![]() Two meetings followed in conference rooms at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Kray asked, Why not band together to help each other build new plants-and usher in a new dawn of nuclear power? As diners nibbled their salads, the two led them through a 23-page report. Keuter, her counterpart at Entergy, the number two operator. As the dominant player, with 17 of the U.S.' 103 commercial reactors, Exelon of Chicago took the lead in discussing the future of the industry. restaurant three blocks from the White House. Six weeks before the last Clinton library meeting, Marilyn Kray, an Exelon vice president, had gathered 11 executives from the largest nuclear operators and reactor vendors at a private room in Olives, a tony Washington, D.C. If oil prices stay high, if people worry about carbon dioxide causing global warming, if the Middle East stays violent, nuclear power may make a huge comeback in the U.S. nuclear construction industry was presumed dead. Over the last five years fans of atomic power have quietly lined up the support of federal and municipal governments and have cozied up to General Electric and Westinghouse Electric (now part of the British BNFL Group) in service to an ambitious agenda: building perhaps 5 new reactors by 2015, a dozen by 2020 and 50 by midcentury. The industry has avoided confrontations that might arouse the wrath of an American public that still doubts the safety of reactors and is spooked about terrorism. ![]() Yes, nuclear power is back, after a quarter-century of suspended animation in the U.S. With backing from the industry's powerful lobby, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Exelon had spent weeks meeting with leaders and heading off the very concerns about health, safety and the environment that Lindberg hoped would galvanize the crowd against the plan. With unemployment at 8%, Exelon, Dewitt County's largest employer, said that if the plant were built there would be 3,200 construction jobs, 600 new full-time positions to operate the plant and a big jump in the county's tax take. Economics, not environmentalism, seemed to be swaying this rural community. By the time of the second meeting, in December, the town-once split 50-50 on the new reactor-now overwhelmingly supported the project. Outcry over the proposed repository for radioactive waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain showed that America wanted nothing to do with nuclear power. No new reactors had been proposed in the U.S. Like other towns where an outraged public defeated plans for new plants, Clinton, she hoped, would reject this one. ![]() Lindberg and her group, No New Nukes, drew inspiration from three decades of protests.
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