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In this week’s New Yorker (subscribers only), Hendrik Hertzberg wades into an issue that has taken up increasing bandwidth in our climate and energy debates: nuclear energy. Weighing nuclear power’s virtues against its drawbacks, Hertzberg concludes:

Republicans love [nuclear energy] anyway – perhaps because it annoys environmentalists, perhaps on its merits. But they don’t love it as much as they hate taxes, which is how they view cap-and-trade. Obama’s willingness to give nukes a chance won’t win him many of their votes. “It won’t cause Republicans to support the national energy tax,” a spokesman for Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, said. But it might win a few of those among them who don’t hate taxes (and science) enough to dismiss global warming as an elaborate hoax. Carl Pope, the executive chairman of the Sierra Club, has said that Obama’s nods to nuclear “may ease the politics around comprehensive clean-energy and climate legislation, but we do not believe that they are the best policy.” But the best, as often happens in our sclerotic political system, may not be among the available choices. As we stumble our way toward an acceptable approach to energy and climate change, the merely good might be the best that we can get.

Its support notwithstanding, Hertzberg’s piece still traffics in the same fear-mongering about nuclear energy’s safety record that has hindered its expansion for decades. “The nuclear industry is one whose record for safety and transparency is very far from spotless, and reviving it will require, besides big spending, nanny-state levels of government regulation,” Hertzberg writes.

In fact, the nuclear industry’s safety culture is so strong that working in the nuclear industry is actually safer than working in manufacturing. Considering the alarmist rhetoric surrounding nuclear energy safety, it might surprise most Americans to know that not one person has died or been injured from a nuclear-related incident in the U.S. (Three Mile Island, that ominous symbol of nuclear risk, did not actually lead to any adverse health or environmental effects.) According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), plant safety performance since Three Mile Island has improved exponentially, with the average number of significant reactor events over the past 20 years dropping to nearly zero. Meanwhile, the average number of times that nuclear plant safety systems have had to be activated – a good index of safety performance – is one-tenth of what it was 22 years ago.

What about Vermont Yankee, the nuclear plant in the Green Mountain State that was recently shut down by its legislature after tritium was detected in nearby groundwater? While such events demonstrate for some critics the unreliability of nuclear, one could argue it actually shows the improved vigilance and monitoring at nuclear plants – and the continuing hysteria among public and politicians over even small amounts of radiation. According to NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, such leaks – which have been found at other plants – do not constitute a public health threat. “In the grand scheme of radiation, it is well down the scale,” Jaczko said last month, “but in the area of public perception, it takes on greater significance.” According to an NRC study in 2009, “These pipe leaks have been of low significance with respect to public health and safety and the environment.” Moreover, the Environmental Protection Agency has called tritium one of the least dangerous radionuclides because it emits low levels of radiation and leaves the body quickly. (For more perspective on the health effects of the Vermont tritium leak, check out this post from Rod Adams’ indispensable Atomic Insights blog.)

Hertzberg’s piece adds one more voice to a growing chorus of acceptance among liberals that nuclear energy needs to be a part of the energy mix if we are to address climate change. There’s no getting around it: We need to stop using coal and replace it with low- and non-carbon emitting sources. Wind and solar will certainly have a role in that transformation, but they simply can’t be scaled up to meet our energy needs at the moment or for the next couple of decades. Nuclear, on the other hand, is here, it works, and it doesn’t emit carbon. Based on those facts, one would expect a stronger push from progressives eager to battle climate change. But in the current climate, grudging acceptance might be the best that we can get.