Time to go nuclear again?

According to an article by the AP that moved a little while ago, the Tennessee Valley Authority is looking at adding a second nuclear reactor at its Watts Barr station, the site of the last nuclear power plant to come on line in the United States. To do that, TVA management is asking its board of directors to approve $20 million for a detailed engineering study of what it would take to add the second reactor.

Watts Bar is about 50 miles south of Knoxville.

There's also talk of a consortium being intersted in building a next-generation reactor at the TVA's unfinished Bellefonte nuclear station in Alabama.

According to the AP, the TVA believes it will need new base generation capacity by 2014.

Watts Bar 1 came on line in 1996.

Here in West Virginia and in the Ohio Valley as a whole, nuclear power has never been much of an option. If memory serves, the Zimmer power plant this side of Cincinnati started out as a nuclear project but converted over to coal. And there may have been talk of a nuke plant along the Ohio somwhere in Indiana, but my memory on that one is hazy. If I'm wrong on any of this, please let me know.

I guess the point of all this is that the United States needs more electric generating capacity. I've never like nuclear power because of the waste it produces. But is that waste any worse than the mercury put into the environment, especially into our rivers, by burning coal?

Maybe it's time to give nuclear another chance.

But first we'll have to ge the Yucca Mountain situation straightened out, I guess.

This one will take some more research before I can form a firm opinion. I would say the same is true of most Americans, although many won't want to admit it.