Gang, D. (2014, September 3). Tva’s costly reactor illuminates nuclear challenge.
USA Today. Retrieved September 7, 2014, from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/02/tva-nuclear-reactor-challenge/14990433/
In Tennessee, the new Watts Bar nuclear reactor is scheduled to start operating in 2015, and will provide electricity to 650,000 homes. However, the project could cost over $4 billion, demonstrating the problems with nuclear power. Eight other reactors across the United States are being decommissioned because of reparation costs and competition from natural gas. If gas prices spike again, nuclear power might become viable, but environmentalists are critical of the dangers of radioactive waste.
This article highlights a major downside of nuclear power which is often overlooked: Despite the large amount of power they produce, the reactors themselves do not last forever. One reactor costs $4 billion to build, and in the future, decommissioning it will not be cheap either. In order to support nuclear power, a country would have to pay for building, maintaining, disposing waste from, and then eventually replacing power plants. Furthermore, constructing power plants could have an environmental impact, since building massive concrete structures in any location would disrupt the existing ecosystem.
Your editorial on this is spot on. Nuclear reactors are not cheap and they don’t last forever. Check out what is going on with fracking which is causing nat. gas to be cheaper than it has been in the past which is having a big effect on the business of generating electricity- so nuclear can’t quite compete. So, which one is the safer way to go. That’s the big question.