Briefings Magazine: ‘We need massive amounts of electricity.’ Nuclear Power’s Sudden Comeback

By SIMON CONSTABLE

More than three-quarters of a century ago, nuclear-powered electricity was born in Chicago. A team of scientists led by Enrico Fermi created the first sustained nuclear reaction. It lit up four light bulbs, a relatively small amount of energy, but it led the way for much more. Indeed, the heyday of building atomic power plants had begun. In 1951, Russia started building a grid-connected reactor, the only one that year. And by 1979, the peak year, 234 plants were under construction globally.

But heydays don’t last forever. While nuclear energy was presented as cheap and clean, its reputation quickly got soiled after some epic disasters. The first, in 1957, was in northwest England at Sellafield nuclear reactor. In 1979, there was a partial nuclear meltdown at US-based Three Mile Island. In 1986, the Chernobyl, Ukraine, plant exploded, immediately killing 31 people. In 2011, a tsunami disabled the cooling system of a nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan. “Everyone thought nuclear power was safe, then something happened and got everybody concerned,” says Rob Thummel, senior portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital. “That’s kept nuclear on the sidelines; people wanted to shut it down.”

So what is happening now? Read more here.