Ending a long pause in nuclear development in Western Europe, the first atomic plant to be ordered since 1986 is under construction on an island off the coast of Finland, Reuters reports.
The massive Olkiluoto 3 project is one of 63 nuclear plants being built in 15 countries, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. More than two-thirds of those plants are in Asia, primarily in China, which is currently building more than 20 and has around 40 more planned.
In the U.S., the Obama administration has approved loan guarantees of $8 billion for two nuclear power plants in Georgia, according to The New York Times. They would be the first U.S. atomic plants top be built since the 1970s. There are 104 operating nuclear plants in the U.S. according to an IAEA status report.
Finland, like many other countries, considers nuclear power crucial to its future prosperity, and plans to rely on nuclear for more than a third of its electricity by 2020, reducing its dependence on fossil fuels and energy imports from Russia.
However, the renaissance of nuclear power in Europe and the U.S., driven partly by concern about climate change from fossil fuels, may be hampered by an aging workforce, Reuters says. Many of the engineers and building experts working at the plant in Finland are in their late 50s and early 60s. In the United States, workers in the nuclear sector are aging, too
Nuclear power was abandoned by many countries for a decade or more after the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, and Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986. Students also abandoned thoughts of nuclear careers, leading to a shortage of workers and delays in construction.
