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PETER DYKSTRA: Nuclear power: dying or reborn?
PETER DYKSTRA: Nuclear power: dying or reborn?
Published: July 29, 2013
Perhaps the oddest thing about nuclear power's journey through American history is that we can't seem to decide whether nukes are dying, being reborn or walking around as zombies.
On the one hand, nuclear plants have had a bad-news few years. In June, Southern California Edison announced that it would permanently shut its trouble-plagued reactors at San Onofre, which powered 1.4 million homes in the region. This spring, Dominion Resources closed a nuclear plant south of Green Bay, Wis. (The plant was in good working order, but falling energy prices made the Kewaunee facility not worth the trouble.)
On the other hand, nukes remain central to America's electric grid, pumping out about 19% of our national juice, and die-hard supporters see nuclear power as a carbon-free cure for climate change.
The industry's origins date to the 1950s, when "too-cheap-to-meter" nuclear energy was touted as a sidekick to the H-bomb and a mascot for the Cold War. Thanks to quiet, steady growth in the 1960s and early '70s, approximately 35 plants were in operation by 1977, and construction had begun on 30 more. By then, however, a growing environmental movement also was targeting nukes with mass demonstrations at sites like Seabrook, N.H., and star-studded benefits like the 1979 "No Nukes" concerts.
Around this time, Wall Street noticed that nuclear plants were not the financial performers they were cracked up to be....
Published: July 29, 2013
Perhaps the oddest thing about nuclear power's journey through American history is that we can't seem to decide whether nukes are dying, being reborn or walking around as zombies.
On the one hand, nuclear plants have had a bad-news few years. In June, Southern California Edison announced that it would permanently shut its trouble-plagued reactors at San Onofre, which powered 1.4 million homes in the region. This spring, Dominion Resources closed a nuclear plant south of Green Bay, Wis. (The plant was in good working order, but falling energy prices made the Kewaunee facility not worth the trouble.)
On the other hand, nukes remain central to America's electric grid, pumping out about 19% of our national juice, and die-hard supporters see nuclear power as a carbon-free cure for climate change.
The industry's origins date to the 1950s, when "too-cheap-to-meter" nuclear energy was touted as a sidekick to the H-bomb and a mascot for the Cold War. Thanks to quiet, steady growth in the 1960s and early '70s, approximately 35 plants were in operation by 1977, and construction had begun on 30 more. By then, however, a growing environmental movement also was targeting nukes with mass demonstrations at sites like Seabrook, N.H., and star-studded benefits like the 1979 "No Nukes" concerts.
Around this time, Wall Street noticed that nuclear plants were not the financial performers they were cracked up to be....
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/07/29/3413611/peter-dykstra-nuclear-power-dying.html#storylink=cpy
