The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved by a 4-to-1 vote Southern Company’s bid to build two nuclear reactors along the Georgia-South Carolina border. These are the first new reactors to be approved by the NRC in more than 30 years. The reactors will cost a Southern Co. led investment group around $14 billion, and will begin producing power as soon as 2016 or 2017.
“Today’s licensing action sounds a clarion call to the world that the United States recognizes the importance of expanding nuclear energy as a key component of a low-carbon energy future that is central to job creation, diversity of electricity supply and energy security,” said Marvin S. Fertel, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear industry association. [FOX Business]
NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko provided the lone dissenting vote, saying “I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima never happened. I believe it requires some type of binding commitment that the Fukushima enhancements that are currently projected and currently planned to be made would be made before the operation of the facility.” [Reuters]
A group of nine advocacy groups said that they would sue to block the license, stating that the NRC did not adequately analyze the reactor design’s safety in light of last year’s disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi facility. [New York Times]
What do you think of this announcement? What’s the proper role of nuclear power in America’s energy future? What’s the cost-benefit mix of nuclear power?
Uranium-fueled generators would be much more costly and less reliable and safe than at least four generators in my compilation of “102 Electrical Energy Innovations” (see http://www.padrak.com/vesperman).
A doughnut-shaped hydro-magnetic dynamo the size of a two-car garage could continuously generate 1000 megawatts for 25 years without fuel nor pollution.
A thorium powerpack could generate electricity at one-tenth the cost of current methods of generating electricity;. After ten years of continuous operation, a trace amount of U-233 is produced. U-233 recovery to re-purify the thorium is easily accomplished. A thorium-powered reactor is inherently safe. It doesn’t run the risk of “meltdown” or explosion nor can even a dirty bomb be created. Its nuclear reaction simply stops when its neutron exciter is turned off.
Safe, pollution-free electron spiral toroid Spheromak micro-fusion reactors could reliably generate electricity with capacities ranging from 10 kilowatts through 1000 megawatts at the cost of 10% of today’s electricity. All transportation vehicles could be reliably and safely powered with micro-fusion reactors with substantially lower production, operating and maintenance costs and without poisonous emissions.
Clean electrino fusion power reactors about the size of a single-wide manufactured house could generate a net of 1880 megawatts of DC electricity with no carbon emissions and no radioactive wastes.
The U.S. Government would find it much more cost-effective developing new generators such as these rather than subsidizing unsafe unreliable new nuclear reactors with billions of dollars.