May 22, 2007
Nuclear hopes and fears
In the latest sign of confidence in a new era opening for nuclear power, Areva is to spend E610m on a new uranium conversion plant in the south of France. Meanwhile Eon of Germany has said it is "keen" to be among the leaders in building a new generation of nuclear power plants in the UK, where the Labour government is signalling a policy shift to back new nuclear build; with the backing of the generally pro-Labour Observer newspaper. And in China, a new company has been established to import up-to-date nuclear technologies, which has agreed in principle to buy for pressurised water reactors from Westinghouse . The door-stopping International Energy Outlook from the US government, buried in all the numbers here, predicted a seven-fold rise in China’s nuclear electricity output by 2030. Although the new plants are safer and produce much less waste than the old ones, however, they still have their problems, as pointed out in the International Herald Tribune: nuclear power may be part of the answer to climate change, but it also can be one of the victims.
