> its because the nuclear industry won't build them without special liability protections.
You say "liability protections" as if the dispute were over indemnification in case of a meltdown or accident. That's not what has made nuclear reactors too "risky" to be built in the US. The "risk" in question is that anti-nuclear factions will be able to indefinitely stall construction by repeatedly coming up with new "safety studies" to perform (e.g. environmental impact on squirrel population). This strategy worked for them in the past and the nuclear industry reckons it will work in the future unless they have legal protection against it.
> Old reactors in the US continue to be decommissioned even though new ones aren't being built.
A few old reactors, yes. But we've been holding steady at ~750GW of nuclear power for 15 years. "We have been keeping the old reactors running" is far, far closer to the truth than "we have been shutting them down."
Clean sources other than nuclear will eventually make this point moot but it'll take decades and in the meantime we have been / will be running on an unholy mix of unclean, nonrenewable power and power derived from old, dangerous nuclear reactors when we could have switched to clean, safe nuclear sources decades ago.
Not to mention that arguing about the degree of liability the owners face is effectively the same as arguing about the cost of their liability insurance. If the insurance is expensive enough to make it impossible to turn a profit, that is just as effective as a regulator causing endless delays by fiat.
You say "liability protections" as if the dispute were over indemnification in case of a meltdown or accident. That's not what has made nuclear reactors too "risky" to be built in the US. The "risk" in question is that anti-nuclear factions will be able to indefinitely stall construction by repeatedly coming up with new "safety studies" to perform (e.g. environmental impact on squirrel population). This strategy worked for them in the past and the nuclear industry reckons it will work in the future unless they have legal protection against it.
> Old reactors in the US continue to be decommissioned even though new ones aren't being built.
A few old reactors, yes. But we've been holding steady at ~750GW of nuclear power for 15 years. "We have been keeping the old reactors running" is far, far closer to the truth than "we have been shutting them down."
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/US_Electr...
> Objectively, the market has found economically viable alternatives to nuclear power.
Yeah, coal, which is probably even worse on average than running old, dangerous nuclear plants:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-ener...
Clean sources other than nuclear will eventually make this point moot but it'll take decades and in the meantime we have been / will be running on an unholy mix of unclean, nonrenewable power and power derived from old, dangerous nuclear reactors when we could have switched to clean, safe nuclear sources decades ago.
Yuck.