Prepare for a new nuclear industry

Prepare for a new nuclear industry

06 April 2011

The nuclear power industry will change in the years after the Fukushima accident but the need for the technology will not, said industry leaders today in Chicago at the first major conference since the crisis began.

Opening statements at the World Nuclear Fuel Cycle 2011 conference included grave warnings of the hard road ahead for nuclear power. "We must admit that we represent a technology that has frightened a great many people," said Richard Myers, vice president of policy development at the US trade group the Nuclear Energy Institute. "But the industry can explain the unfounded nature of this fear, and provide the data to prove it is so."

Immediate political and regulatory responses to the accident have varied and it still remains to be seen how safety requirements may be revised. Despite this uncertainty, World Nuclear Association director general John Ritch noted: "In the years preceding Fukushima, most major nations in the world reviewed their energy and environment policies and, with few exceptions, came inexorably to the same conclusion: that, for reasons of energy independence and environmental responsibility, nuclear power must play a central role in their energy strategies for the 21st Century."