Nuclear power: A dream that failed [View all]

[kristopher]

Nuclear power: A dream that failed

...Looking at nuclear power 26 years ago, The Economist observed that the way forward for a somewhat moribund nuclear industry was "to get plenty of nuclear plants built, and then to accumulate, year after year, a record of no deaths, no serious accidents -- and no dispute that the result is cheaper energy."

It was a fair assessment; but our conclusion that the industry was "safe as a chocolate factory" proved something of a hostage to fortune. Less than a month later one of the reactors at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine ran out of control and exploded, killing the workers there at the time and some of those sent in to clean up afterwards, spreading contamination far and wide, leaving a swath of countryside uninhabitable and tens of thousands banished from their homes.

Then, 25 years later, when enough time had passed for some to be talking of a "nuclear renaissance," it happened again. The bureaucrats, politicians and industrialists of what has been called Japan's "nuclear village" were not unaccountable apparatchiks in a decaying authoritarian state like those that bore the guilt of Chernobyl; they had responsibilities to voters, to shareholders, to society. And still they allowed their enthusiasm for nuclear power to shelter weak regulation, safety systems that failed to work and a culpable ignorance of the tectonic risks the reactors faced, all the while blithely promulgating a myth of nuclear safety.

...

Nuclear power would be more competitive if it were cheaper. Yet despite decades of government research-and-development programs, this does not look likely. Innovation tends to thrive where many designs can compete against each other, where newcomers can get into the game easily, where regulation is light.

Some renewable-energy technologies meet these criteria, and are getting cheaper as a result....

http://www.startribune.com/business/142393925.html