Safety Concerns Often Amount to Status Quo at U.S. Nuclear Industry’s Aging Reactors

On December 1, 1969, Jersey Central Power & Light initiated fission in the fuel rods of the nation’s first boiling-water nuclear reactor–one of 31 ultimately built in the U.S. The first “turnkey” plant, Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in New Jersey was sold for less than $100 million in 1964–a price well below what it would ultimately cost to build the reactor. The point was to prove that a nuclear power facility could be built as cheaply as a coal-fired power plant, and the key to that was a smaller safety system

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Safety Concerns Often Amount to Status Quo at U.S. Nuclear Industry’s Aging Reactors