Americans will be using more nuclear power in the future than in the recent past for a variety of reasons that become more obvious – and more pressing – every day.

This nation cannot go on squandering its limited natural gas supplies on unlimited burning of gas for electricity production when nuclear power is so much more economical. Nor can Americans afford to burn more and more coal when nuclear power plants are much cleaner and emit no global warming gases.

Nor can we deface our seashores and countryside with huge wind turbines on a massive scale, and continue to kill birds with their blades, when nuclear plants demand much less space and are much more reliable.

So we are going to build more nuclear power plants, and there is no reason on earth why this should not begin soon. Nuclear plants produce “baseload” electricity, the power that’s always available, around the clock, to keep the traffic lights on and household appliances going.

That’s beyond the ability of solar and wind power, which are available only when the sun is in the right place and the wind is at the right velocity. The only real alternatives for baseload power are coal and natural gas – but they are also major sources of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas linked to global warming. Just as they’re producing power, a large share of the electricity Americans use, they’re also loading the atmosphere with enormous amounts of carbon dioxide – which is heating up the environment and causing changes in the climate.

The Energy Information Administration, a branch of the Department of Energy, expects the nation’s demand for electricity to grow 40 percent by 2020. Nuclear power currently accounts for 20 percent of all the electricity produced in the United States, compared with 52 percent for coal and 18 percent for natural gas. If we hope to have the additional electricity and even maintain the percentage of power we are now receiving from emission-free sources, more nuclear plants will be essential. But if we want to improve the percentage of clean power, it will take a lot more nuclear capacity.

Efforts to ramp up nuclear power are under way. Three groups of electric companies are considering sites for new reactors in at least six states – Virginia, Mississippi, Illinois, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia.

A new reactor licensing process is being tested to make sure it works efficiently, because energy businesses can’t stand a repeat of the long delays in nuclear plant construction that were experienced in the 1970s and ’80s. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has certified four designs for new nuclear plants that will make them even safer and more economical than plants now in operation.

The goal is to bring into commercial service nuclear plants with standardized designs that can be built in five years or less. Some of the designs use gravity rather than operator-run pumps that, if needed, can shut the reactor down automatically and pour in cooling water. With such a passive approach to safety, these plants will require fewer valves, pumps and pipes than do today’s nuclear plants, making them easier to build and maintain.

The remaining challenge is cost. With natural gas prices rising to $7 per thousand cubic feet and coal under increasing environmental pressure, adding to its cost, the economics of nuclear power are getting more favorable. But for these first-of-a-kind technologies and first-in-decades licensing processes, major uncertainties remain.

It’s a good thing that many members of Congress now recognize the need for government incentives to encourage the next round of nuclear construction. In fact, the comprehensive energy bill approved by the Senate provides tax credits and risk insurance for the first 6,000 megawatts of nuclear generating capacity. That’s at least three or four new plants. The idea is that any nuclear plants built after that would be highly competitive with coal and natural gas plants and would likely be the cheapest power source of the three.

Somehow Americans need to understand how fortunate we are to have nuclear power available – how clean, safe and reliable, as well as efficient, it is. For they will never guess it from the negative media coverage nuclear power has received in recent years and the long hiatus in orders for U.S. nuclear plants. And unless they know, they can hardly be expected to press for a new generation of nuclear power plants as an essential part of a sane and balanced energy system that will benefit our air quality and the national economy.

Nuclear power is coming back. Pass it along.

Donald A. Grant, Ph.D., P.E., is R. C. Hill Professor and chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Maine.