The US nuclear industry

Too Big to Fail

The most striking thing about seeing any nuclear power plant up close is their sheer size. They are such impressive feats of construction and design, and it's hard to imagine that something so robust could fail. In this week's podcast, find out why nuclear power plants fail, and why failure is a fact of life that the industry refuses to acknowledge.

At 6:45 in

Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds chief engineer: The average nuclear power plant has 6 guys on Ebay trying to buy old parts. And the reason for that is that if they put a new part in, and it isn’t like the like replacement, they have to go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and ask permission. So they literally have a staff at every nuclear power plant of people scouring Ebay, looking for old parts, so they can put those old parts in their warehouse. When one of their parts breaks they can replace in kind, as opposed going out and getting something better or newer.

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