Pocket Power: The Future of Nuclear is Small Scale and Modular
For all the talk of an ever-imminent nuclear renaissance, it’s
easy to forget that the last nuke plants to come online in the
United States were built in the 1970s. Sure, we get roughly
20-percent of our nation’s electricity from nuclear plants, but
the glowing (ahem) promises of atomic energy (“Clean, safe, too
cheap to meter”) have remained but promises. So why has this so-
called renaissance stalled out for the past three decades? Well,
there was that not insignificant incident at Three Mile Island
that gave many pause. But, really, it’s cost. To build a
utility-scale nuclear power plant to the safety standards
demanded today is just damn expensive. How expensive? Try over
$10 billion each for the most recent plans that have been given
any serious consideration. So much for “too cheap to
meter”—without any private banks or investors willing to
underwrite the projects, none of these are any closer to
construction. So what’s the flailing industry