I have blogged in the past about the aggressive Russia push to market Russian nuclear power reactors to other countries. South Africa has recently been considering the purchase of reactors from Russia.
The U.S. has a serious spent nuclear fuel problem. The cooling pools at U.S. nuclear power plants are rapidly filling up with spent nuclear fuel. There are about seventy thousand tons of spent nuclear fuel located at seventy sites in thirty-five states. In 1992, the U.S. government chose Yucca Mountain in Nevada for a permanent spent nuclear fuel geological repository to be in operation by 1999.
The global nuclear power industry is trying hard to convince everyone that nuclear power is a viable option and that safe and economical nuclear power plants can be built. Unfortunately, many nuclear power projects fall behind schedule and incur cost increases that can be multiples of original estimates.
One of the big unsolved problems of nuclear power generation is the disposal of the spent nuclear fuel assemblies. In the U.S., the federal government was supposed to have a permanent spent nuclear fuel repository in Nevada at a Yucca Mountain salt mine.
One of the big selling points of nuclear power is that it produces huge amounts of electricity. Reactors that generate over a billion watts of power are common. The smallest commercial power reactor in the U.S. is located at Fort Calhoun in Nebraska and it generates over five hundred megawatts.
Ambient office = 117 nanosieverts per hour
20 μSv/h still detected in Fukushima city. fukushima-diary.com
I have talked about nuclear issues in Europe in general and in specific European nations before. Today I am going to blog about a major division between European nations over the need to utilize nuclear power.
