This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 16, 2011 - WASHINGTON - The fallout from Japan's nuclear crisis is threatening to unbalance the unusual coalition pushing for what some call a "nuclear power renaissance" in the United States -- a clean-energy initiative that is vulnerable to economic and political concerns.
In his State of the Union address in January, President Barack Obama called for a "new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants" and backed that up with a budget proposal for a $36 billion loan guarantee program for nuclear energy, which would help spur construction of as many as 20 new nuclear power plants.
That was part of the Obama administration's plan to boost nuclear along with other clean-energy alternatives, such as solar and wind power. Despite this week's severe problems at nuclear reactors in Japan, the administration has stuck with its nuclear energy plan. On Wednesday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that nuclear energy "has an important role to play in our energy portfolio."
Chu backed the administration's proposal for expanded loan guarantee authority to "jumpstart the domestic nuclear industry." But Chu said his department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will be "looking very, very closely at the events in Japan" to see if changes are needed "at the current existing nuclear power plants and any that are being considered" for construction in this country.
This country has not issued a new construction license for a nuclear power plant in three decades, since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania. However, one plant was built under an earlier license in the late 1990s, and three new plants are now in the early phases of construction, with one plant in Georgia expected to get its NRC license later this year and a new plant in South Carolina early next year. In Tennessee, construction has resumed on a reactor that had been started many years ago.
"There are three new plants either under pre-construction or construction right now," said Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an interest group representing the nuclear industry. "And there are 12 applications for up to 20 reactors."
The NRC's procedure for licensing new plants is complex, and Singer said all of the new plant designs have extra safety precautions. In addition, he said, the industry "already has started to look at our plants and re-examine programs to respond to natural events [such as earthquakes] and any significant loss of critical systems."
The bottom line, Singer said, is that - despite the events in Japan - "we still expect at least five new reactors to be operating by the end of this decade."
Electricity from Nuclear Power
The nation's 104 nuclear power plants now generate about 20 percent of the nation's electricity, but that represents 70 percent of its "clean, non-carbon" electricity. Wind and solar energy now produce less than 5 percent of the nation's electricity.
Chu told lawmakers that nuclear power will help the nation meet Obama's goal of getting 80 percent of its electricity from "clean" sources by 2035.
But the coalition that has endorsed an expansion of nuclear power is showing some signs of fraying in the wake of the crisis in Japan. For a long while, environmentalists have been wary of nuclear power because -- while the energy it produces is carbon-free -- the operation of the plants and the long-term storage of their spent fuel rods pose numerous safety questions.
However, the options other than nuclear are all problematic. To try to reach a compromise on energy policy, Obama has supported some development of U.S. coal and oil resources. But last year's disasters with the BP oil spill and the West Virginia coal mine caused problems, and the Japanese nuclear crisis further complicates the effort to reach a realistic energy compromise.
Public support for nuclear power appeared bright just a few weeks ago -- but may dim after the news reports from Japan. Last month, a survey of 1,000 people conducted by Bisconti Research Inc. in collaboration with GfK Roper found that 71 percent of Americans favored the use of nuclear energy as one way to generate electricity, with only 26 percent opposed. Those "strongly favoring" nuclear power outnumbered the "strongly opposed" respondents by a 3-to-1 margin.
That support level, which has risen since the years after the Three Mile Island accident when many Americans feared radioactive emissions from nuclear power plants, appears likely to fall substantially after the news coverage of the Japanese nuclear emergency, and political support often mirrors public attitudes.
That political support, especially from liberal Democrats, came under scrutiny at Wednesday's House hearing. U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a nuclear critic who had reluctantly backed nuclear power expansion, criticized a keystone of the administration's effort to spur the licensing and building of more nuclear power plants -- the loan guarantee program. Markey called such guarantees "toxic assets" that could haunt taxpayers if a nuclear power plant is struck by disaster.
"We need a seismic shift in our approach to nuclear reactor safety," Markey said. Meanwhile, the panel's top Democrat, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Cal., accused House Republicans of pushing "an all-nuclear strategy" on energy that would skew federal loan guarantees in favor of nuclear projects and "wipe out the [Energy Department's] ability to award loan guarantees to worthy renewable energy projects."
But most Republicans on the panel expressed support for the nuclear option. For example, U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, R-Collinsville, who chairs one of the Energy and Commerce subcommittees that held Wednesday's hearing, said Japan's nuclear crisis should not deter this country from expanding nuclear power.
"While we must learn from the tragedy in Japan, we cannot lose sight of the important role nuclear energy can play in our future efforts to achieve energy independence," Shimkus said.
Missouri and Illinois Nuclear Perspectives
All four of the U.S. senators from Missouri and Illinois say they continue to support the nuclear power option as long as any applicable lessons from the Japanese crisis are taken into account in regulating the reactors in their states.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., told radio reporters Wednesday that she supports the safe expansion of nuclear energy, and she believes that the Callaway nuclear plant in Missouri is safe.
But she cautioned that the Japanese crisis will "give us the opportunity to look closely at the safety of [U.S.] nuclear plants . . . We've got to re-evaluate the risks in light of this incident and make some smart decisions going forward."
In a statement to the Beacon, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said, "I believe we should continue to work for more integration of nuclear power in our fuel mix, and I support every effort to do so in the safest way possible." Blunt said that Americans should maintain perspective on the nuclear crisis in Japan. "An accident at a nuclear plant can have tragic consequences, but it has been decades since any major event has occurred at a nuclear facility, and this incident in Japan occurred as a result of one of the worst seismic events in recorded history," Blunt said.
While Ameren Missouri has applied for a site permit for a possible second reactor in Callaway County, the company's nuclear development manager, Scott Bond, told the Beacon's Dale Singer this week that no decision has been made yet about construction of a second plant. "I would hope there would not be a rush to judgment about the events in Japan," Bond said. "I hope we get all the facts we need to make the decisions as we move ahead."
In Illinois, the company that owns and operates the state's 11 nuclear reactors at six sites, Chicago-based Exelon Corp., has gotten a site license for a possible new nuclear plant near the current power plant in Clinton, Ill.
But Viktoria Mitlying, a spokeswoman for the six-state NRC regional office near Chicago, told the Beacon on Wednesday that Exelon has not yet applied for a separate license actually to build a new nuclear power plant there.
Critics of nuclear power have called for an NRC review of the four aging reactors in Illnois that have the same Mark I design as Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Daiichi reactor that may have undergone a partial meltdown.
Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Washington-based interest group that opposes expanding nuclear power facilities, told the Beacon that his group has complained for years that the design of the 23 such reactors nationwide might be vulnerable. "We need to take a look at these old reactors," he said, adding that the NRC should look into "what lessons can be learned from the Japanese experience that would apply to so many aging U.S. reactors."
But an Exelon Nuclear spokeswoman, Krista Lopykinski, asserted that the reactors are completely safe -- recertified by the NRC in recent years and designed to withstand an array of potential threats such as earthquakes and flooding. "Our plants are equipped with numerous redundant safety systems designed to protect them from earthquakes, flooding and other natural disasters," she told the Beacon.
Both of Illinois' U.S. senators -- Dick Durbin, a Democrat, and Mark Kirk, a Republican -- said they continued to support nuclear power expansion, as long as lessons learned from Japan are incorporated into regulations and designs.
"I believe that nuclear power is part of our future," said Durbin, noting that "half of the electricity in Illinois is from nuclear power." At joint news conference with Durbin in Chicago, Kirk said he opposed "a knee jerk reaction" against nuclear energy in the wake of Japan. However, Kirk argued for a re-analysis of the proximity of U.S. reactors to earthquake and potential tsunami zones.
The High Costs of Nuclear Power Plants
One of the biggest problems with nuclear power is the cost of building the plants, with the new generation of large, low-carbon power plants expected to cost between $6 billion and $8 billion each.
That cost would represent huge outlays for electric utility companies, many of which have market values between $10 billion and $30 billion. The smallest power companies don't have the capability or the financial strength to pay for nuclear power projects without partners.
To help offset the disparity between the size of electric utilities and the big nuclear projects, the Obama administration proposed an expansion of the federal loan guarantee program for such nuclear power projects, absent project partners and limited investment incentives.
The loan guarantees are not loans, but "they enable the companies that are building these plants to access the good credit rating of the federal government," explained Singer of the Nuclear Energy Institute. "In the long run, it saves money for the consumer."
On top of the investment challenges facing electric utilities, potential investors in new nuclear power plants are also concerned about political and regulatory risks. That's the concern that is likely to come into play as Congress and the NRC assess the impact of the Japanese nuclear crisis.