Ira Flatow moderates a panel at the meeting of the Materials Research Society on the impediments to a renaissance of nuclear power in the US. Claude Guet, deputy to the High Commissioner for Atomic Energy CEA (French Atomic Energy Commission), Chaim Braun, of the center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, Thomas Cochran, of the National Resources Defense Council, and Rodney Ewing, geologist at the University of Michigan, discuss the role of materials science in nuclear power.