There are five operating nuclear power plants in the Commonwealth: TMI, Beaver Valley, Limerick, Peach Bottom and Susquehanna. No new nuclear plants have been built in the United States since the 1979 TMI accident. However, with growing US demand for power, fuel shortages and rising electricity costs, the nuclear power industry hopes for a resurgence. Nuclear power flourishes in Europe and some see that continent as a model for our own energy future.
Terry Fitzpatrick, general counsel for the Electric Power Generation Association and former chairman of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, and Dr. Forrest Remick, a former NRC commissioner and former associate vice president for research and professor of nuclear engineering at Penn State, will be our guests. Dr. Remick at one time worked at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria and will share his insights into Europe’s considerable reliance on nukes for power.
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates almost a 25 percent rise in demand for electricity in the United States by 2030. To sustain economic growth, we will have to generate more electricity and that means hundreds of additional power plants. Will some of them be nuclear? Right now, nuclear constitutes about 20 percent of our power generation. The Nuclear Energy Institute says just to maintain that share would require building three reactors every two years starting in 2016. They base that estimate on U.S. Department of Energy forecasts.
But the indelible images of fear and potential catastrophe at TMI and the death and damage inflicted by the meltdown and explosion at Chernobyl, make the decision to “go nuclear” here much more difficult. And there is the thorny question of what to do with the dangerous byproducts of nuclear power generation. The federal government selected a site in Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the repository for spent-nuclear fuel rods and other highly radioactive waste. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission must approve the site but is getting heavy resistance from some members of Congress. So for now, the nuclear waste remains on-site at TMI and other nuclear plants around the country. Seventeen companies and consortia are pursuing licenses for more than 30 nuclear power plants in the United States. The NRC is reviewing those applications, as well.
Join us Friday night at 8:30 for Smart Talk on WITF-TV. If you have a question or comment for our guests, please shoot us an email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
