WASHINGTON — The renewed push for legislation to cut greenhouse gas emissions could falter over an old debate: whether nuclear power should play a role in any federal attack on climate change.
Congress, with added impetus from a Supreme Court ruling last week, appears more likely to pass comprehensive energy legislation. But nuclear power sharply divides lawmakers who agree on mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions. And it has pitted some on Capitol Hill against their usual allies, environmentalists, who largely oppose any expansion of nuclear power.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Barbara Boxer -- Bay Area Democrats with similar political views -- are on opposite sides.
Pelosi used to be an ardent foe of nuclear power but now holds a different view. "I think it has to be on the table," she said.
Boxer, head of the Senate committee that will take the lead in writing global warming legislation, said that turning from fossil fuels to nuclear power was "trading one problem for another."
Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) -- all presidential candidates -- support legislation that would cap greenhouse gas emissions and provide incentives to power companies to build more nuclear plants.
Opponents of nuclear power say that because a terrorist attack on a plant could be catastrophic, it makes no sense to build more potential targets. And radioactive waste still has no permanent burial site, they say, despite officials' three decades of trying to find one.
But attitudes toward nuclear power may be shifting as a consensus emerges that greenhouse gases are causing the world to heat up.
The Supreme Court added its voice, criticizing the Bush administration for not acting to control greenhouse gases.
Max Schulz, a former Energy Department staff member who is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, said the ruling could help "spur the revival of nuclear power."
And congressional Democratic leaders have made passage of global warming legislation a priority.
"I've never been a fan of nuclear energy," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has called it expensive and risky. "But reducing emissions from the electricity sector presents a major challenge. And if we can be assured that new technologies help to produce nuclear energy safely and cleanly, then I think we have to take a look at it."
