If you’ve tracked media coverage of nuclear power, you know that every few months or so nuclear power is about to enjoy a comeback. The “nuclear renaissance” has always been right around the corner, we’ve often been told.
Take the New York Times, for example:
-Few industries have enjoyed the kind of renaissance that nuclear power may be poised to undergo.
(5/23/01)-After decades in the doghouse because of environmental, safety and cost concerns, nuclear power is enjoying a renaissance of expectations.
(editorial, 5/29/01)-Energy shortages may be creating talk of a nuclear power renaissance.
(6/28/01)-“Much Talk of a Nuclear Renaissance, but So Far Little Action”
(headline, 3/3/06)-The continuing fight over Indian Point comes as nuclear power is anticipating a renaissance, mainly because of the high price of natural gas.
(6/7/06)-One day this May, on a brisk morning so clear that I could see its cooling towers from 20 miles away, I visited Vogtle on one leg of a tour to assess what many in the energy industry are calling a nuclear renaissance.
(7/16/06– a piece with the subhead “A Nuclear Renaissance?”)-major step toward actual construction after several years of speculation about a nuclear renaissance.
(8/14/06)-As the chief executive of Constellation Energy, a utility holding company in Baltimore that already operates five nuclear reactors, Mr. Shattuck is convinced that nuclear power is on the verge of a renaissance, ready to provide reliable electricity at a competitive price.
(8/22/06)-NEW REACTORS ACROSS THE GLOBE: A Nuclear Power Renaissance
(headline, 1/16/07)-The senior member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission warned on Monday that the failure of Congress to pass a detailed budget for the current fiscal year could damage the nuclear renaissance that the government tried so hard to encourage with the energy bill of 2005.
(1/23/07)-”To bring about the nuclear renaissance in the United States, it really is going to take the global nuclear industry,” said Michael J. Wallace, a Constellation executive who will be chairman of the new entity. ”Vendors, suppliers, operators and investors like E.D.F. who understand and are comfortable with the technology — we need them all.”
(7/21/07)-”A nuclear renaissance is now gearing up everywhere in the world,” said John B. Ritch III , a former American diplomat and director general of the World Nuclear Association, an industry group. ”It is occurring parallel to an enormous expansion in energy consumption.”
(11/27/07)-Gregory B. Jaczko, one of the federal agency’s three commissioners, said it might not have enough staff members to do now what it did in the 1970s and ’80s — supervise the construction of a couple of dozen types of reactors. The commission has been hiring rapidly to prepare for a nuclear renaissance, but officials there were counting on standardization, if not quite mass production, as a way to manage the workload.
(12/5/07)-the so-called nuclear renaissance is moving slowly.
(8/6/08)-Worries about carbon dioxide and galloping demand for electricity might seem to be setting the stage for a renaissance of nuclear power.
(9/24/08)-More than 90 percent of Areva is held by the French government, which also could inject more money into the company at a time when nuclear power could be on the verge of a renaissance.
(1/27/09)-Today, concern about climate change and desire for ”energy independence” have driven former skeptics to take another look at nuclear power. Some even talk of a ”nuclear renaissance.”
(book review, 3/8/09)-The massive power plant under construction on muddy terrain on this Finnish island was supposed to be the showpiece of a nuclear renaissance.
(5/29/09)-But the companies are concerned that the credit crisis has dealt a critical blow to nuclear power in the United States, which had been perceived as undergoing a renaissance starting in 2004.
(11/1/09)-David M. Ratcliffe, the chairman and chief executive of the Southern Company, said that a nuclear renaissance was in the wings and that ”we will get on with that at a more rapid pace now that we’ve made this first step.”
(2/17/10)-Clarence Fenner, the work force development coordinator for the South Texas Project, a Bay City councilman and a former first sergeant in the Army. ”This nuclear renaissance is important for our community, our state and our country. It’s not just a job.”
(4/22/10)-Is this the long-awaited renaissance of the nuclear construction business, after years of being moribund?
(4/22/10)-Tomas Kaberger, director general of the Swedish Energy Agency, said there was no certainty that any of the plants would be built, despite talk of a nuclear renaissance.
(7/2/10)-The project had once been hailed as a cornerstone of a nuclear power renaissance.
(10/10/10)-Over the last decade, Kazakhstan rapidly became the world’s largest uranium producer, overtaking Canada with vast increases in production. According to World Nuclear Association figures, Kazakh production jumped 62 percent from 2008 to 2009. Overall global demand remained steady, however, because the long-promised nuclear renaissance was always just over the horizon.
(11/17/10)-In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed giving the nuclear construction business a type of help it has never had, a role in a quota for clean energy. But recent setbacks in a hoped-for ”nuclear renaissance” raise questions about how much of a role nuclear power can play.
(2/11/11)
The bogus ‘rennaissance’ is a virtual event, existing only in media. The reality is that the large economies of India & China are heavily invested in a nuclear future, are not susceptible to western punditry, and will undoubtedly prove or disprove the worth of nuclear power without our help, in the coming generation.
We might never have our rennaissance, as the center of world civilization swings east, and we fade into post-colonial irrelevance.
In three months, the U.S. public will have largely forgotten about the Japanese disaster, as it forgot about Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl. When gasoline goes over $5 a gallon next summer and natural gas prices skyrocket (both the result of speculators on the futures market), people will be solidly behind the filthy nuke plants once again. Not to mention, “clean” coal.
Actually, HReading, they won’t be “solidly behind” the nuke plants–they will forget to a certain extent, though. Americans aren’t “solidly behind” anything. They just by and in large don’t care about things like this until it’s too late, though the action taking place in Wisconsin suggests that we are not asleep at all the switches.
cc
Why are we diddling with nuclear Power when we have available a clean green renewable, renewable because it fertilizes the land, that can meet the world’s energy needs and, simultaneously, cleanse the atmosphere. Industrial Hemp gave humanity 85 per cent of its needs for millions of years and can do so again. Between its oil and its fiber, It can replace both coal and petroleum and it has no drug potential. Also, it was a billion dollar export crop right in the middle of The Depression in 1936 when The Hearst Corporation lied it into illegality because its forests couldn’t compete. It takes 40 years to produce a forest, hemp produces three crops a year in every state in the U.S., one acre equals four of trees and hemp won’t burn. On top of that, hemp seeds offer food having 9 times the protein of any other known. Turning wood into pulp requires a sulphate so poisonous that it will reduce bones, hide and hair to pulp, pit marble, pock iron, burn holes in stomachs, animal and human, and pollute the rivers and kill the fish, while hemp turns to pulp in water â┚¬” to bleach paper, threw in hydrogen peroxide which quickly breaks down into hydrogen and oxygen with a double dose of the latterâ┚¬”Âozoneâ┚¬”Âand returns it to the atmosphere. Would you prefer ozonated air or poisoned water and dead fish?
During the same years, Henry Ford unveiled a biomass cracking system for hemp producing electricity, heating oil, kerosene, a protein stock food, and an auto powered by hemp fuel. Corporate America belowed “Autos must run on petroleum,” and they won: are we going to let them destroy the world?
Hemp can make the toughest canvas, the finest linen, excellent rope, curtains, towels, wedding dresses, school clothes passed down for generations, the best diapers,.â┚¬”Âand delicious protein-rich breads. The Brits are malong hemp brcks. But Forests are our siamese twins. Trees store the poison that would kill us and exude four cu.ft. of oxygen each per minute. We should be demanding industrial hemp and standing forests poufing out oxygen.
The Horswill comment read here in Jaipur struck me like a good deed in a naughty world. I am here (India) seeking, inter alia, hemp seed exporters sufficient to meet the needs of a countrywide change from sugar cane to a vastly profitable and necessary addition to Haiti’s entire economy. At least Haiti is not under the incubus of the USDA and so might get away with a crop revolution that, once started, could spread worldwide. India this weekend is reassessing its entire nuclear stance in the wake of Japan’s disasters. You and I are two mere candle-holders in the dark, but I urge you to approach Rep. Kucinich anew: he promised early last summer to enlist a quorum of his fellow members in the House to introduce a new resolution legalizing hemp growing in the United States, the first crop grown by government mandate in North America (1619). It’s high time we came to our senses for our life, our health, and our prosperity.
Emily and Edwin….Did i just enter the twilight zone?Hemp is gonna save us all?Well Im not saying Im buying it but……good luck in starting any enterprise that may help AND…..bring you profit.Remmber though ,if you do save the world and become richer than Gates,you will automatically be deemed evil.It is the way things work on the left.
Ending the Drug War and the GWOT would be two good ways to start reallocating money into positive and productive long term sources.
Re: “Nuclear Renaissance”: Three Mile Island, Chernobl, Fukushima. Enough said!