After years of false dawns, hype is turning to hope again for the U.S. uranium industry, according to a report by Dan Roberts for FinancialTimes.com.
Outside a nuclear fuel rod factory in North Carolina, caretakers are unfurling a stylised metal sculpture of an atom that was folded up to protect it from the Atlantic hurricane season.
Like much of the industry in the US, the General Electric plant is also dusting down the cobwebs from a far deeper period of hibernation. Designed in the 1960s, when optimists thought nuclear-generated electricity would become too cheap to bother metering, this sprawling plant on 1,650 acres never came close to reaching its potential for packing uranium fuel pellets into the spindly metal rods that form the heart of a reactor.
The last new US power station was commissioned in the 1980s. GE, and its Japanese fuel partners Toshiba and Hitachi, have mothballed one production line and export some output to Asia.
But hype is finally turning to hope again in an industry used to many false dawns. Last month, a consortium of utility companies selected two sites next to existing nuclear plants in Mississippi and Alabama where GE and Westinghouse - a US-based rival owned by British Nuclear Fuels - will submit competing designs to build a new generation of reactors.
. . .In the US particularly, political and economic conditions have not looked more conducive since the 1960s.
As well as contributing public money to encourage new designs, Washington politicians gave the industry a big fillip this year with an energy bill that extended federal liability insurance, promised production tax credits and offered research incentives for a future generation of reactors.
Meanwhile, record oil and gas prices mean private sector utility companies are slowly shaking off their long-held scepticism about the financial risks of atomic energy. More efficient use of existing reactors has allowed nuclear to maintain its share of US electricity generation at about 20 per cent.
Outside a nuclear fuel rod factory in North Carolina, caretakers are unfurling a stylised metal sculpture of an atom that was folded up to protect it from the Atlantic hurricane season.
Like much of the industry in the US, the General Electric plant is also dusting down the cobwebs from a far deeper period of hibernation. Designed in the 1960s, when optimists thought nuclear-generated electricity would become too cheap to bother metering, this sprawling plant on 1,650 acres never came close to reaching its potential for packing uranium fuel pellets into the spindly metal rods that form the heart of a reactor.
The last new US power station was commissioned in the 1980s. GE, and its Japanese fuel partners Toshiba and Hitachi, have mothballed one production line and export some output to Asia.
But hype is finally turning to hope again in an industry used to many false dawns. Last month, a consortium of utility companies selected two sites next to existing nuclear plants in Mississippi and Alabama where GE and Westinghouse - a US-based rival owned by British Nuclear Fuels - will submit competing designs to build a new generation of reactors.
. . .In the US particularly, political and economic conditions have not looked more conducive since the 1960s.
As well as contributing public money to encourage new designs, Washington politicians gave the industry a big fillip this year with an energy bill that extended federal liability insurance, promised production tax credits and offered research incentives for a future generation of reactors.
Meanwhile, record oil and gas prices mean private sector utility companies are slowly shaking off their long-held scepticism about the financial risks of atomic energy. More efficient use of existing reactors has allowed nuclear to maintain its share of US electricity generation at about 20 per cent.
