I imagine this talk@ won’t change the mind of anyone who sees nuclear power as a religious issue, but it is very interesting as a technical talk, discussing among other things:
- how nuclear power has managed to stay at about 20% of the US electrical power supply even though that power supply has grown while no new nuclear plants have been constructed
- why there are very good reasons for every US utility to avoid being the first to commission a new nuclear plant, and the way congress has tried to provide incentives to deal with this
- changes in the NRC process for commissioning a new plant to try to avoid the delays and legal uncertainties of the past that have made the utilities so unwilling to even consider building new plants
On a somewhat more pessimistic (IMHO) note, this talk@, given at Vanderbilt in Feb 2007 by William Hinze, discusses the impasse regarding nuclear waste disposal in the US and is not optimistic about the politics surrounding the issue becoming resolved soon.