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A Nuclear Power Boost for Senate Bill
Tax incentives offered with climate measure
Will a heaping spoonful of nuclear power help Congress swallow a climate bill?
Years after Three Mile Island, bill would put nuclear power on even footing with wind and solar. (Carolyn Kaster/associated Press)
The Obama administration and leading congressional Democrats are wooing
wavering Democrats and Republicans to back a climate bill by dangling
federal tax incentives and new loan guarantees for nuclear power plant
construction, even though financial analysts warn that huge capital
needs and a history of cost overruns would constrain what many
lawmakers hope will be a "nuclear renaissance."
The elements of a nuclear package under discussion include investment tax credits, a doubling or more of the existing $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees for new plants, giving nuclear plants access to a new clean energy development bank, federally financed training for nuclear plant workers, a new look at reprocessing nuclear fuel, and a streamlining of the regulatory approval process, according to corporate, congressional and administration sources.
Designed to put nuclear power on an even footing with wind and solar, the package comes on top of existing incentives, such as the production tax credit.
"It seems to me that when talking about ways to reduce emissions . . . that nuclear comes first," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Some GOP leaders like Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) want any climate bill to include plans for 100 new nuclear plants -- doubling the current fleet -- by 2030.
Even relatively liberal lawmakers such as Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) are talking about the need to insert nuclear power incentives into a climate bill. President Obama has said he is open to new nuclear plants. And Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said that the country should "not stop at three or four, but should get tens of [new] reactors."
Asked how many Republicans could be won over to a climate bill with a substantial nuclear power provision, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said: "At least half a dozen, depending on how this issue comes out. Maybe more." And, he added, "you're not going to get a bill without meaningful Republican participation."
Graham, who recently joined Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to list common principles for a bill, including new nuclear incentives, said "people who are involved in writing this bill need to grasp the fact that America's turned the corner on nuclear power."
A few plants, not 100But financial analysts and utility executives warn that while a package of federal tax and regulatory incentives might jump-start a few new nuclear plants, it will be nowhere near enough to lead to 100 facilities.
"That's $1 trillion," said Aneesh Prabhu, a credit analyst for nuclear utilities at Standard & Poor's. "Some people say that by 2030 you could have quite a few going, but 100 is not feasible . . . The most optimistic number I've read is 50 of them by 2035 -- and that's the most optimistic number . . . That's from the perspective of financing."
The nuclear ambitions of GOP lawmakers exceed those of the nuclear power industry itself. "Industry's expectations are colored perhaps by knowing too much," said one utility executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve his relations with lawmakers. Building 100 plants "would be extremely difficult, extremely difficult," he said.
In the United States, no one has begun construction of a nuclear plant in more than 30 years. Nuclear firms say their technology is better and safer than ever, but critics frequently point to delays and cost overruns at a plant that France's Areva is building in Finland as an example of persistent obstacles. Separately, on Oct. 15, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rejected a steel and concrete structure Toshiba's Westinghouse Electric said would shield its reactor against extreme weather.
Jacques Besnainou, president of Areva North America, said that the Finnish reactor was "a difficult project" with "a very difficult customer." He said that U.S. customers would benefit from its lessons. "Nuclear is not the only solution for the U.S., but there's no solution without nuclear energy," he said. Areva is investing $400 million in a Virginia plant that will manufacture nuclear reactor components.
Another obstacle could be the price of natural gas, which offers a cheaper alternative. Natural gas power plants produce only half the carbon dioxide of coal-fired ones. With the discovery that vast shale gas resources can be tapped with new technology, natural gas prices are low and attractive for power producers.
Relying on subsidiesAnalysts say nuclear plants will only be viable if natural gas prices stay higher than $7 per one thousand cubic feet, but current prices are less than half that level. As a result, utility plans for new nuclear plants have lost momentum. Moody's said that more than half of loan guarantee applicants were at a "low" level of activity.
Without subsidies from taxpayers, the expense of new plants would abort the much ballyhooed "nuclear renaissance," analysts say. The new plants are expected to cost $8 billion to $10 billion each. Moody's analysts said it was a " 'bet the farm' endeavor for most companies."
Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, lamented that Senate Republicans were "giving up their economic principles in exchange for more federal subsidies for . . . super-expensive, financially risky nuclear power."
Lobbyists say that even a generous package of nuclear power subsidies might not attract the votes needed for a climate bill. A nuclear package is "necessary but not sufficient for a lot of Republicans," said an expert at one major utility.
Alexander said nuclear power subsidies would not win his vote "because the economy-wide cap-and-trade [system] is so flawed." A cap-and-trade system is the centerpiece of both Senate and House climate bills; it would set a ceiling on greenhouse-gas emissions and allow companies to trade emission permits.
The $18.5 billion of nuclear loan guarantees, included in legislation adopted under former president George W. Bush, would cover two or three nuclear plants. Administration officials have said that they might try to stretch that money by combining it with loan guarantees from Japan, home of some of the contractors seeking to build U.S. plants.
Staff writer Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.
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35 Comments so far
Show AllThis is what passes for 'wisdom' for a president in the pockets of corporate Ameri[k]a.
Does nuclear waste disposal enter into the picture anywhere?
All the high level waste generated but the power plants curently operating, through their lifetimes could fit on a single football field about 15 feet deep. With reprocessing, much less.
If that is the case why has the US spent the past 30 years trying to build a waste disposal facility at Yucca Mountain costing hundreds of billions of dollars?
While a very small amount, it is still very hazardous, and needs a carefully planned facility to store it. The volume is also larger when processed into a stable form such as vitirfied waste. But it is still very small compared to amy other kind of industrial waste - especially coal power plant waste - which actually releases more radioactive material inot the environment than a nucler power plant.
I never understood this disproportionate alarm over nuclear waste. There are many other equally or more harmful persistent chemical compounds being released into the environment, which have longer half lives, and in greater quantities than nuclear materials.
I worry much more about the frac water being dumped with impunity into the river that provides my drinking water, or the BPA's in canned food, even organic canned food, the mercury and other heavy metals going up the stacks of the power plants, and especially the catastrophic destruction of the earths syatems that make life possible, than the tiny hazards of the heavily regulated waste at a nearby nuclear power plant, or a final repository in an uninhabited desert, that is playing a major part in preventing this catastrophe.
Juvenile attacks like Kent Shaws do not contribute constructively to the discussion. As far as the risks from storms and earthquakes, engineers design facilities against these things every day. Please show me your structural engineering credentials and we can discuss the issue.
I'm getting sick and tired of this neo-Luddite "I don't have the education to understand it, so I fear and loathe it" attitude.
"Living on Earth" today presentented a study that showed greatly increased cancer rates around Nuke plants.
I agree coal and fracing are possibly worse but that does not make Nukes viable in and of itself.
Why have all the deadly externalized costs of a Nuke when there are already plans to power the whole country on Solar for 600 billion ( see Sci.Amer. mag 2008)?
Solar, Wind,Bio( non agricutural or reduced forests), Tide, Geothermal,Fusion ( someday) more than enough, Nukes are harmful, cancer, expensive and dangerous and not at all neccesssary
I was neutral about nuclear plants until the industry educated me.
Lack of understanding
---------------- defective and irreparable nuclear plants
---------------- inevitable emissions from mining through waste processes
---------------- inadequate and non-existent waste disposal
---------------- commercial complicity in American use of nuclear materials in wars
---------------- commercial complicity in experiments on American citizens and personnel
---------------- massive opacity even within the industry
has contributed to the relative lack of loathing of nuclear power.
Lack of education about the less expensive, more practical and sustainable alternatives - principally wind, solar, and conservation - has contributed to the sense of helplessness that makes comparisons of nuclear energy against chemical contamination seem relevant.
Your concern over heavy metals in your water, for instance, is well placed, of course. It just has little to do with the issue of nuclear emissions because neither replaces or displaces the other.
Well, then, here is a juvenile, uneducated question for you.
DO you want that reprocessing plant a few miles upwind of your home? Do you?
Principally because much of the waste that is not "high level" is extremely lethal.
Pretty much everything that comes near this stuff is contaminated -- factories, plants, parts, warehouses, trucks, tools, clothing, by-products, and people.
To cite the relatively low bulk of what gets called "high level waste" in the industry does not come close to describing the problem.
Let's build that reprocessing plant in your back yard. We'll store all the waste there also as it waits to be reprocessed. Don't worry about hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes.
Thats high level , maybe, low level is 100,000's truck loads of waste going to WIPP for many years.
Obama ran for office on a pro-nuke energy platform. This should have been a concern for environmentalists.
The impacts of uranium mining on workers and nearby communities, releases from nuclear plants, and waste disposal should not be ignored.
Reducing carbon emissions is a key factor but so is protecting public and worker health from toxics exposures.
As the easy-to-mine high quality uranium supply diminishes, we need to burn ever more fossil fuels to mine, transport and process uranium, thereby increasing the carbon footprint of nuclear power.
A vote for nukes is a vote for increasing cancer forever.
Obama had taken an enormous amount of money from the Exelon nuclear power company. When I brought it up to enviro's last year they basically shook it off with disbelief. It was the same reaction I got from people when I told tell them Obama took more money from Wall Street than John McCain. I am not surprised, but I guess for all those who bought all the rhetoric of hope and change its about time to get their head out of the sand.
Sorry robbkidd, the Obama faithful don't appear willing or able to dig out.
Well put, robbkidd. I wonder how many windmills could be built for $8 to $10 billion. And, how much pollution free, radiation free, disposal issues free, emissions free electricity would they generate compared to the nuclear plant for the same price?
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And conveniently, nukes don't have to factor in the costs of the increasing cancers they produce
Nuclear power wrong on so many points- cost, EROI, disposal of waste, security, etc. Why are people willing to scrabble around desperately for ANY kind of energy, anything, no matter how impractical, costly, and poisonous, rather than just USE LESS ENERGY? Have you heard the story of the clever monkey? Well, the tiger is creeping up on us while we try to figure out how we can get the fruit out of the coconut...all we have to do is LET GO.
Hopefully, long before any new nuclear power plants come on-line, they shall have been rendered obsolete. And also, those who now support nuclear power to be revealed as the pathetic jokes that they are.
The plants were recognized as obsolete by the industry itself at least as of the mid-1980's.
(But where they need abide by less regulation, they are happy to take money and deliver radioactive emissions with their electricity.)
A study shows childhood cancer in the vicinity of Nukes, goes down 25% a year after they are decommissioned.
Nary a mention of decommissioning these relitively short lived( three or four decades) plants, decomissioning may cost as much as building them.
PhotoVoltaic panels have no know expiration period.
Wind is less expensive than coal.
A ton of money to build,a ton of money to secure,a ton of water that is poisoned and that is just to run it!Then it spits out more poison that is around forever and ever.Now tell me what is good about using poison to make more poison and to say that one poison is better than another poison is an oximoron and to borrow more money to build them and we are SO broke we cant have healthcare for all americans but we have to foot the bill for poison?This is HOLY SHIT on a grand scale.Tony
There is nothing cheap, abundant, clean, intelligent, safe or moral about nuclear power.
It is the most -- by far -- subsidized energy source on the planet. Virtually ALL costs associated with it are externalized. If those costs were not, nuclear power, already a costly source of energy, would be prohibitive beyond recognition.
The fuel used for producing nuclear energy, uranium, is an extremely limited, finite resource. We will likely run out of it long before we run out of oil. It is hardly the resource we should be depending on to fuel our future.
The idea that nuclear energy is "clean" is provably and laughably wrong. The front-end process of extracting this resource is extremely dirty and dangerous. And there is absolutely no foreseeable solution to the radioactive waste storage or disposal. That alone should stop all future generation of these plants. There is no known material in the universe that does not break down under radiation. Period. It means that there will never be a safe storage solution. Perhaps for the remainder of our lives, but for the necesary 1/4 of a million years? No way.
Lies on nuclear power have been most blatant when it comes to safety. There are hundreds of known "near-misses" in this technology's very short lifetime -- and we need its safety record to be perfect -- forever. One of the biggest lies is that "no one died at Three Mile Island". While it is true no one died that week, there is plenty of evidence that many, many people suffered radiation poisoning and the rates of cancer and other diseases related to radiation are higher in that area. There are many good studies and anecdotal accounts that should be read by all who consider this energy source "safe".
Finally, we have no right -- religious, spiritual, humanistic or otherwise -- to foist this deadly, radioactive waste on tens of thousands of future generations just because we are too lazy and selfish to figure out a truly clean and sustainable solution for our energy gluttony. For me, this is my no-two-sides-to-the-argument belief. I am as adamant on this as the so-called "pro-lifers" are with their abortion issue. Only in this case, we ARE murdering future unborn with our garbage.
I agree...nuclear is not a solution- it is madness. There IS already a truly clean and sustainable solution...its called energy curtailment.* As in, restructure our lives to use about 1/5 of the energy we use now. And, if we are extremely lucky, solar, wind and others may be able to provide that 20% we do need. But while we fiddle, hoping for the magic technical solution, time is growing short.
*To cut short or reduce.
pjd412: I'm getting sick and tired of this neo-Luddite "I don't have the education to understand it, so I fear and loathe it" attitude.
From one uneducated neo-Luddite to another, "Well put, sir!"
pjd412 makes a comment like this: "All the high level waste generated but [sic] the power plants curently [sic] operating, through their lifetimes could fit on a single football field about 15 feet deep. With reprocessing, much less." ...
... and then calls nuke opponents "uneducated"? Hey, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or St. Louis Rams don't appear to be using their fields -- let's bury the stuff there.
We understand this technology all too well, Sir, and that is WHY we fear and loathe it.
This plan merits our strongest immediate objections.
The possibility of catastrophic action aside (knock on wood), the plants leak. The inner parts rust, and no one can get in to repair many critical parts.
Nothing even approaching an adequate waste disposal plan has even been considered.
..
However, for those who imagine that exposure to radiation either will not happen or is not a problem, let's point out that the nuclear power industry only exists because of massive federal subsidy.
1. The Feds supplied the research at taxpayer expense, but large outfits (Westinghouse, GE, Bechtel) re-charge the taxpayers again for it.
2. The Feds claimed decades ago that they could store the waste. They can't. The population pays the power companies to store and handle it, as someone must. Currently the power companies are suing the Feds. Since the Federal government is indeed in breach of contract, they will presumably win, whether in or out of court. So the taxpayers pay to store the material again, although no plan exists to store it effectively.
3. Particularly dangerous positions within the plant are farmed out to subcontractors, so that when the drunks who falsify their radiation detector badge results to pick up a few extra bucks hit the hospitals looking for cancer treatment, the contractor can disappear, and the employee-victim has no suit against Power Co, who never employed him or her.
When and if health care actually does get delivered, that's largely on the taxpayer's nickel.
4. No private company is willing to insure a nuclear plant for anything approaching its actual natural liability. The federal government has decreed that owners of plants are not liable for the majority of the damage that they might cause.
Who fronts that risk? That's on the taxpayer again.
On top of the big reasons to be against nuclear power -- on top of the longterm damage of radiation exposure to people all up and down the line of processing and storage -- nuclear energy amounts to massive corporate welfare. It means corporate welfare not to produce the electricity that we certainly do need some of, if not all that we use, but to keep the production of that energy centralized within the control of a few quasi-monopolies.
George C. Brown - For the most part, excellent comments about the folly of nuclear energy creation; I need comment any further. However, this issue, like so many other current political issues from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the health care reforem effort rally illustrate how little attention the folks inside the D.C. beltway pay attention not only to the general public, but how easily they can ignore common sense and the wisdom of experts in the various fields of science, economics, public policy and diplomacy in favor of the blandishments and self-serving enticements of the K Street crowd - - and this goes for Democrats well as Repuglicans. This abandonment of what's good for the people and our homeland, if continued for much longer will either end in catastrophe for the nation - - or perhaps on a rebellion; I support the latter instead of the former all the while hoping that any revolt will be a peaceful one, that in addition to overthrowing the forces of greed will
turn us away from a war economy to the point where our focus is on peace and justice for all where we l are able to enjoy "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
Yes!!Tony
This, too, is wrong-headed.
Nukes pour out massive heat into the atmosphere exacerbating the most EXPECTED climate-change scenario, and they are extremely vulnerable to becoming iced-over radioactive chimneys in the most LIKELY climate-change scenario.
With the same money we could cut demand, and bring solar/wind online.