Japan Plans to Restart Most of Their Nuclear Reactors

pigrabbitbear writes "Areva, the French nuclear fuel company, helps supply Japan with a lot of its juice. And Areva's chief executive says that Japan is going to restart up to six reactors by the end of the year. Eventually, it's going to power up at least two thirds of them. Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe has been a little cagey, but he recently told the press that yes, despite the upcoming March 11th anniversary of the Fukushima crisis, the nuke plants are coming back online." Supposedly, they are overhauling their nuclear regulatory agencies to fix the massive failure and regulatory capture that led to Fukushima being run unsafely. They are also not going to restart reactors that are on active fault lines; this includes the largest reactor complex in the world. Vaguely related, the Vogtle plant expansion in the U.S. is running a bit over budget, with folks like the Sierra Club seizing the chance to call for an end to construction (unlikely, since Georgia Power says it'd cost customers more, even pretending natural gas is infinite and will always be cheap, to halt construction in favor of any other kind of power plant), and legislators aiming to 'protect' customers from cost overruns. However, it looks like unless action is taken the nuclear renaissance is already dead due to the inherent short-sightedness of the "free market."

no more homer simpsons and cut cutting MR burns

[Joe_Dragon]

no more homer simpsons and cut cutting MR burns

Re:Nuclear Bias

[bill_mcgonigle]

The nuclear industry says "don't worry, we can run a 40 year old plant safely" and the regulators say "okay, we believe you"

And the startup that wants to build integral fast reactors and buy up the existing nuclear waste to use as fuel gets denied permits because the entrenched interests would suffer.

We'll get them eventually - I'm just not sure if we'll be buying them from China or India.