Sixty years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the specter of atomic power hovers over us.

Nukes haunt our past, they loom large in our present, and they are destined to loom even larger in our future — fueling our industries, as well as our fears.

Two different Nobel prizes just announced bespeak this nuclear omnipresence.

On Oct. 7, the Nobel Peace Prize went to Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. ElBaradei, of course, became famous three years ago when he disputed the Bush administration's claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. No doubt anti-Americanism helped inspire the Nobel Committee to bestow the prize on him. But the committee also stipulated that the prize was going to the IAEA as an institution. And that's an endorsement for the agency's mandate: "to promote safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies."

And the Nobel Prize in economics went to Thomas Schelling and Robert Aumann, both of whom advanced "game theory" — a math-based approach to clarifying the choices that individuals and countries face — and applied it to a variety of situations, most notably the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons.

As for nuclear weapons, the logic is increasingly "pretzelizing" and proliferating. The United States seems destined to fail in its effort to peacefully persuade North Korea and Iran from moving ahead with their robust nuclear programs. Other countries, too, are thought to be developing covert programs.

In addition to military power, four other factors are combining to push the planet in a more nuclear direction as an alternative to continued dependence on fossil fuels. First and most obvious is the concern over record-high oil prices, which infuriates rich countries and further impoverishes poor countries. Second, nations worry about strategic vulnerability, because so much oil flows through the war-wracked Persian Gulf. Third, many countries fear pumping additional money into, say, Saudi Arabia, so the sheiks can pump additional money into Islamic radicalism. And fourth, there's the widespread sentiment that global warming is linked to increased carbon dioxide emissions.

That's why nuclear power is on the verge of a big comeback. China is planning for 60 new nuclear plants. Last month in New York, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for accelerating use of nuclear power. In one of the few instances in which an American official has said anything nice about France, she noted it gets 80 percent of its electricity from nukes.The figure for the U.S. is 20 percent.

Also this month, Prime Minister Tony Blair urged Britons to keep "an open mind" about nuclear power.

Still, the close connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is a linkage that has yet to be broken.

The genie is out of the bottle. Even as some of the world's finest minds are being rewarded for their efforts to harness it for good, other fine but fearsome minds are eager to unleash it for lethal evil.

James P. Pinkerton is a Newsday columnist.