Some engineers and investors are making big bets to develop a new generation of nuclear reactors. Miles OBrien has the story. It was a co-production with our friends at PBS NOVA tied to the January 11 documentary The Nuclear Option.
His story is part of our weekly series the Leading Edge.
MILES OBRIEN: This is where nuclear power began. Welcome to the Idaho National Laboratory. It covers a vast swathe of high desert nearly the size of Rhode Island. It is dotted with experimental nuclear reactors that wrote the textbooks on how to generate power by splitting atoms. And now a new chapter is being written here.
MARK PETERS, Idaho National Laboratory: If we are going to mitigate climate change, we have to think about how to develop new nuclear.
MILES OBRIEN, Laboratory director Mark Peters says concerns about climate change have brought his industry out of a long nuclear winter.
MARK PETERS, We are restarting and testing infrastructure to start to develop the next generation of nuclear power. So I am just incredibly excited about the fact that we are finally starting to get a public dialogue going now that it is important to build the next generation.
MILES OBRIEN, The Bush and Obama administrations and Congress have concurred on that point. Together, they authorized tens of billions in loan guarantees for nuclear plant construction, and tens of millions in funding to develop what is known as Generation IV technology.
MARK PETERS, Generation IV are future reactors that are based on different concepts, different core designs, different coolants.
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