This country's retreat from nuclear power has been sheer idiocy -- talk about turning our backs on science and letting myopic environmentalists and paper-shuffling bureaucrats combine to hold back our growth and hurt the environment at the same time. Believe it or not, things are looking up, and there's a chance common sense might ultimately prevail.
More than a quarter century after the accident at Three Mile Island and two decades after Chernobyl, America's utilities stand at the early edge of what promises to be the first large-scale wave of nuclear plant construction since the 1980's.
And the energy companies are finding — especially in the small, struggling Southeastern towns like Gaffney where most of the plants are planned — that memories of those tragedies have faded and that local governments and residents, eager for jobs and tax revenues to replace vanished industries, are embracing them with enthusiasm.
