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The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Wrap-up of nuclear news 2011

  • Christina Macpherson's websites & blogs

    The year started with  a renewed push by the nuclear lobby, for a “nuclear renaissance”.  But already costs and safety problems were slowing this ambition. The “poster boys” for nuclear power Olkiluoto and Flamanville reactors became increasingly costly, and fraught with safety problems, and still not built.

  • No nuclear plants built in USA since the 1970s. Worldwide 16 new ones were under construction in 2010, but only 2 in 2011. Meanwhile 13 closed, and many of the existing 433 reactors are nearing their use-by date. Global nuclear energy generation fell in 2011, due to increasing costs, weaker electricity demand, and falling costs of gas.
  • In March the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe had a sudden impact on the nuclear industry.   As  a continuing human, environmental, and economic disaster, it continues to accelerate the decline of the nuclear industry.
  • USA, France, Russia, and South Korea continued a frantic competition to sell nuclear power to developing countries, seeing they meet strong opposition to selling them to their own people, (except for South Korea)
  • The worldwide nuclear waste problem escalates, yet even in desperate straights because of this, USA and others are happy to continue producing this toxic stuff !
  • Nuclear weapons problems continue, with a little progress towards nuclear disarmament. At the end of the year, the world is at  a nuclear standoff between the Western world and Iran.
  • The global nuclear lobby is resuming its push to market its product as clean, healthy, cheap etc. It continues to tout “new nuclear” – “Generation 4 reactors, and also Thorium reactors – desperate side issues to promote the industry even as it fails. Christina Macpherson, 3 Jan 2012

January 3, 2012 - Posted by | Christina's notes

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