Nuclear Power Industry Shows Signs of Revival : Plants are reopening, and new facilities are being considered. Polls indicate that public anxiety is lessening.

Is America edging slowly back toward accepting nuclear power as a major source of energy?

By some reckoning, any such reversal may seem unlikely now. It’s been only five years since the disastrous meltdown at the Chernobyl reactor in the Soviet Union and 12 years since the Three Mile Island incident here.

And there still are concerns about the safety of nuclear power plants, the cost overruns inherent in constructing them and the seemingly intractable problems of how to dispose of nuclear waste.

However, there have been recent signs of stirring in the industry’s ashes:

* The Tennessee Valley Authority, which shut down its nuclear power plants because of operational and safety problems, is beginning to reopen them and is exploring the possibility of developing a new-generation nuclear power facility.

* The National Academy of Sciences, evaluating ways to reduce the greenhouse gases that are produced by burning fossil fuels, has recommended development of a new and safer reactor design as a way to help ease the threat of global warming.

* Federal regulators, borrowing a page from the Navy’s successful submarine reactor program, have begun moving to standardize nuclear electric power plants in the future--a step analysts say will go a long way toward making them competitive with coal- and gas-fired stations.

* The Senate Energy Committee recently approved a Bush Administration request to streamline the process for licensing nuclear power plants.

None of these by itself signals a wholesale return to nuclear power. A recent poll by Time magazine and Cable News Network showed 32% of Americans still strongly oppose construction of nuclear power plants, and 20% more say they are “somewhat” opposed.

There are also indications that the public, sensitized once again to U.S. overdependence on imported oil, may have lost some of its anxiety.

The same poll, for example, showed 40% of Americans favoring nuclear power.

And two separate industry-financed polls earlier in the year also pointed in that direction.

Cambridge Reports/Research International found 77% of U.S. opinion leaders supported accelerated research and development on new reactors.

And a poll by R. H. Bruskin Associates for the U.S. Council for Energy Awareness showed 70% of Americans believe nuclear power plants of the future will be safer.

Moreover, industry statistics show a steady improvement in the reliability of nuclear power plants during the last decade. Unplanned shutdowns in 1990 were only one-fourth of what occurred in 1980.

In some ways, the TVA has been at the spearhead of the move back toward nuclear power. Once, it had the most ambitious plans in the country for expansion of nuclear power. When the industry came in for criticism, however, it canceled more than 100 plants.

Now, however, after closing it for almost six years, the TVA has restarted one unit at its Browns Ferry generating station in Alabama, plans to bring two others back on line and is moving forward with other nuclear projects.

Even so, analysts say there’s much to be done before the U.S. begins a serious effort to bring nuclear power back into the mainstream.

Marvin Runyon, a former auto executive who is chairman of the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority, cites four necessary mileposts: creation of a standardized reactor design, streamlining of the licensing process, resolving the waste-disposal problem and restoring public confidence.

Those will come slowly at best.