Sadly the U.S.,which invented nuclear power, no longer has the skills to build new plants. We will have to sub-contract that to the Japanese.
Read the whole article, it is pretty interesting and will give you something to do while we wait for our abysmal politicians to come up with an energy policy.
The American Spectator
last Tuesday, September 25, was a milestone. For the first time since 1973, a new application for building a reactor was placed before the federal government.
The proposal submitted Tuesday is to build two new reactors with a total capacity of 2,700 megawatts at the South Texas Project site in Matagorda County, where two nuclear units have already operated for 25 years. The size of the reactors is unprecedented -- the biggest American plants generally produce about 1,200 MW.
...Soon these new owners -- heavily staffed with veterans from the nuclear Navy -- were revitalizing the industry.
The results have been stunning. Whereas power plants traditionally ran at a "capacity factor" of 60 percent -- meaning they are up and running 60 percent of the time -- the nation's 104 reactors now run at a previously unimaginable capacity of 90 percent. (In South Korea, where nuclear provides half the electricity, the figure is 95 percent.) The average nuclear plant now runs uninterrupted for nearly two years before shutting down for refueling. Safety improvements have been spectacular. While there were 26 shutdowns of more than a year for safety reasons from 1987 to 1997 and 21 in the decade before, there has only been one over the past decade.
