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The much-hyped "Renaissance" of atomic power has taken three devastating hits with potentially fatal consequences. The usually supine Nuclear Regulatory Commission has told Toshiba's Westinghouse Corporation that its "standardized" AP-1000 design might not withstand hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes. Regulators in France, Finland and the UK have raised safety concerns about AREVA's flagship EPR reactor. The front group for France's national nuclear power industry, AREVA's vanguard project in Finland is at least three years behind schedule and at least $3 billion over budget. And the Obama Administration indicates it will end efforts to license the proposed radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. After more than fifty years of trying, the nuclear industry has not a single prospective central dump site. "If history repeats itself as farce, then the nuclear power industry represents the most incompetent jester of all time," says Michael Mariotte of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service. It "seems intent on repeating every possible mistake of its failed past-from promoting inadequate, ever-changing reactor designs to blowing through even the largest imaginable budgets. If the computer industry followed the practices of the nuclear industry, we'd still be waiting for the first digital device that could fit in a space smaller than a warehouse and cost less than a family's annual income."

The much-hyped "Renaissance" of atomic power has taken three devastating hits with potentially fatal consequences. The usually supine Nuclear Regulatory Commission has told Toshiba's Westinghouse Corporation that its "standardized" AP-1000 design might not withstand hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes. Regulators in France, Finland and the UK have raised safety concerns about AREVA's flagship EPR reactor. The front group for France's national nuclear power industry, AREVA's vanguard project in Finland is at least three years behind schedule and at least $3 billion over budget. And the Obama Administration indicates it will end efforts to license the proposed radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. After more than fifty years of trying, the nuclear industry has not a single prospective central dump site. "If history repeats itself as farce, then the nuclear power industry represents the most incompetent jester of all time," says Michael Mariotte of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service. It "seems intent on repeating every possible mistake of its failed past-from promoting inadequate, ever-changing reactor designs to blowing through even the largest imaginable budgets. If the computer industry followed the practices of the nuclear industry, we'd still be waiting for the first digital device that could fit in a space smaller than a warehouse and cost less than a family's annual income."