Nuclear power was widely regarded as the Holy Grail for energy supply when first introduced into the US electricity market in the late 1950s and early 1960s— power so cheap that utilities could scarcely afford the cost of the meters needed to monitor its consumption and charge for its use. The first civilian reactor, with a capacity to produce 60 MW of electricity (MWe), went into service in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, in late 1957. By the end of 1974, 55 reactors were in operation in the United States with a combined capacity of about 32 GWe. The largest individual power plant had a capacity of 1.25 GWe: the capacity of reactors constructed since 1970 averaged more than 1 GWe. The industry then went into a state of suspended animation. A series of highly publi¬cized accidents was responsible for this precipitous change in the fortunes of the industry. Only 13 reactors were ordered in the United States after 1975, and all of these orders were subsequently cancelled. Public support for nuclear power effectively disappeared in the United States following events that unfolded at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania on March 28, 1979. It suffered a further setback, not only in the United States but also worldwide, in the wake of the disaster that struck at the Chernobyl nuclear facility in the Ukraine on April 26, 1986. The most recent confidence- sapping development occurred in Japan, at the Fukushima- Daiichi nuclear complex. Floodwaters raised by a tsunami triggered by a major offshore earthquake resulted in a series of self- reinforcing problems in March 2011, culminating in a highly publicized release of radioactivity to the environment that forced the evacuation of more than 300,000 people from the surrounding communities If not a death blow, this most recent accident certainly clouded prospects for the future of nuclear power, not only in Japan but also in many other parts of the world. Notably, Germany elected to close down its nuclear facilities, leading to increased dependence on coal to meet its demand for electricity, seriously complicating its objective to markedly reduce the nation’s overall emissions of CO2.
Earth, Wind, and Fire: Power Infrastructure in Alberta’s New Age