Beyond the political battles over waste and safety, the U.S. nuclear power industry faces some more fundamental problems in its attempt to extend the life of its old power plants and build new ones to serve the United States' expanding electricity needs. Keith Johnson at the Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog (one of my favorite energy-environment writers these days) has a nice account today of the supply chain problem:

Supply-chain woes are familiar to most energy sectors these days. Oil companies struggle to get rigs and other equipment for exploration. Wind turbine makers have been wracked by component shortages for years. Solar power makers are still struggling with a shortage of pure polysilicon.

But for the nuclear industry, the problem is more dire. Long lead times for plant construction can grow even longer thanks to bottlenecks of key components, while the safety issue is of more concern than, say, a faulty wind turbine. The nuclear industry in particular, after hitting the pause button after Three Mile Island, faces an uphill struggle to get back up to speed.

update: A reader comments:

And one more issue - due to the so called nuclear renaissance which is the world tendency nowadays, the price for nuclear fuel might grow very quickly. Russia only is planning to construct as much nuclear reactors as they already have. Then, there is a problem of long term waste storage or recycling, which is expensive and technologically consuming.
http://atomwatch.blogspot.com 

Your Name:

Your Email Address:

Rate this article:
Poor Great

Comment:

BOLD

"QUOTE"

UNDERLINE