Focus Turns Back to Nuclear Power

In the aftermath of the disastrous Fukushima Daichi incident—the uncontrolled release of radioactive materials following a massive 2011 earthquake in Japan—the world turned its attention to the issue of nuclear power once again. At issue was whether or not nuclear power would have a future after such a high-profile containment breach. The answer turned out to be yes—provisionally. One way or another, such power plants would have to update their systems and security. The proposed improvements proved to be so good and so economical that several nations are now considering expanding their nuclear portfolios.

The first big player in the nuclear power game was the United States. The US was the first to build a civilian atomic power plant and has been heavily invested in the technology since the 1950s. Today, no fewer than nineteen American nuclear sites have been approved for new construction or facility expansion. Given the decades-long moratorium on such expansion following the Three-Mile Island accident, this new approach seems to signal a shift in the energy profile of the world's largest nuclear power.

At the time of the 2011 earthquake, Japan had fifty-four functional nuclear generators. In the aftermath, all of them were shut down pending safety reviews. Some Japanese citizens, outraged by the blanket of silence that the government had thrown over serious safety issues, have applied political pressure to permanently decommission all nuclear sites. Meanwhile, Japanese nuclear power advocates have made the case that the closest reactor complex to the quake's epicenter was the Onagawa plant, which functioned as designed, shut down in good order, and suffered no release, demonstrating that plants can be built to survive disasters intact. While the debate rages on, Japan's government has released start-up authority over the plants to local governments, perhaps to encourage them to restart.

In the midst of the Japanese debate, representative groups of the world's commercial nuclear power providers released a 189-page report that outlined the way forward and encouraged governments to consider larger roles for nuclear power in their national energy portfolios. The industry, however, has a history of optimism in its projections of new technologies and the uses to which they can be put in real-world power plants.

From its earliest days, nuclear power has inspired mixed feelings. On the one hand, it has always promised to deliver boundless energy cheaply and easily; on the other, lax safety and outdated infrastructure have condemned more than one plant to infamy after uncontrolled releases of nuclear material have threatened lives and jobs around the world. It will certainly be interesting to see whether the public will share the industry's confidence going forward.

(Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)