“If the competent and technologically brilliant Japanese can't build a completely safe reactor, who can?” syndicated columnist Anne Applebaum asks today [1]. Applebaum’s question is perhaps the one that will be most discussed and debated in the months and years ahead.

Just as important is who’s asking it. Applebaum is no classic anti-nuke type. Far from it. She previously served, for example, as an adjunct fellow at the influential American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Washington’s foremost neo-conservative think-tank.

Bottom line: If some good number of conservatives and neo-conservatives begin to publicly question the efficacy of nuclear power, then its future as an energy source – already a big question mark – is doubtful, if not doomed.