The dream that failed

Comment:  Remember that uranium mining is the beginning of the nuclear cycle of death, we do not want uranium mining or nuclear power, not wanted, not needed!  The nuke push is from the nuke powers companies who give monies to the federal and state leaders so taxpayers have to pay for new nuke plants!  Keep the uranium mining ban!  Remember the biggest power company in Virginia is pushing the Gov of VA for more nuke plants, are trying to stop windmills or solar at all cost and the good old VA Gov is their patsy!

 

Nuclear power will not go away, but its role may never be more than marginal, says Oliver Morton

Mar 10th 2012 | from the print edition

THE LIGHTS ARE not going off all over Japan, but the nuclear power plants are. Of the 54 reactors in those plants, with a combined capacity of 47.5 gigawatts (GW, a thousand megawatts), only two are operating today. A good dozen are unlikely ever to reopen: six at Fukushima Dai-ichi, which suffered a calamitous triple meltdown after an earthquake and tsunami on March 11th 2011 (pictured above), and others either too close to those reactors or now considered to be at risk of similar disaster. The rest, bar two, have shut down for maintenance or “stress tests” since the Fukushima accident and not yet been cleared to start up again. It is quite possible that none of them will get that permission before the two still running shut for scheduled maintenance by the end of April.

Japan has been using nuclear power since the 1960s. In 2010 it got 30% of its electricity from nuclear plants. This spring it may well join the ranks of the 150 nations currently muddling through with all their atoms unsplit. If the shutdown happens, it will not be permanent; a good number of the reactors now closed are likely to be reopened. But it could still have symbolic importance. To do without something hitherto seen as a necessity opens the mind to new possibilities. Japan had previously expected its use of nuclear energy to increase somewhat. Now the share of nuclear power in Japan’s energy mix is more likely to shrink, and it could just vanish altogether.

http://www.economist.com/node/21549098