{"id":10230,"date":"2015-07-20T07:04:08","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T12:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10230"},"modified":"2015-07-20T07:04:08","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T12:04:08","slug":"can-u-s-nuclear-plants-operate-for-80-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10230","title":{"rendered":"Can U.S. Nuclear Plants Operate For 80 Years?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/oilprice.com\/Alternative-Energy\/Nuclear-Power\/Can-US-Nuclear-Plants-Operate-For-80-Years.html\" target=\"_blank\">Can U.S. Nuclear Plants Operate For 80 Years?<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>The nuclear industry in the United States has been at a standstill for several decades. After an extraordinary wave of construction in the 1960s and 1970s, the nuclear industry ground to a halt. A confluence of events killed off new construction, including high interest rates, cost overruns, delays, and the Three Mile Island incident that scared the public and turned it against nuclear power.<\/p>\n<p>But despite the nuclear industry\u2019s inability to build more than a handful of new nuclear power plants since the 1980s, nuclear power still accounts for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.eia.gov\/electricity\/monthly\/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_1_1\">about 19 percent<\/a>\u00a0of electricity generation in the United States, the third largest source of electricity behind coal and natural gas.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the nation\u2019s 99 reactors are mostly nearing their retirement age. Having originally been planned for 40-year lifespans, many of the reactors would have already been forced to shut down by now, with nearly all of the rest hitting their limits at some point within the next decade. Instead, more than three-quarters of them have already received a 20-year extension, putting off their retirements until the 2030s.<\/p>\n<p>But in the nuclear sector, where everything takes a long time, the 2030s are rapidly approaching. With one-fifth of the country\u2019s electricity fleet nearing retirement, and very few nuclear power plants under construction to replace what is expected to be lost, how will the U.S. cope with the lost capacity?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/oilprice.com\/Energy\/Energy-General\/This-Week-In-Energy-Oil-Shows-No-Signs-Of-A-Rebound-Amid-Ongoing-Slump.html\"><strong>Related:\u00a0This Week In Energy: Oil Shows No Signs Of A Rebound Amid Ongoing Slump<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cFour reactors are being built, but there\u2019s absolutely no money and no desire to finance more plants than that. So in 20 or 30 years we\u2019re going to have very few nuclear power plants in this country\u2014that\u2019s just a fact,\u201d the former Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, said in a 2013\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/tech-talk\/energy\/nuclear\/former-nrc-chairman-says-us-nuclear-industry-is-going-away\">interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can U.S. Nuclear Plants Operate For 80 Years? The nuclear industry in the United States has been at a standstill for several decades. After an extraordinary wave of construction in the 1960s and 1970s, the nuclear industry ground to a halt. A confluence of events killed off new construction, including high interest rates, cost overruns, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7411,6141,579,5004,6000,5332,834],"class_list":["post-10230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-electricity-generation","tag-nuclear-industry","tag-nuclear-power","tag-nuclear-reactors","tag-nuclear-regulatory-commission","tag-oilprice-com","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10231,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10230\/revisions\/10231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}