You know, I never thought I’d find myself referencing Glenn Beck twice in the same week. Then again, I never thought I’d find a Republican presidential nominee (ok, presumptive nominee) singing the praises of the French.

Yes, in his complete misinterpretation of a recent Nature article on the illustrious Mr. Beck’s radio show, John McCain added his name to a long list of high profile politicians peddling nuclear power as an easy solution to the problem of global warming. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. In a country like America, where the fully half the nation’s electricity is produced by coal, nuclear power has some obvious advantages. It produces no direct carbon impact, and is free of the sulfur and heavy metal emissions that are part and parcel with the combustion of fossil fuels.

Additionally, as McCain pointed out, nuclear power has been successfully implemented on a large scale in other countries, which is something many of the newer and relatively untested low-carbon energy sources cannot boast.  Recently, other nations looking to reduce their carbon impact have turned to nuclear, in part because fission can boast a relatively strong safety record compared to other power sources.

Of course, when things do go wrong with nuclear, they go wrong in a big way. American attitudes toward nuclear power soured in 1979 after the Three Mile Island incident, and while the nation has fortunately never experienced anything on the scale of the Chernobyl disaster,  as you can see from the incidents reported this map, nuclear safety in America has a long way to go.

At any rate, the long-term viability of of nuclear as a clean energy source is questionable: Deforestation for clearing plant sites releases carbon into the environment, and then there’s the thorny matter of what to do with the nuclear fuel once it’s been used up.  Even the climate-friendliness of uranium extraction has been called into question:

“The extent of economically recoverable uranium, although somewhat uncertain, is clearly linked to exploration effort, technology and economics but is inextricably linked to environmental costs, such as energy, water, and chemicals consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and broader social issues,” say Gavin Mudd and Mark Diesendorf, authors of a recent study on the “eco-effeciency” of uranium mining.

So while the debate continues to rage over the sustainability of nuclear power, it’s clear that as a nation, America cannot simply forget about “global warming and concentrate on other things like Social Security”, as Mr. Beck puts it.  As the technologies of green energy continue to evolve, new solutions will emerge, and governments worldwide need to focus on implementing those solutions wisely, based on the best available data.