SO WHY the sudden renewed enthusiasm for nuclear power? Although nuclear power has been in existence as a commercial energy source since the 1950s, it is now finding itself eclipsed as a technology by more advanced and far cheaper renewable energy sources, in particular solar and wind power. While nuclear power has demonstrated what is known as “negative learning” — in other words, the longer it has been around, the more expensive and slower to deploy it has become — renewable energy is getting faster and cheaper almost by the month.