Reporting from Stockholm - For nearly 30 years, no nukes were good nukes in this Scandinavian nation. Spooked by the meltdown at Three Mile Island, Swedes voted decisively in 1980 to ban expansion of nuclear power, and lawmakers pledged to close down all of Sweden's reactors by 2010.

Many here were therefore stunned this year when the government announced a sudden U-turn in energy policy.

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Nuclear power — dangerous, right? And there's nowhere to put the nuclear waste, right? Eric Loewen is the evangelist of the sodium fast reactor, which burns nuclear waste, emits no CO2, and might just save the world.

By John H. Richardson

Thomas Porostocky

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT HOW NUCLEAR WASTE BECOMES CLEAN ENERGY >>

A month after plunging into the file, Loewen began meeting with officials from the U. S. Department of Energy and other veterans of the project, from the original project manager to the man who built the test reactor's electromagnetic pump. "He looked at me as a new greenhorn guy, a month on the job, and said, 'If you're serious about building this, go save that pump. And oh, by the way, they're knocking the building down in three months.' "

Gradually, he put the story together. The first glimmer of the fast-reactor concept began at the federal government's Argonne National Laboratory in 1951, when the sodium-cooled Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1 powered four lightbulbs and proved that nuclear power was a real thing. In 1965, Argonne put into service Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 2, a demonstration project that ran successfully for thirty years. In 1971, Richard Nixon launched the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project, putting together thousands of government and industry scientists in an effort to come up with a commercial prototype, but after twelve years, a mixture of technical problems, procurement scandals, and the relentless opposition of environmentalists finally led the Senate to kill it.

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By John H. Richardson

You better believe it, tree huggers. On the hunt for next-gen nuclear power, Esquire.com's political columnist talks with the southern senator who wants a green Manhattan Project and — dare he say it? — even a cap or two.

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November 18, 2009

by Andrew Klein

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The international scientific consensus is clear: The Earth is warming, and humanity’s reliance on carbon-based energy sources is a significant factor. Scientists working under the auspices of the United Nations believe that unless global emissions are stabilized by 2030 and cut by at least half by 2050, the Earth’s temperature will increase by more than 3 degrees centigrade by the end of this century.

Should this happen, these scientists predict, both the natural world and human society will experience dire consequences, including mass extinctions, severe flooding caused by rising sea levels, and the failure of primary crops. To prevent these predictions from coming to pass, developed countries like the United States may need to cut carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent by 2050.

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