In many ways, nuclear power remains a perfectly reasonable stopgap as the world attempts to wean itself off environmentally harmful fossil fuels: it's pretty safe overall, it generates a steady supply of power around the clock, and it's well understood.
Of course, there are also those pesky disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima, which are rare but horrifying. And maybe even messier are the constant debates over where to store the spent fuel that's left over after nuclear plants use it to generate electricity.
Taylor told the newspaper that he's worried about threats ranging from terrorism to nuclear contamination., since plans to centralize storage for the horrible stuff at locations like Yucca Mountain keep falling through. Instead, the waste tends to pile up at the site of reactors, leaving it vulnerable to spillage, theft by terrorists, or other grim eventualities.
"The U.S. has to gird its loins and actually deal with the problem of what they’re going to do with this material in the long run," former US Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair Allison Macfarlane told the WSJ