Environmental Capital - WSJ.com : Nuclear Ghosts: On Anniversary, Three Mile Island Still Haunts Industry

As nuclear power races back into the energy agenda, it keeps getting waylaid by old ghosts. Today is the 29th anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, when a partial core meltdown in one of the reactors led to five days of panic and 14 years of expensive clean-up.

Three Mile Island didn’t kill anyone, but it did contribute to a winding-down of the nuclear power industry in the U.S. in the 1980s, and changed public perception of the safety of nuclear power.
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But in those same three decades, nuclear engineering firms have completely re-designed reactors and are shopping them around the world; France hasn’t had any safety issues with the reactors that provide almost 80% of its power.

Is safety the stumbling block for nuclear power’s comeback in the U.S.? Or, as Gov. Schwarzenegger suggested, is Three Mile Island just a convenient bogeyman?