Restarting the American Nuclear Industry

The presidential campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama have both mentioned nuclear power as a vital component in meeting America’s growing energy needs. Many Americans are coming to the realization that “domestic power” means “nuclear power,” but the infrastructure simply is not in place to rebuild this forgotten industry, according to Fortune.

Any revival of American nuclear capacity would require a revival of the nuclear components industry that has long since been forgotten in this country. There are over 100 nuclear power facilities around the United States, but we haven’t broken ground on a new nuclear site in over 30 years. After the scare at Three Mile Island, most of America figured that nuclear energy was a dinosaur awaiting extinction. However, now it seems more vital than ever.

Unfortunately, the United States has ignored the industry for so long that it is no longer a world leader in nuclear technology. The only factory in the world (a Westinghouse facility – formerly an American company) capable of forging the massive steel cores required to house reactors is in Japan, and the leading nation in nuclear-electrical output is France. The industry which was born in the United States has been farmed out to other willing participants because of our own ignorance and fear. There is a movement to make up for lost time, but large startup times and even larger overhead costs make jumping into nuclear energy a serious gamble.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, which favors an expansion of nuclear energy production, has noted that 17 utilities and consortiums are interested in gaining licenses for up to 30 newly proposed power plants. With the current fleet of facilities getting older by the day, a new wave of building growth is necessary to keep the energy grid from crashing as older plants go off-line. But it takes years to build a plant and start producing electricity, so the “pursuit” of a license is far from the end of the process.

Many people have expressed fear that nuclear energy poses an unnecessary risk, but the facts prove much different. Nuclear facilities have perhaps the greatest safety record of any electrical production facilities in the world. For example, there were at least 112 deaths during the construction of the Hoover Dam. That is precisely 112 more than all accumulated nuclear incidents in the history of the United States of America. In fact, the only major nuclear catastrophe which resulted in any deaths due to explosion or radiation occurred at Chernobyl, USSR in 1986. The tragedy was the result of poor planning, shoddy construction and inept safety measures and staff training. It was not due to some inherent instability or lack of safety regarding nuclear power.

The fact is, the United States needs nuclear power to meet its future energy needs, and reinvestment in this forgotten industry would produce thousands of jobs in construction, maintenance, research and development, operation, regulation, security, and a host of other areas. It could potentially provide us with a means to power a fleet of vehicles by something other than overpriced foreign petroleum. It could jump-start the lagging math and science curriculum in our nation’s schools as more job opportunities would encourage more children to study these vital subjects. Nuclear power is not a cure-all, but it is an opportunity. It is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss.

Source Fortune:

The Nuclear Energy Institute, for example, a pro-nuke trade group, says 17 utilities and consortiums are “pursuing” licenses for 30 new nuclear plants in the U.S. That’s potentially meaningful, given the fact that there hasn’t been a new nuclear plant open in the United States since 1996, and construction on that one began in 1973.

Set aside the safety fears, political opposition, regulatory hurdles and the seemingly irresolvable quandary of how to dispose of the waste and you’re still left with the nagging question of who’s going to build all these new plants.

We used to do it all here. Today there’s just one plant in the world that’s producing the massive steel forgings that form the core of nuclear reactors, in Japan. And until these proposed new plants come online in Virginia and Louisiana, there’s still only one plant left in America — a Babcock & Wilcox facility in Mount Vernon, Ind. — that has the coveted “N” stamp required for large-scale nuclear manufacturing.

Information obtained from economyincrisis.org

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