Nuclear power is gaining support after years of decline. But old hurdles remain

The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant shut down in 2019. Exelon Generation blamed the closure on a lack of state subsidies. Such subsidies are growing amid concerns that such closures abet climate change. (Matt Rourke/AP)

At the Nuclear Energy Assembly in Washington, D.C., this June, speaker Maria Korsnick urged the audience of hundreds to picture a world in which nuclear energy is triumphant.

"In this clean energy future, hundreds of reactors — from the existing models that we have today to advanced reactors both large and small — dot the landscape," said Korsnick, who's president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade association.