United States Nuclear Power Poised to Come Back Strong

Though I’ve been a proponent of the ecology movement since I was able to reason, I was always opposed to limiting nuclear power. Perhaps it was because I saw how magnificently huge the output of a nuclear power plant is for the amount of fuel spent, maybe it was the fact that I have always had a love of science and technology. Whatever the reason, I was not onboard with the No More Nukes program, no matter how much I loved the music of its greatest proponents. Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, and Graham Nash would have to do without my support.

The good news is that many people today (those who are politically active, anyway) escaped the No More Nukes rallies, the movie “The China Syndrome“, and the small problem in Pennsylvania in the ’80s. (Many people have only a fond recollection of the Saturday Night Live spoof, done by the early cast, and being affectionately called “The Pepsi Syndrome”.) They have no predisposition against nuclear power, and can see it as an immediate way to remove much of the carbon dioxide additions to the atmosphere, and to keep many dollars here, instead of travelling to the Middle East.

from slashdot

ThousandStars sends us to The Wall Street Journal for a report that momentum for nuclear energy is waxing in the US. “For the first time in decades, popular opinion is on the industry’s side. A majority of Americans thinks nuclear power, which emits virtually no carbon dioxide, is a safe and effective way to battle climate change, according to recent polls. At the same time, legislators are showing renewed interest in nuclear as they hunt for ways to slash greenhouse-gas emissions. The industry is seizing this chance to move out of the shadow of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and show that it has solved the three big problems that have long dogged it: cost, safety and waste.”

Nuclear power, to many of the great unwashed, is something that went away, after the rallies and pushes by the ecology movement. What they are not aware of, is that nothing went away, what happened is that no new plants were brought online, and, in fact, several were stopped in the middle of their building plans. So expansion stopped, but plants running in the seventies are, for the most part, still online today. Only a few have been retired, as part of their natural life cycle.

Perhaps this would be the best place to start, with the plants that have been retired, but are still intact, to be refurbished. In would be expensive, but could be done using new improved technology, which would increase efficiency, and prolong the lifespan of the renewed power plants.

Programs like ‘60 Minutes’, once allies of the non-nuclear movement, have recently shown how nuclear is a way out of the mire of global warming, and a bridge between oil as a major supplier of energy, and totally renewable resources to feed a power-hungry planet.

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Humor is just another defense against the universe.

- Mel Brooks