Keith Johnson writes:  Four years after the meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power station paralyzed the sector, nuclear energy is again gearing up globally for what appears to be a long-awaited renaissance.

But while nuclear power’s rebirth from China to Argentina is driven by the imperative of finding clean and reliable power, it must still overcome a host of obstacles, including lingering concerns over safety, lousy economics, and growing worries about the risks of nuclear proliferation. And all of that could strangle the latest nuclear rebound before it really gets started.  “Right now, the nuclear renaissance is happening, and it’s happening in East Asia,” said Geoffrey Rothwell, principal economist at the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris. Asia alone could invest as much as three- quarters of a trillion dollars in new nuclear reactors in the next 15 years as the region seeks to meet growing energy demand while grappling with rising concerns about pollution.

Nuclear power’s development hit the pause button everywhere after the March 2011 accident at Fukushima, which led to the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Japanese and the idling of Japan’s entire nuclear fleet. Indeed, some countries, such as Germany, swore off nuclear power altogether after the accident. Others, such as Belgium, Sweden, and Switzerland, plan to phase out nuclear energy when their current reactor fleets retire.
But Japan is moving closer to restarting its first reactor since the accident, with plans to fire up the Sendai plant in the country’s southwest this summer; another 15 reactors await approval to restart.  Nuclear Power