Nuclear Energy Industry Could Someday Expand

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Nuclear Power - Economics, Design, & Industry

Date posted: 01/07/16

The editors opine that the U.S. NRC recently gave safety and environmental site approval for adding two nuclear plants to the existing three in Salem County, New Jersey. But the companies that own the Salem and Hope Creek generating stations may not proceed with a new plant, not when the U.S. cost of nuclear power is higher than that of the current cost of natural gas, which is expected to remain so indefinitely. Events of the past year, however, suggest that the feasibility of such plants could change in the decade ahead. University researchers petitioned the NRC last year to reconsider basing its rules on the unproven theory that there is no safe level of radiation. But, low levels of radiation are part of the natural world in which humans evolved, so presumably such levels should be acceptable. Evidence that the danger of radiation has been overestimated has been building for years, as the predicted high numbers of fatalities from such nuclear accidents as Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 as hyped by media have failed to appear. The U.N. radiation committee in 2008 quit predicting the Chernobyl harm using the no-safe-threshold model. The NRC historically has promulgated and enforced rules on reactor design and operation based on the premise there is no safe radiation level, even though in 2014 it stated that studies of occupational workers who are chronically exposed to low levels of radiation above normal background have shown no adverse biological chronically exposed to low levels of radiation above normal background have shown no adverse biological effects. The NRC in June started accepting public comment on whether to revise safety standards to reflect the experience with low levels of radiation. If that happens, the cost of building nuclear plants could fall dramatically. And if Americans in the future want to significantly reduce climate-related carbon emissions in a cost-effective way, nuclear power could play a big role after all.