A SMALL Alaskan town with a population of 700 could become the site for an experimental mini nuclear power plant. If approved, it would be the first reactor in the US since 1974.
Last Wednesday the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission met with local community leaders from Galena, an Athabaskan village 900 kilometres north-west of Anchorage on the Yukon river, to discuss licensing procedures. Also present were representatives of Toshiba, which will build the plant if it is licensed, and which seems to have initiated the project.
One benefit for Toshiba would be to test its new type of reactor. The…
