Small Town America Embraces Nuclear Energy

In today's New York Times, reporter Rick Lyman uncovers something we've been telling you about for some time here at NEI Nuclear Notes -- the fact that many small towns are embracing the possibility of new nuclear build:

Bill Whelchel, working the main chair at Elmore's Barber Shop on Limestone Street, paused the clippers above his customer's half-sculptured crew cut to consider the question of atomic energy.

"I'm not worried at all about putting in a new nuclear power plant," said Mr. Whelchel, 76. "We're used to nuclear power around here. Plus, it'll create jobs, and one thing I've learned is that working people are happy people."

More than a quarter century after the accident at Three Mile Island and two decades after Chernobyl, America's utilities stand at the early edge of what promises to be the first large-scale wave of nuclear plant construction since the 1980's.

And the energy companies are finding -- especially in the small, struggling Southeastern towns like Gaffney where most of the plants are planned -- that memories of those tragedies have faded and that local governments and residents, eager for jobs and tax revenues to replace vanished industries, are embracing them with enthusiasm.

For more, click here, here and here.

UPDATE: And for your further reading pleasure, here's another nuclear renaissance story from the Baltimore Sun.

POSTSCRIPT: Also making an appearance in the article is the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, and, as always, we remind you to doublecheck whatever claims they make.

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