I wish the U.S. had about 200 of these. See:
http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/1005/14biznuclear.html
QUOTES
. . .
Construction has begun in Finland on the first of a new generation of
reactors designed to alleviate many of the concerns that arose after the
accidents at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 and at
Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986.
The new plants are designed to be simpler and more rugged. They employ
"passive" methods to shut down in an emergency that are based on physical
phenomena such as gravity or temperature resistance rather than engineered
parts. Proponents say they virtually eliminate the danger of a meltdown of
the nuclear core.
The new reactors also contain safety features not found in older U.S.
plants, such as water-filled basins that would capture and cool the core if
a meltdown did occur.
"In terms of safety, the reactor being built in Finland is the only reactor
in the world in which the consequences of a core melt accident would be
restricted to the plant itself, thanks to the core catcher and other
features," said Anne Lauvergeon, chairman of the executive board at Areva,
a French-owned nuclear engineering firm that's helping to build the Finnish
plant.
"And, with its extremely robust containment, it's the reactor with the
highest resistance against an airplane crash worldwide," she said.
Finally, the new reactors are supposed to produce much less nuclear waste
perhaps only one-tenth of that produced by existing reactors.
Here is a document from Greenpeace opposing the construction of this reactor:
http://eu.greenpeace.org/downloads/energy/PRonFinnishEPR.pdf
- Jed
