You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap
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It's possible to be stupid about nuclear plants--let's not place them where earthquakes or tornadoes or hurricanes are likely. That still leaves wide swaths of the US that can safely generate electricity from fission. What are we waiting for, a written invitation?
Where many of us go wrong, though, is the assumption that the anti-nuclear crowd is genuinely afraid of another Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, or even a China Syndrome. They're not; that's just what they hide behind. They don't like capitalism, and they don't like success. Nuclear power would solve too many problems, making socialism harder to instill as the economy hums along on relatively inexpensive and non-polluting electricity. That's why they're against it.
It's not a science issue, it's a political issue for them.