Sunday, August 06, 2006

It's pronounced Nucular!!!


Swedish nuclear reactors shut down over safety concerns

"Three of Sweden's ten nuclear reactors have been shut down due to safety concerns following an incident last week at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in which the reactor cooling systems failed. The reactor has since been shut down there. After the incident, the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, SKI asked all the nuclear power plants to demonstrate that the same failure could not happen in them. On Wednesday, two more reactors at Oskarshamn were shut down after the operator said their safety could not be guaranteed."

So it takes a near meltdown to reveal that three of Sweden's nuclear plants can't guarentee their safety? With the ubiquitous talks of oil prices and consumption, I think we forget the prevalence of nuclear energy. 20% of the US is powered by nuclear energy. Although Canada relies on nuclear energy for just 15% of its power needs "Ontario has 16 operating reactors providing about 50% of the province’s electricity, plus two reactors undergoing refurbishment."

Is this another calling to move towards safer forms of renewable energy, or should we continue to rely on nuclear power and simply increase the scrutiny?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home