By By Adrian Croft and Daniel Fineren,
Reuters
LONDON - Japan's nuclear crisis in the wake of a huge earthquake is likely to increase opposition to plans for a major nuclear expansion in Europe and focus attention on the vast potential costs of a nuclear disaster.
The crisis will reignite concern over nuclear safety as Japan fights to avert a meltdown at crippled nuclear reactors, describing the quake and tsunami, which may have killed more than 10,000 people, as its biggest crisis since World War Two.
The disaster is a setback to the nuclear industry, which is enjoying a renaissance as public fears over nuclear safety have faded along with memories of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States and Ukraine's 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Japan disaster may mean setback for U.S. nuclear industry
By Jia Lynn Yang,
Washington Post
Stymied by concerns about safety and cost, the U.S. nuclear power industry has struggled to make a comeback for decades. Now the revival may have to wait even longer, as earthquake damage to a reactor in northern Japan has again highlighted the potential hazards of going nuclear.
The timing is tough for the industry, which recently has been enjoying more support in Washington than on Wall Street. President Obama as well as Republican leaders on Capitol Hill want to lend the industry billions of dollars in additional taxpayer funds to help pay for building new nuclear plants. Even some environmentalists had begun to embrace nuclear energy in the wake of last summer’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and amid concerns about global warming.
But banks and investors worry that the plants are too expensive and risky to finance. The crisis in Japan could jeopardize or at least tone down political support for nuclear energy just as the industry needs all the financial backing it can get from the government.
