Nuclear was never the future. Nuclear was the stop gap between the old air polluting plants to when wind, solar or any other usable and environment friendly ways to generate electricity that comes along. Nuclear was never a thing seen as the future of energy. Certain factors lead to the current power plants.
John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton were the first to split first to split an atom using artificially accelerated particles. Now they noticed the fast amount of energy available in such atom. In practical units, the fission of 1 kg (2.2 lb) of uranium-235 releases 18.7 million kilowatt-hours as heat
Unfortunately it was before the war and and military applications took over. But to put that aside the reactors that was used was for that purposes. Breeder reactors was designed so that dangerous mining of uranium do not have to take place which destroyed a lot of families. Now a breeder reactor produces more fuel than it consumes
The breeder system that has had the greatest development effort is called the liquid-metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR). The breeder system that has had the greatest development effort is called the liquid-metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR). It produces about 20 percent more fuel than it consumes. In a large power reactor enough excess new fuel is produced over 20 years to permit the loading of another similar reactor. In the LMFBR system about 75 percent of the energy content of natural uranium is made available, in contrast to the one percent in the LWR.
The USA has not bothered to build or develop new plants because they had cut the emissions. So it was just a "It will do for now" technology.
Now the interesting thing is the accidents people refer to. In 1979 at Three Mile result of human error was the cause as the emergency cooling system was shut off. In an operating reactor, the fuel elements contain by far the largest fraction of the total radioactive inventory.
The safety and the design prevented a serious catastrophe. They designed it where a number of barriers prevent fission products from leaking into the air during normal operation. The fuel is clad in corrosion-resistant tubing. The heavy steel walls of the primary coolant system of the PWR form a second barrier. The water coolant itself absorbs some of the biologically important radioactive isotopes such as iodine. The steel and concrete building is a third barrier. Backup safety systems that inject boron into the coolant to absorb neutrons and stop the chain reaction to further assure shutdown are part of the PWR design.
Now at Chernobyl it was due to unauthorized testing of the reactor by its operators. The reactor went out of control; there were two explosions, the top of the reactor blew off, and the core was ignited, burning at temperatures of 1500° C. Again human stupidity and to add the reactor at Chernobyl' did not have a containment building. It could have prevented material from leaving the reactor site. Again no safety standards.
The worlds supply of enriched uranium fuel for powering commercial nuclear power plants is produced by five consortiums located in the United States, Western Europe, Russia, and Japan. Now there is where Iran also have problems. They wanted to sort of push in their own consortium which will break that cycle of control and monitoring the above ones have. They can not see who is doing something they are not suppose to do with it and that is where the US and other nations do not want Iran to mine their Uranium. That is why Russia has offered enrichment for them. Also since those accidents strict protocols have been in place for the safety of such plants. That is also a reason for the inspectors to visit and look at the sites. It is more for Irans own safety and to see if the plants are according safety regulations as the world do not want another Chernobyl. 30 years ago Nuclear was the answer but today it has done its purpose to fill that gap. Sweden committed to phasing out nuclear power. France canceled several planned reactors and was considering the replacement of aging nuclear plants with environmentally safer fossil-fuel plants. Germany announced plans to phase out nuclear energy as well.
CChina is now no 1 in five renewable technologies and aims to be in all. Thanks to private enterprise, China passed its 2020 wind power target in 2010, and India has more wind power than nuclear power. Chinas 2006 renewables (excluding large hydro) had seven times nuclears capacity and were growing sevenfold faster and that gap had widened despite the worlds most ambitious nuclear program.
Some stats I got from
THE WORLD NUCLEAR INDUSTRY STATUS REPORT 20102011
As of April 1, 2011, there were 437 nuclear reactors operating in the worldseven fewer than in 2002. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) currently lists 64 reactors as under construction in 14 countries. By comparison, at the peak of the industrys growth phase in 1979, there were 233 reactors being built concurrently. In 2008, for the first time since the beginning of the nuclear age, no new unit was started up, while two were added in 2009, five in 2010, and two in the first three months of 2011b. During the same time period, 11 reactors were shut down.c In the European Union, as of April 1, 2011, there were 143 reactors officially operationald, down from a historical maximum of 177 units in 1989. In 2009e, nuclear power plants generated 2,558 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity, about 2 percent
less than the previous year. The industrys lobby organization the World Nuclear Association headlined another drop in nuclear generationthe fourth year in a row. The role of nuclear power is declining steadily and now accounts for about 13 percent of the worlds electricity generation and 5.5 percent of the commercial primary energy.
