The Oil Drum

Watt's Bar is the example of what the US says it does not want in the rest of the world nuclear world...a dual use reactor.

All reactors have the potential to make tritium, its just less likely with a LWR and in smaller quantities than one would get from a HWR. With the shutdown of the K-reactor at the SRS site and the scrapping of the NPR project there, tritium, with a half-life of 12.53 years slowly decays away at ~7% year. Not a good thing if you thermonuclear weapon yield is dependent upon tritium as a source of extra neutrons and an "easily" fusionable source.

But the article also points to a fundamental problem...demand growth is now reaching explosive proportions, even at a nominal 2.0-2.5% per year rate. The additional load required to supply that demand requires huge investments not only inthe generating source, but in the T&D system as well (which is also a huge bottleneck). As Duke Power has discovered and said "...someone has to say no" in reference to ever growing demand.

It cannot be a knee-jerk reaction to nuclear power (or any other power for that matter), but we also cannot assume that we can go one growing at the rate that we are and have been for the past decades.

Hope was the last evil thing out of Pandora's box.