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It is fashionable among green groups and others who have utopian visions of a low tech post industrial society to say that nuclear energy is finished as a result of the Fukushima crisis. This is dead wrong. Charles D. Ferguson, President of the Federation of American Scientists, has an important essay in Foreign Policy Magazine on the subject. In an article titled, "Think Again: Nuclear Power," he writes that while Japan has "melted down, that doesn't mean the end of the atomic age."His point is that the fashionable approach to the nuclear fuel cycle is sometimes wrong.Also, there is other positive news about nuclear energy. The NRC is making headway with the final design certification of the Westinghouse AP1000. South Africa will try again to get financing and build new nuclear reactors instead of more coal plants.

Here's a quick summary of Ferguson's essay.First, Fukushima did not kill the nuclear renaissance. Germany already had a significant anti-nuclear political constituency well before March 11, 2011. Fukushima simply accelerated a process that was already underway. Meanwhile, China, India, and South Korea are moving ahead with their plans to rely on nuclear energy.Second, nuclear energy is not "an accident waiting to happen." The accidents which have happened are mostly the result of issues with organizational culture, and not technology failures.

Third, the expense of building nuclear power plants is offset by the low cost of running them. Once you factor in the benefits of stopping carbon emissions and the issue of climate change, nuclear energy looks like a bargain. While nuclear energy has been good for highly industrialized countries, it doesn't have nearly the same potential in the developing world for two reasons – cost and lack of robust electrical grids. Ferguson doesn't address small modular reactors which could find a niche in these markets.Fourth, commercial nuclear development does not necessarily lead to bomb making. Most of the 30 or so countries that use nuclear power have not built their own enrichment plants nor reprocessing centers.

There are plans for eight more AP1000 reactors – four in Florida, two in North Carolina, and two in South Carolina. The next two AP1000s likely to be built are to be located near Miami at the Turkey Point power station operated by Florida Power & Light. The approval of the AP1000 design is turning into a high stakes outcome with much of the future of nuclear reactor construction in the U.S. over the next two decades riding on it. No other reactor vendor comes close.

UK continues on path to rebuilding a complete new sets of reactors. The Finnish government said that it has sent bid documents to Areva and Toshiba for responses to build a new nuclear power station. The new plant will need to generate up to 1,700 MW and be ready to produce power by 2020 at a cost of $6-9 billion

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted 20-year license renewals to the two reactors in Salem County, New Jersey. The two pressurized water reactors have been operating since 1977 and 1981 and generate just over 1,100 MW each.

Georgia Power company stock

On a professional level, there is a lot riding on the success of the project to add two new Westinghouse AP1000 reactors to the Vogtle site in eastern Georgia along the Savannah River. It is one of only two remaining projects that is actually moving forward out of the finalists for the first round of loan guarantees initially authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It is the only project to have actually been awarded a conditional loan guarantee and the one that is most at risk of having a significant schedule interruption if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission dallies even longer in its review process for the completed design certification license application

This morning, the Wall Street Journal published Rebecca Smith’s article titled Georgia Eyes Cost Buffer for Nuclear Plant that described how the public utility commission is considering changing the cost recovery rules because they are being pressured by people who think that the project is in danger of a cost and schedule overrun. The company leaders testified that they would have chosen a natural gas project as being “more cost effective” (for the company) if they had known that there was a possibility of the rules of the game being changed six years after the project decision was made

Miami, Oct. 16 –Headline: ‘Fukushima disaster can happen here’ Today’s Miami Herald has an article warning South Florida residents they “should take little comfort in assurances that a Fukushima-type catastrophe could not happen here.” It notes that the Miami-area nuclear power plant, Turkey Point, “is just as reliant as Fukushima on offsite electricity, emergency electrical generators and batteries.” Yet, Florida Power & Light (FPL) is trying to build two new reactors at the site, making a total of four.

These two proposed reactors, the AP1000 design, are essentially “experimental” and “have never been tested or operated commercially at full scale”. The reactor design has “drawn substantial criticism on safety issues”. The article reviews three of these: 1) “One major issue is that the steel inner-containment structure is barely strong enough to keep radioactivity from escaping during a ‘design basis accident.’ This leaves little margin for error when the steel containment structure eventually corrodes and loses strength. Such corrosion is a common problem in older reactors.” 2) “The British Nuclear Installations Inspectorate has criticized Toshiba/Westinghouse for not sufficiently demonstrating that the outer concrete shield can withstand an external shock, such as an earthquake, hurricane, tornado or impact from a commercial aircraft crash.” 3) “Perhaps, the most damaging criticism comes from Dr. John Ma, the lead structural reviewer evaluating the outer concrete shield for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Dr. Ma submitted a ‘nonconcurrence statement of dissent’ stating that the outer shield could shatter like a ‘glass cup’ in an earthquake or commercial aircraft crash.”

After 34 years, the United States is expected to resume construction of nuclear reactors by the end of the year, and Toshiba will export turbine equipment for the reactors to the U.S. early next month, it was learned Saturday. According to sources, construction will begin by year-end on the Nos. 3 and 4 reactors of the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia Georgia Country Georgia /ˈdʒɔrdʒə/ (Georgian: საქართველო, sak’art’velo IPA: [sɑkʰɑrtʰvɛlɔ] ( listen)) is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern E... View full Dossier Latest news and the Nos. 2 and 3 reactors of the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in South Carolina South Carolina U.S. state South Carolina /ˌsaʊθ kærəˈlaɪnə/ is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally pa... View full Dossier Latest news .

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Nuclear Regulatory Commission Government Agency (United States of America) The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government that was established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 from the United States Atomic Energy C... View full Dossier Latest news is expected to shortly approve the construction and operation of the reactors, which have been designed by Westinghouse, a subsidiary of Toshiba. The decision to resume construction of reactors is expected to pave the way for Japan Japan Country Japan /dʒəˈpæn/ (Japanese: 日本 Nihon or Nippon; formally 日本国  Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, literally, the State of Japan) is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the... View full Dossier Latest news to export related equipment to the United States, observers said.

The reactors to be constructed are of the AP1000 type

The NRC had declared delays in the new reactor approval process for AP1000 and ESBWR reactor designs. They NRC wants to complete their analysis on information from Fukushima Daiichi before moving ahead with the process to possibly approve either new design. Meanwhile Nuclear power companies are forging ahead with preparing sites for the reactors they hope to build. An interesting twist in that power companies can start a project before getting approval for the reactor they intend to build. This is then frequently used to pressure the NRC because work and spending is already underway. It was a key circumstance during the initial approval process at North Anna.

The Oyster Creek reactor in New Jersey, one of the oldest in the US has announced they will shut down for good in 2019. In 2010 Excelon threatened to close Oyster Creek unless a mandate requiring them to build cooling towers was removed. It appears that the cooling tower issues may have been a major factor in the decision to cease operations.  Containment corrosion and lawsuits over the lack of metals testing on the reactor were mounting against Oyster Creek. The people in the region and the state authorities were all working various angles to shut down the plant due to its many problems. They have succeeded. Now to just hope nothing bad happens at Oyster Creek before 2019.

At Davis Besse in Ohio, as they are replacing the reactor cap that has a pineapple sized hole in it, they discovered a long crack in the containment concrete. They had already sliced a hole in the containment dome to put the replacement reactor cap in. FirstEnergy claims none of this will degrade safety…..

China has "vastly increased" the risk of a nuclear accident by opting for cheap technology that will be 100 years old by the time dozens of its reactors reach the end of their lifespans, according to diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Beijing.The warning comes weeks after the government in Beijing resumed its ambitious nuclear expansion programme, that was temporarily halted for safety inspections in the wake of the meltdown of three reactors in Fukushima, Japan

Cables released this week by WikiLeaks highlight the secrecy of the bidding process for power plant contracts, the influence of government lobbying, and potential weaknesses in the management and regulatory oversight of China's fast-expanding nuclear sector

n August, 2008, the embassy noted that China was in the process of building 50 to 60 new nuclear plants by 2020. This target – which has since increased – was a huge business opportunity. To keep up with the French and Russians, the cable urged continuous high-level advocacy on behalf of the US company Westinghouse to push its AP-1000 reactor.This is crucial, according to the cable dated 29 August 2008 from the American Embassy in Beijing, because "all reactor purchases to date have been largely the result of internal high level political decisions absent any open process."

Southern Co. is poised to end a three-decade freeze on nuclear development as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission holds a final hearing today before granting it a license to build and operate two reactors. The stakes for Atlanta-based Southern are greater than its bottom line, Chief Executive Officer Thomas Fanning said during two interviews. If there is to be a nuclear revival in the U.S., Southern, the largest U.S. power company, must deliver the $14 billion project on-time and on-budget, he said.

“We’ve got to be successful,” Fanning said during an interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. “This is the first, best shot for the nuclear renaissance in America.” Nuclear expansion ground to a halt in the U.S. as cost overruns, construction delays and a thicket of new regulations after Three Mile Island’s partial-meltdown in 1979 turned some plants into economic disasters, Ted Quinn, past president of the American Nuclear Society, said in a telephone interview.

A far worse accident at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear station this March so far hasn’t derailed Southern’s project at Plant Vogtle south of Augusta, Georgia, as critics predicted. Southern is on track to license the plant by early 2012, provided the commission certifies design changes for the Westinghouse AP1000 reactors that will power Vogtle, said Scott Burnell, a commission spokesman, in a telephone interview.

After 44 years of operation, unit 1 of the UK's Oldbury nuclear power plant will be permanently shut down in February 2012, ten months earlier than expected, Magnox Ltd announced.

The company said that further operation of the 217 MWe Magnox reactor was "no longer economically viable." The decision to shut down the unit - the only operational reactor at the site - was taken "after careful consideration by operators Magnox and the site owners the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), in conjunction with independent regulators the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR)."   Built in the 1960s and among the first generation of UK reactors, both of the gas-cooled, graphite-moderated first generation reactors at Oldbury were originally scheduled to shut down at the end of 2008. However, the NDA requested permission from the regulator to operate beyond that date, earning revenue to help pay for decommissioning. While unit 2 was eventually shut down in June 2011, unit 1 was expected to close at the end of 2012. To date, the site has generated over 130 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity.  

Oldbury site director Phil Sprague said, "Oldbury's excellent generation history is a terrific success story, especially as the site was originally planned to close in 2008. As a result of excellent teamwork between Magnox, the NDA and ONR the site's operational life was extended until February 2012, and it is a testament to the skills and dedication of the workforce who have operated and maintained the reactors to such a high standard that it has been able to continue to generate safely."   Magnox Ltd noted that since their originally planned shut down date of 2008, the two units have generated an additional 7 TWh, worth an estimated £300 million ($478 million) to the British taxpayer. This extra generation, it added, also saved some six million tonnes of carbon from being released into the atmosphere.   NDA executive director for delivery Mark Lesinski commented: "The income from electricity sales has provided an important contribution to the funding for our decommissioning program. Magnox and NDA will now work with stakeholders to ensure a smooth transition into the next stage for the site which will involve defueling and subsequent decommissioning."