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Saturday, October 31st, 2020

Trump Admin to Give $1.4 Billion to Try to Revive the Nuclear Power Industry

Author:     Peter Montague
Source:     truthout
Publication Date:     October 29, 2020
 Link: Trump Admin to Give $1.4 Billion to Try to Revive the Nuclear Power Industry
Stephan:   The civilian nuclear power industry was created back in the 1950s so that General Electric and Westinghouse could have a steady supply of men and women who could build such reactors for the nuclear powered naval vessels and submarines which were part of what was called the Trident Strategy to defend America in the Cold War. Civilian reactor construction gave the corporations involved with nuclear power enough profit to stay in the game. As a power source nuclear power is, and always has been a financial disaster. It will cost countless billions, for instance, to deal with the lethal waste created by this technology. Remember Fukushima and Chernobyl. Yet Trump, to help his corporate backers is going to give this dying industry over a billion dollars of your money. Here is the story.
A new study raises serious doubts about the low carbon emissions claimed by proponents of nuclear power.
Credit: Zhongguo/E+/Getty

The nuclear power industry may be getting a new lease on life, thanks to a $1.4 billion taxpayer subsidy from the Trump administration.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in August approved the design of a new kind of nuclear power reactor invented by NuScale Power, a startup company with offices in Corvallis and Portland, Oregon.

The new design is called a “small modular reactor” (SMR). The approval of the SMR design does not mean construction can begin; nevertheless, it is a significant step toward NuScale’s goal: to deploy up to 1,682 small (60-megawatt) reactors across the U.S. and beyond starting in 2023, essentially reviving the moribund nuclear power industry.

Successful deployment of 1,682 60-megawatt SMRs in the U.S. would more than double domestic nuclear power capacity, which currently stands at about 98,000 megawatts. Globally, nuclear power is in decline; in 1996, it produced 17.5 percent of global electricity, but today only 10 percent. In the U.S., only one new nuclear plant has started operating since […]

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1 Comment

  1. Tom N on Saturday, October 31, 2020 at 8:07 am

    What ever happened to fusion as a power source?