Outside a nuclear fuel rod factory in North Carolina, caretakers are unfurling a stylised metal sculpture of an atom that was folded up to protect it from the Atlantic hurricane season.

Like much of the industry in the US, the General Electric plant is also dusting down the cobwebs from a far deeper period of hibernation. Designed in the 1960s, when optimists thought nuclear-generated electricity would become too cheap to bother metering, this sprawling plant on 1,650 acres never came close to reaching its potential for packing uranium fuel pellets into the spindly metal rods that form the heart of a reactor.