Though they are among the least deadly and most reliable sources of electricity, new reactors remain extremely expensive, slow to build and unpopular. It’s a question that’s been posed before, most recently in the mid 2000s. The Energy Department recently approved the country’s first permits for a next-gen small reactor and helped broker a deal for a U.S. The $1.7 trillion Build Back Better legislation currently being negotiated in the Senate adds billions more in tax credits for nuclear generation. 15 provides aging, financially troubled nuclear plants a $6 billion lifeline to stay open and directs billions more for research into next-generation mini-reactors. The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill President Joe Biden signed into law Nov. In the United States, where nuclear power plants have been steadily shutting down for the past decade as they struggle to compete with natural gas and renewable energy sources, the Biden administration pledged to shore up existing reactors and invest in new ones.

1 carbon emitter, promised to construct an unprecedented 150 new reactors in the next 15 years ― more than the entire world built in the last 35. Ghana and Indonesia unveiled plans for their first reactors. As negotiations to phase out coal fizzled, the United Kingdom announced an investment in Rolls-Royce’s next-generation nuclear reactors.

Japan was hardly alone in rediscovering its enthusiasm for nuclear power. Yet in the lead-up to this month’s United Nations climate summit, newly elected Prime Minister Fumio Kishida vowed to restart the reactors the country shut down after a tsunami flooded the Fukushima-Daiichi plant in 2011 and caused a meltdown that contaminated more than 300 square miles with hazardous levels of radiation. The worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster is a recent and painful memory in Japan. (Photo: Illustration: Damon Dahlen/HuffPost Photos: Getty Images)

Rainbow island 1944 lobby