The proposal to build a nuclear-power plant in Piketon has many pluses but the minuses would have to be erased to make this project a valuable asset to Ohio.

Nuclear-energy plants do not produce air pollutants that cause smog and acid rain and do not emit greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. For this reason, nuclear power remains on the list of energy alternatives this nation should pursue to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

However, many politicians, including President Barack Obama and key Democratic leaders of Congress, are ignoring the pressing need to build a safe national storehouse for the dangerous high-level radioactive wastes that are byproducts of nuclear-energy production. The planned repository for this debris at Yucca Mountain, Nev., is not much closer to completion than it was in 1998, the year that a 1982 federal law set for its opening.

Without congressional and presidential backing, the project lacks the funding to speed its opening, now projected to come no sooner than 2020. Meanwhile, the radioactive wastes piled up in temporary storage sites across the nation, including Ohio, would fill about three-fourths of Yucca's planned capacity.

Another big question mark relates to the price of nuclear energy. Can it be competitive in the marketplace of electricity-generating systems? According to a report released last week by the University of Vermont's Institute for Energy and the Environment, power from new nuclear plants would cost 12 to 20 cents per kilowatt hour, compared with power from renewable-energy sources, such as wind and solar, combined with energy conservation, which would lower costs to about 6 cents per kilowatt hour.

If the nation is to expand its use of nuclear power, however, the Pike County site of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant is a perfect location. Particularly if USEC manages to open an advanced-technology uranium-enrichment plant on the same site. Obvious efficiencies would stem from one plant making materials for the reactor in the power plant next door.

USEC is one of the members of the Southern Ohio Clean Energy Park Alliance, a group of companies promoting the nuclear plant. Other key members include North Carolina-based Duke Energy, an electric-power company; Areva, a French nuclear-energy company; and Maryland-based UniStar Nuclear Energy.

The people living in the Piketon area, which has Ohio's third-highest unemployment rate, at 15.1 percent, deserve some good news.

USEC, based in suburban Washington, is a private company that sprouted in 1998 from the United States Enrichment Corps., the federal agency that once owned the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. USEC closed the plant in 2001. USEC's efforts to open the new advanced-technology uranium-enrichment plant in 2011 hinge on a $2 billion federal loan guarantee. Without it, company officials say, private financing will dry up, and the project, which employs about 600 in Piketon, will be put on hold indefinitely.

An energy park featuring this plant and later a nuclear plant could be a real spark to economic development in southern Ohio. But the time needed to win approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other regulators stretches out for years. The commission already has 17 applications for 26 new reactors pending. The most optimistic projection says a Piketon nuclear plant could open in 2020.

But if expansion of nuclear power really is a goal for Ohio and the nation, Congress and the president have a duty to ensure a safe, long-term storage site for the high-level radioactive wastes that come with these projects.