Our understanding of the situation at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has evolved since the release of radioactive materials in late February. There is still a debate going on about what caused the release and whether there is future risk for breaches of more drums of waste.
The nuclear disaster at Fukushima caused nuclear nations to rethink their use of nuclear power to generate electricity. Germany and Switzerland have decided to close existing nuclear reactors and not to construct any new reactors. France is much more dependent on nuclear power than any of the other thirty one nations that use nuclear power. About seventy five percent of France's electricity is currently generated by fifty eight operating nuclear power reactors.
I have blogged in past posts about regulatory capture which is basically the take-over of a government agency by the industry that it is supposed to regulate. This can result in industry involvement writing the rules for regulation or failure of the agency to enforce regulations on industry. There is also the problem of a revolving door where people move back and forth between positions in the regulatory agency and positions in industry.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently released its annual survey of nuclear weapons. The United States with seven thousand three hundred warheads and Russia with eight thousand warheads have been dismantling their huge arsenals left over from the Cold War.
