Thomas King

“Nuclear Freeze: Why Nuclear Power Stalled- How to Restart It”

The fear of a natural disaster and the US’s reliance and commitment to fossil fuels is holding the US back in the advances of nuclear energy. Ever since the Three Mile Island incident the market for nuclear power has become regionally monopolized. These monopolies rely on each other for improvements in their field. This has led to great cooperation between these monopolies, which have greatly improved the plants’ safety. The other problem that the US faces with rebooting our movement towards nuclear energy is our dependence on fossil fuels. The US is so cemented in this market that the profit for building new plants cannot match the cost of building one.  This will cause the US to look for an international market which will most likely be found in China. Since, the market is not available at this time in the US the manufactures will have to continue to rely on the federal government for funding.  The problem with this is that the federal government is at a standstill as to where to keep the nuclear waste. At this time the most likely candidate is the Yucca Mountain repository. However, the bill that the senate has drawn up has yet to go to a vote and will likely see resistance from the House.

            The most successful change from fossil fuels as of now is through nuclear power plants. Since, the nuclear spike in the 1960’s the US has fallen behind the rest of the world in this field. China has built currently 20 power plants with 28 on the way since their movement towards nuclear power. Since, the 1960’s we have ordered 264 plants and only half of those have been built. In the last couple decades the nuclear power plant has had some major improvements not only are they safer but take up much less space than they have in the past. Nuclear energy is much cheaper and the obvious next step away from fossil fuels however, with the problems that the US faces we might fall to far back in this environmental movement.

            I thought that the author did a great job with laying out the problems the US faces along with the improvements that have occurred of the last couple decades in the nuclear power field. I believe they could have gone a little deeper into previous incidents like Three Mile Island and described why they are a problem to the US’s advancements in nuclear power. Over all I thought it was a well written article which described the benefits of nuclear power very well.

http://www.edline.net/files/_0DBiM_/1dc16fab367e1bee3745a49013852ec4/WhyNuclearPowerStalledandHowtoRestartIt.pdf

Lauffer, Micheal R., Edward D. Blandford, and Per F. Peterson. "Nuclear Freeze: Why Nuclear Power Stalled- How to Restart It." Editorial. Foreign Affairs May 2014: 27-32. Print.