It’s no real surprise, but this Reuters story about Seabrook Station nuclear power plant shutting down for a routine refueling notes that the owner, Florida Power and Light, plans to apply next year for a 20-year extension to Seabrook’s original 40-year operating license. Vermont Yankee, which is smaller but in worse shape than Seabrook, is in a long struggle to do the same thing - my guess is that the process would be much more straightforward for New Hampshire’s nuke plant.

There is much talk about a renaissance for nuclear power - but the technical issues remain, as you can see in this NY Times Green Inc. post, concerning cost and construction problems at a cutting-edge plant in Finland.

(On an unrelated power-production note, I wondered a few weeks ago why more solar panels weren’t installed on all those big, flat industrial buildings which litter the modern world. Here’s a story about a 4.8-megawatt plan to do just that in Spain.)

Tags: nuclear power