Obama to boost US nuclear power industry

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Summary	Obama to boost US nuclear power industry
Category	General
New Science Technology Idea	" ... President Obama has moved to boost the US nuclear power industry, proposing massive government loan guarantees for construction of new stations and setting up a panel to sort out nuclear waste policy. The New York Times reports that the White House will include $54bn of loan guarantees in the 2011 budget request to Congress, up from $18.5bn. The idea is to provide investors with enough certainty to move ahead and build new power stations. At the same time, Obama's energy secretary Steven Chu announced the appointment of a new commission on nuclear waste, hinting that at least some waste might be re-used as fuel in the future rather than being put into long-term storage. In the early days of nuclear power it was assumed that spent fuel would be reprocessed and reused, because it was thought that uranium was so rare that no other plan could make sense. In the event, however, uranium turned out to be more common than expected. Some nations undertook reprocessing activities anyway, but new fuel has so far remained cheap enough that generally these have been commercially marginal - though perhaps worthwhile from the viewpoint of national weapons programmes. ... "
Webpage	More info
Author	Editor
Date	2/1/2010