Britain Gives Nuclear a 2nd Chance via The New York Times

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The nuclear industry also brings benefits for those around it. The operating Hinkley Point B reactor employs several hundred people from the area. Another 200 or so spend their days working on two 1950s-era Magnox reactors that look like big blue jack-o-lanterns. Those reactors were taken out of service in 2000 but still require decades of cleanup.

Whether the new plants, known as Hinkley Point C, get the green light and, if so, how well they work out may have a huge effect on the future of the nuclear energy industry across the world. The shock waves from the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011 are still being felt. China is going ahead with its ambitious nuclear program, but Germany is abandoning nuclear power, and many countries that were once eager to harness the atom to meet their surging electricity needs are now wary, according to Mark Hibbs, a nuclear analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

France has long been a leading proponent of nuclear power, but the construction of early versions of a new generation of French-designed reactors called EPRs, which will be used at Hinkley Point, has hit snags and huge cost overruns at Olkiluoto in Finland and Flamanville in France. EDF is building two other EPRs at Taishan in China with China Guangdong Nuclear Power.

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