Very cool news on the environmental front
From
Scientific American magazine:
U.S. Will Approve New Nuclear Reactors
British official says she's been informed the U.S. will approve at least three new nuclear power plants
One of the U.K.'s top nuclear officials said today that she was told the U.S. will okay plans to build the first nuclear power plants since the accident at Three Mile Island nearly three decades ago. Lady Barbara Thomas Judge, chair of the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, said that the chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission informed her that the NRC will approve three applications for new nuclear reactors that it's currently considering.
"Dale Klein told me that those three nuclear applications will be approved," she told the State of the Planet conference at Columbia University today, the 29th anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island in Middletown, Pa. (Subsequently, a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the then Ukrainian Soviet Republic melted down in April 1986 in what would become the worst nuclear power accident in history, spreading radiation as far away as North America and leading to the evacuation and resettlement of more than 336,000 people).
"The politics is changing," she added, noting growing enthusiasm for nuclear power as the clean alternative to coal-burning plants. Even some environmentalists have begun to embrace nuclear power, because of its potential to reduce the greenhouse emissions that are blamed for global warming.
The article goes on to talk about people's concerns over the safety issues but it doesn't address the fact that the first reactors (TMI and Chernobyl) were designed in the 1950's and the technology has gotten a lot better today. It also doesn't address the number of people who die each year as a direct result of coal power plants (respiratory illness, train collisions, mining fatalities, etc...)
There is also the waste issue but there are some reactor designs that burn the waste and turn it into relatively short-lived nucleotides. The key reason for getting a permanent waste storage facility is to deal with the witches brew that was left over from the initial development and first decade of production of the bombs. That hellish cocktail is still sitting at Hanford waiting for a final resting place.
Posted by DaveH at April 7, 2008 9:55 PM