U.S. Regulators Approve First Nuclear Reactors Since Three Mile Island

Two shiny new reactors could be up and running in Georgia by 2016.

The United States has approved construction of the country's first nuclear reactors since the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1978. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave the go-ahead to Southern Co. to construct two new reactors in the state of Georgia yesterday. The two reactors, to be built at a site in Waynesboro, Georgia, are expected to go online sometime between 2016 and 2017. There are currently 104 commercial nuclear reactors in the U.S., although not a single one has been built since the Three Mile Island incident, in which a nuclear plant in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, accidentally released unsafe levels of nuclear radiation into the atmosphere. While no one was killed in the meltdown, the incident prompted widespread concern over nuclear power in the U.S. and at the time, 76 of a planned 129 nuclear plants were cancelled. While 53 were completed and opened after Three Mile Island, the Waynesboro project marks the first new nuclear project to be approved since then. Except for the, y'know, U.S. military's vast arsenal of nuclear weapons.