US eyes boom in nuclear reactors

What to do, what to do with the waste in our petrified and stale concept of nuclear? As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence & resource wars" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known, Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of nuclear) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.


US eyes boom in nuclear reactors
By Laura Smith-Spark BBC News, Washington 10-11-07











Almost three decades have passed since the last application was filed to build a new nuclear reactor in the US. Now, up to 30 are expected in the next three years.
As time has passed, memories have faded of the 1979 radioactive leak at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania that threw the US nuclear industry into disarray.
Meanwhile, energy security concerns and worries about climate change have reshaped the debate, and financial incentives and a new licensing process have altered the economics.
The first full application for two new reactors, in southern Texas, was submitted at the end of September.
Another four are due by the end of the year and a dozen in 2008, many in south-eastern states, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said.
The earliest could be in operation by 2015.
A range of factors is fuelling the renewed enthusiasm:
The introduction of a new fast-track combined construction and operation permit, making new reactors easier and cheaper to build
A tax credit, introduced in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, of 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour for the first 6,000 megawatts generated by nuclear plants
Risk insurance adding up to $2bn for the first six plants to be built, protecting companies against the cost of delays in construction
Multi-billion-dollar loan guarantees
A likelihood that the cost of emitting CO2 will rise as the battle against climate change intensifies
But the impending flood of applications is fuelling a new row over whether nuclear power represents a bold step to address 21st Century needs or a mistaken return to flawed 20th Century technology ..... full text