Europe pioneers renaissance of nuclear power
Nuclear energy — its image sullied for decades by scary reactor accidents and the stubborn problems of securing radioactive material — is poised for a comeback in the United States, thanks to the soaring cost of fossil fuels. The energy bill signed this summer by President Bush included substantial subsidies designed to get new U.S. nuclear reactors up and running for the first time in more than 30 years. To see how a possible nuclear renaissance in the United States might play out, one needs only to look at Europe, where a reliance on nuclear energy has been building for years.
France generates more than 78 percent of its electricity in nuclear reactors, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The figure is above 30 percent for seven other European OECD members, including Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. By contrast, about 20 percent of U.S. electricity is nuclear, an amount likely to drop to 15 percent by 2020 as old plants are taken out of commission.
Construction has begun in Finland on the first of a new generation of reactors designed to alleviate many of the concerns that arose after the accidents at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 and at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. The new plants are designed to be simpler and more rugged. They employ "passive" methods to shut down in an emergency that are based on physical phenomena such as gravity or temperature resistance rather than engineered parts. Proponents say they virtually eliminate the danger of a meltdown of the nuclear core.
The former press secretary for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher says:""There isn't much point in waging war against terrorists if you depend on Islamic oil supplies to keep your economy in business."
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