For decades, the U.S. nuclear power industry has stood at a virtual standstill, a victim of economics and fears over safety. But as President Barack Obama prepares to issue new carbon-emission regulations targeting the power industry, nuclear companies are hoping a new era is upon them.

With high-profile advocates like former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christie Whitman on board, the industry is embarking on a public campaign arguing nuclear must be part of any national energy plan. To accomplish that, it wants to examine amending power and licensing regulations to encourage nuclear and speed up construction.

From the $6 billion to $8 billion cost of a new reactor in this country to the 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant, nuclear faces an uphill climb domestically. Perhaps no hurdle is greater than wholesale power prices, which have fallen nationally as U.S. hydraulic fracturing operations have flooded the country with cheap natural gas.

The U.S. has five new reactors under construction in South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. But with power prices low, any plans for further construction have been put on hold. Also, the future of the country’s 61 nuclear plants, many of which were built in the 1970s, is falling into doubt as facilities come up for relicensing and will probably require costly upgrades.

The president’s call for a 30 percent cut in emissions by the U.S. power industry is expected to force the closure of vast numbers of coal-fired plants and cause a surge in wind and solar farm construction.

“Something like 65 percent of the existing coal fleet will not be operating. That’s (a lot) of electricity that needs to be replaced. Natural gas is going to supply the vast majority of that, but nuclear is going to have a place too,” said Dan Lipman, vice president of the trade group the Nuclear Energy Institute.

But the industry will face opposition. Nuclear remains a divisive issue among environmentalists. Some support it as a proven means to cut carbon emissions out of the nation’s power supply.

But there are many see its potential contamination risks as just too great to make it sensible.

“On nuclear, the environmental community is not a monolith. There are some groups that grew up around anti-nuclear protests,” said Jim Martson, Texas director of the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund.

Among an older generation of Americans, the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 remains a vivid memory.

Dale Klein, a professor at the University of Texas and former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said new technology designed to keep reactors cool even when a plant loses power — as happened at Fukushima — has greatly reduced the risk of a meltdown.

“One of the things people often forget about is any source of electrical generation has issues. The one that would kill the most people is hydroelectric. If a dam failed, you could take out 200,000 people very quickly,” he said. “You have to look at a risk-benefit comparison.”