Energy realism includes nuclear power

- One of the most encouraging themes to emerge from President Barack Obama's State of the Union address was an emphasis on realism in the development of new energy sources, including nuclear power.

The president touted "clean energy" jobs, saying we need "more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies."

What the president needs to do now is make sure there is follow-through in his administration on the development of all of these sources of energy — especially nuclear energy, which is both clean and renewable. It generates no carbon dioxide, so to the extent worries about greenhouse gases warming the atmosphere are accurate, nuclear power can be seen as part of the answer for climate change issues.

The nation only gets about 20 percent of its energy needs from nuclear power. This compares with more than 80 percent in France and Sweden at 60 percent.

In the past 30 years, there have been almost no new nuclear plants built in the United States, as the result of political fallout from the 1979 partial meltdown of the nuclear generating facility at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, though there were no injuries. Jittery regulators made the permitting process for new plants especially daunting in the aftermath.

But there have been significant advances in the technology since then and more plants are now on the way. DTE energy began the permitting process in 2008 and hopes to obtain a license by the end of 2012 for a new plant at its Fermi site near Monroe. The firm still hasn't committed to whether it will go ahead and build a new nuclear plant, however. That could take an additional four to five years. That will be based on its assessment of energy needs and whether some form of carbon emission tax is ultimately enacted by Congress, a spokesman said.

The long recession in Michigan and the national slump from which the rest of the nation is recovering may have dampened energy needs for the near future. But if the shift to electric cars, now so heavily emphasized both by the domestic auto industry and the administration, achieves any momentum, the demand for new sources of electric power will be significant.

Nuclear power isn't the only realistic source of energy, as the president's remarks acknowledged, and in the short run clean coal and offshore oil will play a role in providing for energy needs. Solar and wind power are nowhere near the state of development that would allow them to be more than experimental and supplementary power sources at this stage.

But if the president's energy remarks are to be more than a brief grace note in a long address, officials of the various regulatory agencies will have to take them to heart and craft pragmatic rules on the development of nuclear and other power sources.