was contained. Radiation release was extremely limited, and the fatalities ensuing consisted of hospitalized patients and nursing home resident elderly who died while being evacuated due to failures of the evacuation process. No fatalities from the reactor failure occurred.

Nuclear power is safe, when the designs are sound and, especially, when construction and subsequent operation are carried out carefully and in accordance with specifications. When those factors are met, nuclear power compares very favorably with the fatality rates from driving an automobile or truck, from flying commercial, and from riding the train. They compare favorably with the fatality rate inflicted on birds by windmills, and with the loss of habitat from building solar farms.

Pallone surely knows this, which makes his “support” very much a superficial position.

It’s time the naysayers—and not only some Progressive-Democrat pretenders—to get out of the way. Nuclear power is much greener than wind or solar, and it is much steadier and more reliable at generating electricity.