Town Sees Nuclear Plans as a Boon, Not a Threat

Could reality actually be winning the battle against totalitarian leftism disguised as science?

From Drudge: Local governments and residents embracing new nuke plants -- with enthusiasm...

Bill Whelchel, working the main chair at Elmore's Barber Shop on Limestone Street, paused the clippers above his customer's half-sculptured crew cut to consider the question of atomic energy.

"I'm not worried at all about putting in a new nuclear power plant," said Mr. Whelchel, 76. "We're used to nuclear power around here. Plus, it'll create jobs, and one thing I've learned is that working people are happy people."

More than a quarter century after the accident at Three Mile Island and two decades after Chernobyl, America's utilities stand at the early edge of what promises to be the first large-scale wave of nuclear plant construction since the 1980's.

And the energy companies are finding — especially in the small, struggling Southeastern towns like Gaffney where most of the plants are planned — that memories of those tragedies have faded and that local governments and residents, eager for jobs and tax revenues to replace vanished industries, are embracing them with enthusiasm.

Indeed, none of Mr. Whelchel's half-dozen customers said they had any problem whatsoever with the idea of a nuclear facility going up down the road.

"I can't remember hearing a single negative comment from any local resident," Cody Sossamon, publisher of The Gaffney Ledger, said as he sat in his office out near the highway.

Driven partly by federal Department of Energy projections that demand for electrical power will increase 50 percent by 2025, and by recent federal legislation offering a more streamlined application process and financial incentives for new nuclear facilities, many utilities are eager to get back into the atomic business.

"We initially were looking at 14 communities in the Southeast, and then we narrowed that down to four," said Henry B. Barron Jr., chief nuclear officer for Duke Power, which announced last month that it would apply to build its first new nuclear plant in three decades just outside Gaffney. "I found no single individual who had any concerns about the plant. The few who did have concerns were worried about increased traffic on the roads during construction."