Almost a month after a devastating earthquake and follow-on tsunami struck Japan, the Nikkei 225 Stock Average remains more than 1,000 points off its closing price on the day before the disaster. More troubling though, are the struggles Japanese workers have faced to contain radiation at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant–a catastrophe that has sparked global debate over the future of nuclear energy. Although the scope of the devastation in Japan is horrifying, investors who adopt a pragmatic view of the situation can still find opportunities.

The 1979 partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, forever changed America’s perception of atomic power; no new nuclear facility has been constructed in the US since the accident. In the intervening decades, our politicians have sought to distance themselves from nuclear energy policy. All of this changed during President Obama’s State of the Union address in January. In the speech, he cited nuclear energy as a key component of a plan to generate 80 percent of the nation’s electricity from clean energy sources by 2035. 

The speech sparked a national debate about nuclear power’s virtues and drawbacks, a conversation that proved to be a boon for the nuclear industry. In the weeks following the speech, public opinion shifted slightly in favor of nuclear power. For the first time in decades, the American public was evenly divided on the topic, an incremental shift, but an important moment for the nuclear industry.

Much of that newfound goodwill has evaporated with the Fukushima disaster. Public opinion in the US has turned against the industry, prompting some pundits to declare an end to the budding nuclear renaissance.

That is a shortsighted view. Nuclear power is the most efficient and reliable form of alternative energy currently available. A nuclear installation requires approximately one square mile of space to produce 1,000 megawatts of energy. A solar installation would require 50 square miles to produce the same amount of energy. An equivalent amount of wind power would gobble up 250 square miles; biomass would require 2,600 square miles. Nuclear energy is dependable–you don’t need to rely on the wind or sun to keep the lights on.

This isn’t the time for investors to abandon the nuclear power industry. Cooler heads will eventually recognize that the problem facing nuclear power is political and not technical. The reactor at Fukushima was close to 40 years old and had a spotty safety record. And yet it was able to mostly withstand a massive earthquake and tsunami–a fact that speaks to the durability and even safety of these reactors.