But finally, the USA has licensed a new nuclear power reactor.
From MS/NBC:
US licenses first nuclear reactors since 1978
It's been 34 years -- and several nuclear accidents later -- but a divided federal panel on Thursday licensed a utility to build nuclear reactors in the U.S. for the first time since 1978.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's chairman, Gregory Jaczko, opposed licensing the two reactors at this time even though he had earlier praised their design.
"There is still more work" to be done to ensure that lessons learned from Japan's Fukushima disaster last year are engrained in the reactor design, he told his colleagues. "I cannot support this licensing as if Fukushima never happened."
"There is no amnesia," responded Commissioner Kristine Svinick, speaking for the 4-1 majority and noting that the industry has been directed to adopt those lessons.
The licensing covers two reactors estimated to cost $14 billion that the Southern Company wants to add to its existing Vogtle nuclear plant in Georgia. Preliminary work has already begun and plans are for the first new reactor to be operating in 2016.
It is odd that they would cite Fukushima Daiichi in their concerns. It came online in 1971 which means that the initial design was started sometime in the early 1960's which means that the design is a good 50 years old. Think about what changes computers have done in 50 years. Television and radio receivers. Automobiles.
The reactors coming online today are based on ten year old designs and the technology has improved a lot.
In Japan, the Fukushima Daiichi reactor was a meltdown while the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant which came online 13 years later in 1984 not only survived but served as a community evacuation center and suffered only a small fire and some water splashing out of the spent fuel rod pool.
The MS/NBC article has some more and concludes:
Nuclear power provides about 20 percent of all electricity in the U.S.
Worldwide, more than 60 reactors are being built, including more than two dozen in China alone.
Readers will know that I am a big fan of Thorium for reactors -- a simple foolproof design and the waste only needs a few hundred years isolation (and the waste can easily be burned in the reactor if we get over Pres. Carters stupid reprocessing ruling).
Of the two dozen reactors being built in China, some of them are LFTRs and they are being designed by a guy who learned this at Drexel University.
Where is the vision?
