RICHMOND, Va. -- Two years ago, the promise of a new day loomed for the U.S. nuclear energy industry. Both presidential candidates supported to varying degrees an expanded role for nuclear power, as each vowed to reduce America's reliance on foreign oil and its greenhouse gas emissions.
John McCain proposed building 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 and 100 over a longer period. While Barack Obama was less robust in his enthusiasm for nuclear power, he readily admitted more reactors would be necessary to meet his energy security and pollution-reduction goals.
And a year after beating McCain, President Obama indeed announced more than $8 billion in federal loan guarantees to construct the first two new nuclear reactors in the United States in more than 30 years. Both would be in Georgia and owned by Southern Company, with one coming online in 2016 and the other a year later.
Obama also proposed in his 2011 budget an additional $36 billion in loan guarantees to supplement an existing $18.5 billion. In the just-passed spending bill, however, he got only $8 billion, about a quarter of his request. No doubt that more than $26 billion in U.S.-backed financial support can move off the drawing boards a number of new plants, creating tens of thousands of new jobs and producing emissions-free power.
But will it? Today there are 104 nuclear reactors operating in 31 states, with 33 reactors being in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Region II, which covers the Southeast. North Carolina has five. However, only two or three additional reactors nationwide have a reasonable chance of being built over the next decade.
Plans to construct nuclear reactors in more than a half-dozen states, mostly across the South, have been delayed or canceled due to various bottom-line factors - escalating construction costs, a drop in electricity usage due to the recession, the competitive price natural gas, the inability of their owners to obtain from state regulators a good enough return on their big investments or a combination of the above.
The latest plant to hit trouble is in Maryland, where a joint-venture between Baltimore-based Constellation Energy and French-owned EDF has broken apart. The trans-Atlantic alliance had proposed building a reactor alongside the two Constellation already operates at Calvert Cliffs. Recently, though, Constellation determined the terms for $7.5 billion in federal loan guarantees were not in its best interest. EDF is searching for another U.S. partner.
That so many proposed nuclear plants have been temporarily or permanently shelved, and with the once promising Calvert Cliffs project now up in the air, the industry - the market - is telling Washington and state capitals that corrective action is needed.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu gets it. A few weeks ago he acknowledged that nuclear power would have to be part of any "clean energy standard," especially in the Southeast where renewables like wind are less abundant. Overall, Chu would like 25 percent of the nation's energy to be produced from low- or no-emissions sources by 2025, with that doubling by 2050.
To bring a new reactor online requires a great deal of capital. The design, construction and permit-granting process is expensive and time-consuming. The going rate is $7-9 billion, and it takes nearly a decade to go from concept to ribbon-cutting.
It is likely that the new Congress will push for changes. The loan guarantee program, which has been slow to process applications, will receive bipartisan scrutiny. There may be efforts to dramatically reshape it in the form of a "clean energy bank." Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., has proposed creating an independent Clean Energy Deployment Administration to finance emerging low-carbon technologies, including nuclear.
Industry stamina can be maximized if risk is minimized. That means Washington must craft loan guarantees with terms that cushion against economic variables unpredictable enough to even scuttle reactors on the verge of groundbreaking. It means that federal and state environmental and other regulatory processes must be shortened to reduce the billions in upfront reserves needed to bolster a new project. And it means sheathing political swords in the name of a more secure energy future based at least in part on a reliable, emissions-free source.
New political winds are blowing through Washington and in state capitals across the country. Despite an uncertain partisan divide, the need for scores of new reactors is one issue where there should be common ground. Obama has demonstrated his willingness, the new Congress certainly can, and new governors and state legislatures must.
Source: www.newsobserver.com
No comments:
Post a Comment