Antinuclear

USA nuclear reactors in terminal decline?

NUCLEAR PLANTS, OLD AND UNCOMPETITIVE, ARE CLOSING EARLIER THAN EXPECTED Sustainable Transport COalition of Western Australia   When does a nuclear plant become too old? The nuclear industry is wrestling with that question as it tries to determine whether problems at reactors, all designed in the 1960s and 1970s, are middle-aged aches and pains or end-of-life crises….. This is a turnaround because until recently, the life expectancy of reactors was growing. When the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began routinely authorizing reactors to run 20 years beyond their initial 40-year licenses, people in the electricity business began thinking that 60 was the new 40. But after the last few weeks, 40 is looking old again, at least in reactor years, with implications for the power plants still running, and for several new ones being built.

“They were intended to last for as long as they were commercially feasible,” said Robert E. Curry Jr., who was a member of the New York Public Service Commission from 2006 to 2012. But with low gas prices, additional costs imposed after the Fukushima Daiichi accident of March 2011, and “the general mistrust of nuclear by anyone who saw ‘The China Syndrome,’ ” commercial feasibility now is evidently shorter, he said……The difference is that gas plants continue to be built, and so do a few coal plants……. http://www.stcwa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5229&Itemid=134

July 16, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized