Reassessing nuclear power as a clean energy alternative

HBO recently broadcast a dramatization of the April 26, 1986, Chernobyl accident — at the time, the highest severity nuclear accident in history — a 7 on the International Event Scale. Some 30 people died as a direct result of the accident, thousands more died or are dying as a result of Acute Radiation Syndrome and large swaths of the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were contaminated by radioactive fallout. According to the director of the Chernobyl Plant, the immediate area around Chernobyl will be uninhabitable for “at least 20,000 years.”

I was working at the Pacific Northwest National Labora...