Safety problems
Questions about the safety and economy of nuclear power have created perhaps the most emotional battle yet fought over energy. The nuclear advocates believe that no realistic alternative exists to increased dependence on nuclear power. They recognize that some problems remain but continue that solutions will be found. The most effective nuclear opponents, on the other hand, emphasize a number of unanswered questions about the environment: What are the effects of low-level radiation over long periods? What is the possibility of a major accident at a nuclear power plant? What would be the consequences of such an accident? How can nuclear power’s waste products, which will be dangerous for centuries, be permanently isolated from the environment? These safety questions helped cause changes in specifications for and delays in the construction of nuclear power plants, further driving up costs and helping to create a second argument: Is electricity from nuclear power plants less costly, equally costly, or more costly than electricity from coal-fired plants?
Despite rapidly escalating oil and gas prices and escalating environmental problems with coal, these political and economic problems caused an effective moratorium on new orders for nuclear power plants, even before the 1979 near meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and the 1986 partial meltdown at the Chernobyl plant north of Kiev in Ukraine. The latter accident caused some victims and cases of radiation sickness, and it released a cloud of radioactivity that traveled widely across the northern hemisphere.