Today’s Nuclear Power Moratorium

Used nuclear fuel rods have been the political Achilles heel of commercial nuclear energy for decades. Using a very old but effective script, anti-nuclear activists and their allies have long frustrated the development of a permanent geologic waste repository.

Lost in all the happy talk about a nuclear “renaissance” and the Obama’s administration’s oft-repeated “all of the above” approach to general energy policy, is the fact that we’re approaching the first anniversary of a formal moratorium on new nuclear power plants in the US. The moratorium also includes what had been the near-routine granting of 20-year license renewals to existing electric power reactors.
On August 7, 2012, the five-member U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) voted unanimously to suspend final action on all pending COL (combined construction permit and operating license) applications for new plants, and license renewals for operating units in the existing fleet. The NRC took this action in response to a June 8, 2012 DC Circuit Court of Appeals decision that vacated key provisions of the NRC’s second update of its own generic “Waste Confidence Decision and Rule” (WCD). Years of litigation may lie ahead.


http://news.sfppr.org/2013/05/todays-nuclear-power-moratorium/