17 March 2011 - nuclear trouble 3

Technically, a new nuclear reactor is far safer than an old one, so you prefer to retire the oldest. Economically, a nuclear power plant has high construction costs and low operating costs, so it’s important to operate it as long as possible. Politically, that means that safe new plants cannot be financed because they face decades of high regulatory risk due to the unsafe old plants. Technologically, that undermines research into next-generation reactors that are safe against any incident short of military attack, and use fuel far more efficiently, and destroy nuclear waste, and open the door to deep space travel. Moral: Pay attention to the engineers first.