nuclear-news

Mexico abandons plans for new nuclear plants

Mexico Scraps Plans to Build as Many as 10 Nuclear Plants, Bloomberg, By Carlos Manuel Rodriguez – Nov 2, 2011 Mexico, one of three Latin American nations that uses nuclear power, is abandoning plans to build as many as 10 new reactors and will focus on natural gas-fired electricity plants after boosting discoveries of the fuel.

The country, which found evidence of trillions of cubic feet of gas in the past year, is “changing all its decisions, amid the very abundant existence of natural-gas deposits,” Energy Minister Jordy Herrera said yesterday in an interview. Mexico will seek private investment of about $10 billion during five years to expand its natural gas pipeline network, he said……

“This is a very good decision by the Mexican government,” said James Williams, an economist at WTRG Economics, an energy research firm in London, Arkansas. With a power generation project based on gas “you can build multiple plants at a much lower cost and much faster pace than a nuclear facility.”

Nations around the world are also reconsidering plans for increasing their reliance on nuclear power after the March 11 earthquake in Japan that wrecked the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, causing a loss of cooling, the meltdown of three reactors and the worst atomic disaster since the leak at Chernobyl in 1986….. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-02/mexico-scraps-plans-to-build-as-many-as-10-nuclear-plants-focus-on-gas.html

November 3, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, SOUTH AMERICA