Leaky Nuclear Plants Versus States Rights
From the Epoch Times:
The people of Georgia may soon be neighbors to the first two new U.S. nuclear plants approved in decades, thanks to billions in loan guarantees just proposed by the Obama administration. But discontent in state legislatures is signaling that those new nuclear plants may not be warmly welcomed in every neighborhood.
Around the country, a problem-plagued nuclear industry is being met by public mistrust. Just last month, the Vermont senate voted 26–4 to block a license extension for Vermont Yankee, the state’s only nuclear power plant, when it reaches the end of its original 40-year license in 2012.
Also in February, West Virginia defeated a bill to repeal that state’s ban on new nuclear construction. And in Arizona, a bill to classify nuclear power as renewable energy was withdrawn.
The source of distrust is a fleet of 104 nuclear plants that isn’t aging well. Vermont Yankee and its owner Entergy Corporation, for example, seemed a shoe-in for a 20-year license renewal in 2012 until one of the plant’s cooling towers collapsed. Then radioactive tritium was discovered leaking into local groundwater from buried pipes that cannot be inspected (after Entergy claimed under oath that no such pipes existed).
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