Are Some Technological Wonders Economically Impractical?

The Supersonic Transport (SST) is sometimes cited as a step backward in technology. It was a technological wonder that was an economic failure. The Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) may have the same history. At the dawn of the nuclear age an optimistic bureaucrat at the Atomic Energy Commission predicted that electricity would become so cheap that there would be no need for meters. Are NPPs like SSTs, technical wonders with problems that make them economically impractical?

The SST, a joint venture between the British and French governments, made transatlantic flights in half the time of subsonic planes. However, high fuel costs and stratospheric maintenance costs made tickets prohibitively expensive. This was a case of government subsidized technology that was not economically sustainable.

The nuclear power plant concept has been subsidized by governments for sixty years. When the Atomic Entergy Commission was renamed the Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRC) it was to make the commission into a regulatory agency rather than the nuclear industry's public relations body. However, a visit to the NRC web site will find enthusiasm for nuclear power and little recognition of the problems. Recently Edward McGaffigan, one of the five NRC Commissioners, was criticized by his agency for speaking out about the billions of dollars spent on a nuclear waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada while the citizens of Nevada refuse to accept the waste. The industry wants to build more NPP's, but there is no state that will accept the permanent storage of nuclear waste. The waste processing plant in Washington State has construction costs that have risen from $4 billion to $14 billion and still is not finished. The "promise" of reprocessing nuclear waste for reuse in reactors is a technology that remains theoretical, and perhaps theological.

NPPs are said to be an answer to global warming, the balance of payments and cheaper electricity. Designs of NPP's have been improved since the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Training of NPP operators is now more rigorous. Security at NPPs has been tighter since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. France and Japan have embraced NPPs. However, Germany is rethinking a plan to decommission its NPP's in the face of global warming. Global warming may be sufficient threat that we must turn to NPP's for our electricity. But one may ask, "Where will we store the nuclear waste that is dangerous for millions of years?"

In the end, political and economic considerations will determine policy and location of NPPs. The political debate will be right here in Levy County and in every county that is asked to host a nuclear power plant or waste disposal site.