Duke Energy and Areva will work together to study the feasibility of a nuclear plant in Piketon, Ohio. The announcement was hailed by several politicians in Ohio, including governor Ted Strickland, as a way to produce emission-free energy and jobs in the Midwest.

But don't get too excited yet. The gap between announcing something and actually doing it in nuclear is wide indeed. No nuclear plants have been built in the states since the 1970s. Although the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will  be juggling 17 applications to build 26 new reactors in the U.S., building one takes years. The first four might only be operational by 2016. Four more might come online two years later.

Nuclear plants also cost $6.4 billion (the industry estimate) to $10 billion. Who will pay for it? Where will they be built? Will the public need to subsidize them? If so, why should U.S. taxpayers fund a project partly owned by a French company? These questions will be asked, and we haven't even got to the question of nuclear storage, nuclear waste, and the fact that a large number of the people in the U.S. with nuclear know-how have already passed retirement age.

Some, like Werner Koldehoff, a board member of the German Solar Industry Association, also contend that there is only 30 to 40 years left of available uranium (a contention that is hotly disputed by advocates of fuel recycling and many nuclear experts.)

Those are some of the reasons that most of the new electrical capacity in the U.S. these days comes from renewables.

Still, nuclear provides consistent baseline power, something wind and solar can't do, at least without storage technologies and most mass storage ideas are barely off the drawing board. Nuclear provides 19.4 percent of the power in the U.S. Solar, wind and other new renewables provide 2.5 percent.

It's one of the best debates in green tech.

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