The previous day, the U.S. Department of Energy said it would resume production of plutonium used to power spacecraft and equipment utilized in “security activities.”

Several governments in Eastern Europe are building a new generation of nuclear power plants to meet domestic energy needs and export power to western Europe. These are among the most recent examples of the increasing trend toward use of nuclear power, as the world's fossil fuel reserves continue a long-term decline.

The $12 billion experimental fusion reactor would be built in Cadarache, near the southern French city of Marseille. It is projected to start operating in 2016, although “opponents say the project is only experimental and it will be at least 50 years before a commercially viable reactor is built,” the Reuters news agency reported June 28. “If we can really make this work, there will be enough electricity to last the world for the next 1,000 to 2,000 years,” said Ian Fells of the Royal Academy of Engineering in Britain, according to Reuters.

Fusion reactors mimic the process that occurs at the sun's core or in a hydrogen bomb, where hydrogen atoms are fused producing heat in the millions of degrees. Scientists say the challenge, however, is how to duplicate those processes in a controlled way so the heat produced can be used to generate electricity. Fells gives it a 50-50 chance.  
 
Drive towards nuclear power
The ongoing depletion of the world's fossil fuels is behind the growing trend in the imperialist countries and semicolonial nations such as Iran to turn to nuclear power. “We know oil and gas depletion will start in 2030 or 2035,” Peter Haug, secretary general of the European Nuclear Society, told the New York Times. He said renewable energy sources like wind or solar power would never provide more than a small amount of the world’s energy needs and that “there is enough coal in the earth to keep the world running for centuries, but at an unacceptable environmental cost,” the Times reported.

Fusion reactors use fuel from deuterium, a hydrogen isotope that can be extracted from seawater, ensuring a virtually unlimited energy source. Haug said fusion reactors are not expected to replace fission reactors, which use enriched uranium as fuel, but to augment them to meet energy needs.

Pressing Congress to approve an energy bill that includes construction of nuclear power plants, U.S. president George Bush toured a power plant operated by Constellation Energy Group. The company is seeking a license to construct the first nuclear power plant in the United States in 30 years. Bush argued that nuclear power will reduce dependency on oil and natural gas. He noted that France meets 78 percent of its electricity consumption with nuclear reactors, compared with 20 percent for the United States.  
 
Plutonium-238 production
U.S. Energy Department spokesman Michael Waldron said June 27 that Washington is moving to resume production of plutonium-238. The U.S. government stopped producing that isotope when it shut down its Savannah River complex in South Carolina in the mid-1990s, relying since then on existing stockpiles and a supply from Russia for the U.S. space program. The new program will take place at the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls.

“Production of plutnium-238 is critical if the United States is to continue its leadership in areas of space exploration and provide for certain classified security operations.” said Waldron. Plutonium-238 is not used for nuclear weapons but rather for spacecraft and some espionage devices. Solar batteries made of it are used to power spacecraft that go where sunlight is too dim to charge solar cells.

Several governments in Eastern Europe—the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria—plan to build new nuclear power plants to meet rising domestic energy demand and to reduce dependence on Russia, which supplies 90 percent of natural gas in some countries in the region. They are also looking to export power to western Europe, where 60 percent of the aging power plants will have to be closed by 2010.

This situation has led to some cross-border stand-offs. The Austrian government tried to stop the Czech Republic's publicly traded utility—CEZ AS company—from upgrading its Temelin nuclear plant, located 37 miles from Austria's border.

The European Union made the closing of Bulgaria's Kozloduy nuclear plant a condition for entry into the EU, saying it did not meet safety requirements. But the International Atomic Energy Agency said the plant is among the most profitable in Europe and met safety standards.  
 
 
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