Hungry World Embraces Nuclear Power

Nuclear power is on the rise, all over the world after decades of dormancy, driven by the need for a cleaner environment and steady, secure sources of power in the Internet age.
Plans are on the drawing board to build as many as new power plants - the first since 1973--while hundreds more are under consideration in China, India, Russia and other countries.
Nuclear power is experiencing a budding renaissance.

High fossil-fuel prices, low interest rates, and concerns about the environment and energy security have all combined to increase momentum in the construction of new nuclear plants around the globe.
With worries about terrorism now paramount in the minds of the public and political leaders, concerns about safety that haunted nuclear utilities for decades appear to have receded, replaced by increasing confidence that after a half-century of operating without causing a major public health hazard .
A new generation of power plants on the drawing board, some with automatic methods of shutting down in emergencies, promises to be safer than before.

But analysts say that in light of lingering worries caused by the Three Mile Island crisis in the US and the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, the industry will have to continue giving top priority to ensuring public safety if it is to succeed .

The growing power needs of rapidly developing countries such as China, India and Russia also have acted as a catalyst for change. China’s electricity demands have doubled during the past decade, and although it has become the second-largest power producer after the US, China suffers chronic power shortages.

Few other power sources can deliver the large loads of electricity the country’s 1.3 billion potential customers need without causing widespread ecological damage.
China’s Three Gorges Dam, for example, will produce more power than any other hydroelectric plant in the world when it goes on line in 2007, but at the cost of displacing more than a million people, inundating a scenic national treasure and endangering rare species of fish.

China, like the United States, has plenty of coal. But its coal-fired power plants have blanketed the countryside with haze and choking emissions that contribute to an estimated 400,000 premature deaths each year.
Thus, the emerging Asian giant is laying plans to build as many as 100 nuclear power plants in the next 20 years, and has started construction on two of them, in what is by far the most ambitious nuclear program in the world .

India, too, has come to see nuclear power as essential to satisfy growing power needs. It is building eight nuclear plants. India secured an agreement to get technical assistance from the United States in what officials say could be a breakthrough on the diplomatic front.

The revival can be seen most clearly in Asia . Asian nations have been the most aggressive in their pursuit of nuclear power over the past decade and have become the center of growth for the global nuclear insustry .Nuclear power is gaining an image as a clean energy source. Nuclear plants emit none of the pollutants or greenhouse gases that are byproducts of the most common sources of power: coal, oil and natural gas.