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Ban on nuclear power upheld in six US states

Attempts to Overturn Nuclear Bans Fail in Six States

West Virginia is not the only state that declined to overturn a ban on nuclear power this year.

The State Journal by Pam Kasey 3 Sept 09

West Virginia is not the only state that declined to overturn a ban on nuclear power this year.

As the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers licensing applications for new nuclear generation in 14 states, attempts to overturn explicit or effective bans failed in six other states in 2009, according to the nonprofit Nuclear Information and Resource Service.

“Things will be even tougher for their state lobbyists in 2010 now that the freeze on Yucca Mountain has taken long-term waste disposal off the table,” said NIRS Executive Director Michael Mariotte.

The last new nuclear power generation unit to be ordered in the U.S. was in 1978, just before the partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979.

Since that time, first California and then about a dozen states passed laws that outright or effectively banned new nuclear generation.

West Virginia’s law is titled a ban in the state code, but functions as an effective ban…….. The code requires at least 24 months’ prior operation of a national facility “which safely, successfully and permanently disposes of any and all radioactive wastes associated with operating any such nuclear power plant, nuclear factory or nuclear electric power generating plant.”

That condition has never been met.

And because the federal government withdrew its support for the Yucca Mountain facility earlier this year, there is no process in place for it ever to be met.

http://www.statejournal.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=65865

September 4, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | antinuclear, nuclear, radiation, radioactive, uranium