Push for new nuclear power sputters, but old reactors still pose cancer risks

From a news release issued by the Cancer Prevention Coalition posted on World-Wire:

CHICAGO, Illinois, July 27, 2009 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- Nuclear reactors in the United States should be phased out, and replaced by technologies that don’t threaten public health with the emission of radioactive chemicals, urges the Cancer Prevention Coalition.

A recent energy bill sponsored by Congressional Republicans proposed building 100 new nuclear reactors across the United States in the next 20 years.

The proposal, which would double the current U.S. total of 104 operating nuclear reactors, would amount to a nuclear renaissance, as no new reactors have been ordered since 1978.

Concerns about global warming gave utilities the idea for this revival since reactors don’t emit greenhouse gases while generating power, and utilities have stopped closing old reactors while proposing 33 new ones to be sited in New England, throughout the South and Southeast, and in Texas, Utah and Idaho.

(For a list of applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval of new reactors click here).

But this month, two Swedish scientists published an article concluding that a large increase in nuclear reactors will not solve global warming.