Victor Gilinsky
Snapshot
As Japan's ongoing nuclear crisis shows, older reactors are the most vulnerable to failure. Aging nuclear plants pose a risk in the United States as well, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must enforce up-to-date safety standards more forcefully -- or risk the possibility of a disaster.
Essay
Winter
1978
Europe and the United States have parted company on the question of reprocessing spent fuel from nuclear power reactors, particularly as it applies to the separation and export of plutonium. The decisions to proceed with the construction of new plants at Windscale in Britain and La Hague in France, designed in large part to provide this service for non-nuclear-weapon countries, run counter to the U.S. conviction that restricting separation and trade in plutonium is essential, at least until more effective controls can be devised.
