Word: plante
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Safety is a vital global issue. A nuclear power accident anywhere stirs public fears about nuclear plants everywhere. Executives of U.S. utilities shuddered in February when the failure of a valve caused the worst mishap in the 20-year history of Japan's atomic power industry, crippling a plant in the town of Mihama, about 200 miles west of Tokyo. "When the skill and discipline of the Japanese falter," says Lawrence Lidsky, an M.I.T. nuclear engineer, "that means anyone can screw...
That endorsement marks one of the few recent positive developments for an industry that has been mired in misery for more than two decades. Faced with an endless round of challenges, U.S. utilities have walked away from 120 nuclear plants since 1974 -- more than all the plants now in operation. In New York State, the Long Island Lighting Co. gave up on its completed $5.5 billion Shoreham nuclear facility in 1989 after local authorities refused to approve the firm's plans for an evacuation route for nearby residents in the event of a serious accident. The state now plans...
Such fiascoes have for years discouraged virtually every U.S. utility from even looking sideways at nuclear power. "We have no plans to build a nuclear plant," says Pam Chapman, a spokeswoman for Indiana's PSI Energy. The troubled company is still reeling from the financial crisis that sandbagged it in 1984, when it wrote off $2.7 billion in construction costs for a half-built reactor. Concurs Gary Neale, president of nearby Northern Indiana Public Service Co., which scrubbed a barely started nuclear plant in 1981: "We're not antinuclear, but given the size of our company, I just...
Utility executives must be persuaded that ordering nuclear plants again can make economic, environmental and practical sense. The first challenge, already addressed in the Administration's recent proposal, will be to streamline the licensing process, which now requires a set of public hearings before a plant ; can be built and another before it can start operating. In the case of New Hampshire's $6 billion Seabrook nuclear power station, the second round of hearings kept the completed plant idle for three years, costing its owner, Public Service Co. of New Hampshire, an extra $1 billion in interest and other expenses...
...question remains: Who would buy such a plant? Wall Street experts say the most likely customers could be consortiums rather than individual firms. "The next generation of nuclear reactors will be partly owned by manufacturers as well as by utilities," says Barry Abramson of Prudential Securities. "Utilities want to spread the risks around this time." That seems to be happening already. Without much fanfare, for example, Westinghouse and Bechtel, a San Francisco-based engineering firm, have formed a joint venture with the Michigan utility Consumers Power to purchase and operate nuclear plants...