Some tout nuclear energy as ‘clean,’ but it’s hardly that, even with technological advancements. //

Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have come up with an unsettling discovery. Using the most complete and up-to-date list of nuclear accidents to predict the likelihood of another nuclear cataclysm, they concluded that there is a 50% chance of a Chernobyl-like event (or larger) occurring in the next 27 years, and that we have only 10 years until an event similar to Three Mile Island, also with the same probability. (The Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor, near Middletown, Pa., partially melted down on March 28, 1979. This was the most serious commercial nuclear-plant accident in the U.S.) //

Then there’s the problem of nuclear waste. Just in the U.S., commercial nuclear-power plants have generated 80,000 metric tons of useless but highly dangerous and radioactive spent nuclear fuel — enough to fill a football field about 20 meters (65 feet) deep. //

The nuclear-energy industry wants to participate in the clean-energy movement by positioning itself as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels. However, fossil-fuel pollution can be reversed. Nuclear waste is here to stay for hundreds of thousands of years.