Tentative Green Light for Nukes Is No Free Ride 9/18/2006
The development and construction of the world's first nuclear powerplants starting in the mid-1950s was thought to be the threshold of an age where the generation of electricity would be "too cheap to meter." That of course proved to be nonsense, but the world, it seems, is eager to place some new bets on nukes. They will be carefully considered ones, based on the positive experience of many powerplants that have been quietly churning out vast amounts of electricity over the past 50 years, and mindful of the ecological and financial disasters at the Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Shoreham nuke plants.
Faster, cheaper, better are the marching orders for the designers and builders of the third generation of powerplants. And there is a growing, but still gentle, push from some environmentalists who feel that baseload nuclear generating stations will help the world curtail greenhouse gasses and other pollution from burning fossil fuels.