The Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR): Safety Issues

The Bush Administration has made the expansion of nuclear power generation a centerpiece of its domestic energy policy. However, the White House has not addressed the practical issue of how to overcome the nearly three-decade-long aversion among U.S. electric utilities to investing in new nuclear plants. In today's deregulating market, utilities will not build new nuclear power plants unless they are clearly competitive with fossil fuel plants (or receive substantial government subsidies). Compounding the difficulty are the nagging questions that continue to inhibit public acceptance of nuclear power: severe accident risk, non-proliferation, vulnerability to sabotage and nuclear waste disposal. To solve all these problems simultaneously will be a considerable challenge --one unlikely to be met by the current generation of light-water reactors (LWRs), the only reactor type now used for power generation in the U.S.