An Orange County lawmaker says the best strategy for attacking global warming is to build nuclear power plants.

"If we want to have power that working-class people can afford and that doesn't produce (carbon dioxide), the only alternative is nuclear power," said Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, in an interview last week.

However, a nuclear plant hasn't been ordered to be built in this country since the Three-Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in March 1979, though several already in the regulatory pipeline were allowed to be finished. California has banned new plants since 1976, insisting that the issue of permanent disposal of spent fuel be resolved first.

That issue remains unresolved three decades later. But DeVore suggested that a resolution is on the horizon, and a waste site will be available within 10 years -- the time it would take to bring a new generator online if given the green light today.

DeVore has introduced legislation -- dubbed the California Zero Carbon Dioxide Emission Electrical Generation Act of 2007 and numbered Assembly Bill 719 -- that would lift the 1976 ban and open the way for a new plant within 10 years.

DeVore said the time is right. California's landmark climate-change law will require a 25 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, or a return to 1990 levels. And he said nuclear plants pump virtually no carbon into the atmosphere.

"As I see it, this is a bill whose time has come," DeVore said. "If it doesn't pass this year, I plan to reintroduce it every year until it does pass."

DeVore contends that, while clean electricity sources such as solar, wind and geothermal energy will help trim greenhouse gas emissions, they cannot fill all the need for new power that will be triggered by the climate-change law (Assembly Bill 32). Nuclear can fill the gap and at an economical cost, he said.

"As much as you would want it to, good intentions do not power turbines," he said. "We will basically have to shut down the state to get to the AB 32 numbers. You just can't get there without nuclear power."

But not everyone agrees California is ready for a return to nuclear generation.

John Galloway, senior energy analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Berkeley, suggested that the idea is not one whose time has come.

"There are so many hurdles facing nuclear power right now before it can be made the global warming solution," Galloway said. "We have no idea what the next generation of nuclear is going to cost. It hasn't been done. It hasn't been built."

And he said questions about waste and safety remain unanswered.

Galloway said it would be far better to rely on solar, wind and other sources of clean energy to quench the state's thirst for power, while curbing carbon emissions.

But DeVore said a wholesale conversion to alternative energy sources would drive up the cost of electricity.

"That means consumers will have less money to spend on shelter, medicine and automobiles," DeVore said.

DeVore also said that wind power, for example, is not always available when needed. "Most Californians don't realize that last year, during our major heat wave (in July), the wind was not blowing," he said.

But with nuclear, he said, California would get a source that can be relied upon all the time and that is affordable. And he said there are plenty of potential sites for new plants away from sensitive neighborhoods.

"We have a lot of desert in the state of California," DeVore said.

Even without new plants, nuclear power likely will play a significant role in supplying electricity to California homes in the future.

Currently, two plants in California -- San Onofre in North County and Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo -- and the Palo Verde plant in Arizona deliver about 13 percent of the state's electricity, according to the California Energy Commission. Nationwide, there are 103 nuclear plants.

Contact staff writer Dave Downey at (760) 740-5442 or ddowney@nctimes.com.