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Could nuclear power plants last as long as the Hoover Dam? Increasingly dependable and emitting few greenhouse gases, the U.S. fleet of nuclear power plants will likely run for another 50 or even 70 years before it is retired -- long past the 40-year life span planned decades ago -- according to industry executives, regulators and scientists.

Could nuclear power plants last as long as the Hoover Dam? Increasingly dependable and emitting few greenhouse gases, the U.S. fleet of nuclear power plants will likely run for another 50 or even 70 years before it is retired -- long past the 40-year life span planned decades ago -- according to industry executives, regulators and scientists.

Ecologists Timothy Mousseau and Anders Pape Moller have been studying long-term effects of radioactive contamination on nature since 1999 in the closed area surrounding Chornobyl, the site of world's worst nuclear disaster on April 26, 1986. Their work is taking place in the exclusion zone, a 30-kilometer radius around the nuclear power plant. It provides a perfect ground for the study of biodiversity and survival of animals living in the conditions of irradiated environment. The team has documented many consequences of radiation, including dramatically increased rates of genetic mutation, lower life spans and lower reproduction rates of some species.

"After a long period of inaction due to tight financing, the Russian nuclear fleet operator Atomflot gears up for decommissioning several of its old nuclear vessels - starting with the 1977-built nuclear icebreaker Siberia. Spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste have been removed from the ship, and works done to ensure the hull bottom is watertight. Next in line are the icebreaker Arktika and the nuclear maintenance vessels Lotta, Lepse, and Volodarsky. Alexey Pavlov, 29/06-2010 - Translated by Maria Kaminskaya Each nuclear icebreaker has its own finite useful life period - an estimated time frame that the vessel can remain in service. It is impossible to keep extending the life span of an icebreaker's various mechanisms without risking an increased incidence of equipment malfunctions and system failures. The first to be laid to rest on Atomflot's roster of nuclear icebreakers was the icebreaker Lenin: The veteran icebreaker is now permanently moored in the far northern city of Murmansk, retrofitted to function as a museum. Lenin's successors will be sent for complete dismantling, beginning with the Siberia. The vessel, which was put into commission in 1977 and broke Arctic ice until it was taken out of service in 1992, has been awaiting decommissioning for 18 years. Until very recently, Russia had no sufficient means to allocate to the costly procedure."

MADRID (AFP) - Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Saturday he would not extend the life of Spain's ageing nuclear plants as he repeated his government's commitment to phasing out nuclear power. "We are committed to respecting the normal life-span of the plants unless there are urgent energy needs, and to not building new nuclear plants," he said in an interview with top-selling daily El Pais.

In Nicole Krauss' sparse and astonishing novel, Man Walks Into A Room, local cops find a disoriented man wandering along Highway 95 in the desolate Mercury Valley of Nevada. After the officers get him out of the shimmering heat, we learn that the man, Samson, has a brain tumor that has obliterated a large chunk of his memory. He has no recollection of the last 24 years of his life. Samson is able to recover the human and concrete remnants of those lost 24 years. His wife is there, loving and supportive; his home is still his; his job is still available. Nevertheless, his life crumbles. His very identity unravels in the absence of the anchor of a large span of memory. It's terrifying. Parts of the nuclear West, especially those involved in Cold War weapons production, suffer from a similar condition. Take Rocky Flats, for example, which for four decades produced tens of thousands of the pits that detonate atomic bombs. While it was in operation, the industrial complex outside Denver, Colo., was veiled in absolute secrecy. The people who worked there couldn't tell outsiders what they did, and they couldn't even talk to one another about their work.

"After reading Sen. Mike Crapo's glowing endorsement of nuclear energy, I feel inspired to remind your readers why no U.S. nuclear power plants have been built in the past 25 years. To begin with, the enormous financial cost to build a reactor is exceeded only by the cost of decommissioning it once it has depleted its 40- to 60-year life span. Regardless of whatever laws Congress may pass to: (1) subsidize nuclear power plant construction (2) remove standard liability requirements from nuclear construction contractors or (3) force long-lived toxic and radioactive wastes onto less populated states, the fact still remains that nuclear energy is not cheap, clean or safe. The primary reason nuclear power is being considered at this time is that it carries with it a "scale of economy" that translates into jobs, tax money and economic boon for specific, well-lobbied industries. This all seems so needless in light of life-friendly, alternative energy production technologies that do not place toxic-waste storage burdens, large-scale contamination issues and a mess of other problems and risks onto the environment and future generations. "

"Germany's government has proposed a new nuclear fuel tax as part of a wider austerity package, without linking this explicitly to the expected extension of nuclear run-times. According to a statement posted on the government's website, extra profits generated by nuclear plant operators in the wake of higher power prices because of extra CO2 certificates justifies the next tax, which also will contribute to financing nuclear waste storage solutions. From 2011, the government expects Eur2.3 billion ($2.8 billion) a year until 2014 from nuclear plant operators through the planned new measures. E.ON, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall Europe, which run Germany's 17 operational reactors, are hoping their plants' life spans will be extended beyond the start of the next decade, when nuclear power should be phased out, according to a still valid law. "

The Hanford nuclear site is the most dangerous contaminated site in the United States. Unfortunately, the federal government has failed to meet its commitment to clean up Hanford. That's why we recently asked the federal courts to require the Department of Energy to do what is required by federal and state law - and what the agency itself agreed to do in signing the Tri-Party Agreement in 1989. Some have questioned our decision. Failure to complete the cleanup of the highly radioactive and toxic waste buried in the ground near the Columbia River simply is not an option. Just below ground at the Hanford site are 177 steel tanks containing 53 million gallons of heavy metals, acids, solvents and lethal radioactive waste. Of those tanks, 149 are of single-wall construction and well beyond their design life-span - and 67 have confirmed leaks. These leaks threaten the safety of the river.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates believes the United States needs to resume its nuclear tests. The US needs to take steps to transform an ageing and very expensive complex of nuclear weapons from the Cold War era to a smaller and less costly enterprise that could meet the nation's security needs for the future. He said the current nuclear stockpile has been re-engineered to extend its life span, but such extensions cannot continue indefinitely. Without a modernization program, Gates said, the long-term outlook for the arsenal is "bleak."

German utility EnBW has received state approval for the deconstruction of its phased-out nuclear power plant Obrigheim, the company said Friday in a statement. The 357 MW nuclear reactor was commissioned in October 1968 and shut down in May 2005. EnBW formally applied for deconstruction permission in December 2004 after Germany's previous government passed a nuclear phase-out law in 2002, limiting nuclear life-spans to an average of 32 years.

"The problem: Five Arizona cities--Phoenix, Mesa, Glendale, Scottsdale, and Tempe--are facing severe cash shortages. The solution: selling billions of gallons of wastewater to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in a move that will bring $1 billion to city coffers over a 40 year period. It's a unique use for treated wastewater, which is often used in landscaping and on golf courses. Palo Verde is the first nuclear plant ever to use reclaimed wastewater for cooling. AZCentral explains some of the benefits: For Palo Verde, which produces more power than any other U.S. power plant, the deal cements access to a predictable water supply through the plant's expected life span. Predictability is critical in the long-term management of a power plant, which uses water to cool the system, and eases the pain of the higher rates, utility officials said."

"ROCKVILLE, Md. - When commercial nuclear power was getting its start in the 1960s and 1970s, industry and regulators stated unequivocally that reactors were designed only to operate for 40 years. Now they tell another story - insisting that the units were built with no inherent life span, and can run for up to a century, an Associated Press investigation shows. By rewriting history, plant owners are making it easier to extend the lives of dozens of reactors in a relicensing process that resembles nothing more than an elaborate rubber stamp. As part of a yearlong investigation of aging issues at the nation's nuclear power plants, the AP found that the relicensing process often lacks fully independent safety reviews. Records show that paperwork of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sometimes matches word-for-word the language used in a plant operator's application."

No nuclear reactors have been built in the United States since the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island. But that is about to change. A number have recently been approved and dozens more are waiting in the wings.