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« NRC greenlights Peach Bottom 80-year license extension despite significant safety questions | Main | Nuclear Power Plant Workers Prep For Shutdown After 47 Years »
Friday
Jul122019

America wants to extend the lifespans of its nearly 100 nuclear reactors to 80 years

As reported by Reuters.

Beyond Nuclear, represented by legal counsel Diane Curran, is challenging 80 years of operation at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in PA, with its Fukushima Daiichi identically twin designed atomic reactors. Peach Bottom, PA, and Turkey Point, FL, are among the first reactors in the U.S. applying for 80 years of operations. Initial licenses were for 40 years, and already represented very significant age-related degradation, breakdown phase risks. The article above neglects to mention such risks.

Also, the nuclear power industry and its proponents in the federal government have been promising less radioactive waste-generating reactor designs for many decades. As reported above, they wasted yet another $125 million in federal taxpayer money yet again in the past year, chasing pie in the sky "advanced" reactor designs, some of which have been in development for decades. This subsidy is on top of hundreds of billions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars, or more, heaped upon the nuclear industry over the past half-century and longer. Nuclear power is among the most heavily subsidized energy industry's in history, and yet continues to lobby for more, year after year.

The opportunity cost of continuing to subsidize nuclear power means that the real solutions to the climate crisis -- efficiency, and renewables like wind and solar -- will continue to go untapped, for lack of adequate funding.

And speaking of wind and solar, they too can generate hydrogen. The article neglects to mention this.