by Peter Pogany

Created on: October 04, 2008

Nuclear electricity alternates between hope and fear.

Like the courtesan in the novel of 19th century French writer Balzac, atomic energy is a melange of splendor and misery. It is at once a wellspring of great expectations about reducing reliance on fossil fuels and ridding nations of dependence on imported oil, and a hot bed of nightmares worthy of Dante's infernal imagery about the land of eternal sorrows.

The world seems to vacillate between going full hog and yelling "Forget it!"

REACTOR GOING CRITICAL GOING CRITICAL!

China wins the gold medal in the race to expand nuclear power, according to data published by the London-based World Nuclear Association. The Middle Kingdom has seven reactors under construction and another 102 planned or proposed. Russia gets the silver with a total of 44 in the three categories combined; and the United States earns the bronze with 32, although all of them are planned or proposed - none is being built right now. South Africa (26), India (25) and Ukraine (22) take fourth, fifth, and sixth places, respectively.

The 36 reactors already under construction globally will increase the capacity of nuclear power generation by eighth percent. If additions from the 97 planned and 221 proposed projects are combined with those in the process of completion, worldwide atomic energy- generating capacity will increase by almost 90 percent.

National governments and private firms act as if they had implicitly accepted the presence or imminence of "peak oil." Prospects of irreducible excess demand in long-term hydrocarbon markets; climate change, which threatens carbon-fired facilities with increasingly harsh financial penalties; and slow expansion in the use of renewable energy are turning fission-based electricity into the default choice - big time. According to the International Energy Agency, the world may need 1,300 new atomic power-generating units by 2050 (over four times more than currently planned and proposed) to avoid severe energy shortfalls, to keep the ever-faster growing number of light bulbs burning.

Intentions are grandiose but you cannot take the "renaissance of nuclear energy" to the bank just yet. OECD countries, which account for nearly four-fifths of globally operating reactors, are mired in an apparent schizophrenia over the issue. While France, Canada, Japan, and the U.S. are working on reactor modernization and indulge in daring plans about cross-border fuel cycles, Chancellor Angela Merkel (an accomplished physicist) wants

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