The nuclear industry is in serious trouble these days. It if was not so huge and tightly involved with national governments, it would have collapsed long ago. I got this list of problems for the nuclear industry off the Nuclear-News website and have added a few comments of my own.
- Widespread assumption that another major accident is inevitable. Regulatory agencies are not doing their job in many cases because they have been “captured” by the industry. Nuclear corporations are cutting corners, ignoring regulations, making unauthorized design changes and not insuring that staffs are sufficiently trained.
- Many of the world’s commercial nuclear power reactors are nearing the end of their design lifespan and require repairs that are too expensive to continue to function.
- Very few nuclear reactors have been built in the past few decades to take advantage of design improvement and lessons learned.
- Competition for a shrinking international market in reactors has been increasing as nuclear companies that cannot sell new reactors in their home countries are trying to survive and new designs are frantically hyped.
- Climate change threatens nuclear reactors with rising ocean temperatures, dropping water levels in rivers, and mega storms that can damage or floor reactors.
- Nuclear weapon inventories are being reduced by treaty. Even an exchange of a few hundred warheads could bring a nuclear winter that would destroy our civilization. Global conflicts are now asymmetrical with major countries fighting terrorist groups in the third world. Nuclear deterrence is no longer a reasonable way to deal with international tensions if it ever was.
- The world consumption of electricity has been dropping as conservation measures are being implemented and industries are being idled by world financial problems.
- The cost of renewable energy is dropping as the cost of nuclear power is rising. It is only a matter of time before nuclear power is simply no longer competitive in the marketplace.
- The entire nuclear fuel cycle from mining to refining to transporting to burning to storing waste is vulnerable to accidents or terrorist attacks. Other forms of energy are just not as dangerous as nuclear power for this standpoint.
- Public opinion has been turning against nuclear power recently, especially since the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan.
None of these problems is going to go away and many of them are only going to get worse with the passage of time. All of these problems add up to make the further use of nuclear energy for electrical power generation less and less attractive. Another major accident or a terrorist use of nuclear materials could be the fatal blow that brings down the house of cards that is the nuclear industry.
