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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
Energy needs may spur rebirth of nuclear power
By Patrice Hill
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
SPECIAL REPORT
One surprising result of the past year's energy crisis is a revival of
interest in nuclear power — an industry that was declared dead only a few
years ago. Top Stories
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Perhaps the most visible sign that nuclear power is back came last month
when Silicon Valley executives declared that it would be the best solution to
the chronic electricity shortage facing California, though it still faces
formidable political obstacles.
"Nuclear power is the answer," said Craig Barrett, chief executive of
Intel Corp., "but it's not politically correct."
The computer-chip executive said his company risks losing millions of
dollars each time power fluctuates during one of California's rolling
blackouts, disrupting the manufacture of microchips.
Nuclear, which provides about one-fifth of America's power, is one of
the most reliable and plentiful sources of electricity since nuclear plants
can run 24 hours a day, seven days a week and are not affected by drought or
frigid weather like hydroelectric and conventional power sources.
But Mr. Barrett acknowledged that resistance to nuclear power remains
strong, particularly in Northern California, where the Green Party and other
environmental groups are major political forces. He said local officials have
consistently blocked efforts to build new power facilities in the valley, and
the company would not expand there for that reason.
Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun Microsystems Inc., agreed in a
speech at the National Press Club last month that nuclear is the best
alternative for California.
"In terms of environmental and cost and competitiveness and all of the
rest of it, I just don't see any other solution," the software executive
said, alluding to another nuclear selling point: It is largely pollutant-free
and requires no disruptive drilling in sensitive environmental areas, unlike
oil and gas.
The hard facts
The statements from high-tech executives may appear mostly symbolic. But
hard statistics show that nuclear no longer is the dying industry that only a
few years ago was biding time waiting for aging power plants built during the
1970s to crumble toward their inevitable burial.
Today, with the cost of natural gas and oil soaring, old nuclear plants
that had been mothballed because they were too expensive to maintain and
operate suddenly can be brought back on line and made profitable once again.
A brisk business in buying and selling closed plants has developed, and
80 percent to 90 percent of the nation's 103 nuclear plants are expected to
seek 20-year extensions of their operating licenses.
Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s Calvert Cliffs plant in March 2000 was
the first to win relicensing.
With demand for electricity at record highs, existing nuclear power
plants have been producing a record amount of power — up 3.7 percent to 755
billion kilowatt hours last year, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Improvements in maintenance procedures that mean, among other things,
less down time for refueling also enabled the plants to operate at a record
89.6 percent of capacity in 2000, the institute said. Also for the first time
in more than a decade, nuclear production has become less expensive than any
other source of electricity generation.
"It's the best year ever in performance," said Alfred C. Tollison,
executive vice president of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. "The
foundation is being put in place for a renaissance in nuclear power," though
he added, "that depends on the industry remaining accident-free."
Safety questions persist
All sides agree that public perceptions about the safety of nuclear
power and the question of how to permanently dispose of nuclear wastes remain
significant obstacles. Because of that, no new nuclear plants have been built
in the United States in the last two decades, and none are on the drawing
board.
But there are signs that the political opposition may not be as potent
as in past years. The interest shown by many technology professionals
suggests that younger generations are not as worried by the scare surrounding
the Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl nuclear accidents that made the power
source untouchable to older generations.
Observers say nuclear's clean record on safety after decades of
operating power plants in the United States, France, Japan and other
industrialized nations also is vindicating the reputation of the industry.
Meanwhile, a new generation of technology is being developed that could
virtually guarantee safety through automatic shutdown mechanisms designed to
prevent even the remote possibility of a meltdown.
Exelon Corp. wants to start building a new plant using this new
technology in South Africa by 2002 and then export the technology to the
United States. The South African plant is expected to be smaller, quicker and
cheaper to build than the older U.S. plants.
"Nuclear power is much safer than fossil-fuel systems in terms of
industrial accidents, environmental damage, health effects and long-term
risk," Richard Rhodes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author on
energy issues, said in testimony last year before the House Energy and
Commerce Committee.
"The U.S. nuclear power industry has an extraordinary record of safe
operation across the past 40 years, and I would submit to you that disposal
of civilian nuclear waste is a political, not a technical, problem," he said.
The Energy Department could designate a permanent disposal site — most
likely Yucca Mountain in Nevada — as early as this year under procedures
Congress established in 1987 that require extensive scientific review for
safety.
Congress intrigued
Despite the still-emotional debate surrounding waste disposal and
safety, interest in nuclear is quietly picking up in Congress. Republicans
and some centrist Democrats are saying nuclear should play a significant role
in solving the country's energy crisis.
Further chronic power shortages are expected in California this summer
and could crop up in the West, New York and other Northeast cities in coming
months as well. During the 1990s, most utilities expanded power generation by
building small, inexpensive units fired by natural gas, which became the
power source of choice for environmental as well as economic reasons.
Now, with the quadrupling of natural gas prices in the last year, those
gas-fired plants have become expensive to run and are a major reason that
wholesale electricity rates skyrocketed in California, bankrupting the
state's utilities.
The woes faced by gas-fired plants, many of which are just coming on
line, will continue, energy analysts say. They predict that robust demand for
gas from both power plants and homeowners will keep prices elevated at around
$5 per million British thermal units —double what they were at the end of
1999.
Gas prices at those levels make nuclear plants, which are more expensive
to build but cheaper to operate, competitive economically for the first time
in years, industry officials say.
Marvin Fertel, a vice president at the nuclear institute, said they
would make new nuclear plants feasible within five years.
With most of the political opposition to nuclear coming from the left
wing, perhaps the most potent testament that nuclear's time may have arrived
is the interest centrist Democrats are showing in it as an effective way to
curb the carbon-dioxide emissions thought to cause global warming.
Environmental assets
Unlike coal, natural gas and oil-fired power plants, nuclear plants are free
not only of carbon emissions but also of other noxious gases like sulfur
dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxide that have made fossil-fuel-burning plants
the biggest sources of air pollution in the United States.
In 1999, nuclear plants provided about half of the total carbon
reductions achieved by U.S. industry under a federal voluntary reporting
program.
The Clinton administration gave nuclear a little-noticed boost as it
sought to find economical and relatively pain-free ways to comply with the
steep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions called for under the global-warming
treaty.
In negotiations over the treaty at The Hague in November, the Clinton
administration waged a monumental fight with environmentalists and the
15-nation European Union over whether to allow the use of nuclear power to
curb carbon emissions in developing countries. Major Third World nations like
China and India insisted that they should play a major role in averting
climate change.
"Nuclear power, designed well, regulated properly, cared for
meticulously, has a place in the world's energy supply," former Vice
President Al Gore said at the Chernobyl museum in Kiev in 1998.
Mr. Gore's running mate for president last year, Sen. Joseph I.
Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, also endorsed nuclear as "part of the
solution to solving the world's energy, environment and global-warming
problems."
Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who is concerned about potentially
catastrophic floods caused by global warming in his state, said nuclear's
potential to reduce the one-third of U.S. carbon emissions generated by power
plants has piqued his interest.
France, Japan and several other industrialized countries rely heavily on
nuclear power to reduce their carbon emissions.
Mr. Graham was startled by the conclusion of a Nuclear Regulatory
Commission study that found that if the United States used nuclear power to
the extent that France does — 80 percent — it could in one fell swoop
achieve the goals of the environmental treaty, which calls for a 10 percent
reduction of U.S. emissions below 1990 levels.
Also, nuclear power does not require the destructive drilling off-shore
and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that would be required to produce
significantly more oil and gas in the United States. Mr. Graham, like many
other Democrats, opposes drilling in the Alaskan refuge as well as in the
Gulf of Mexico off Florida.
"Nuclear power is not a magic bullet, but it should also not be a poison
pill," the senator said. "The technology exists to make nuclear power —
already one of our cleanest energy sources — also one of our safest, most
reliable and least expensive."
Mr. Graham is the co-sponsor of a bill to expand the use of nuclear
energy and support advanced research into technologies to minimize nuclear
wastes, introduced this month by Sen. Pete V. Domenici, New Mexico Republican.
Two other Southern Democrats have signed onto that legislation, Sen.
Mary L. Landrieu, Louisiana Democrat, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Arkansas
Democrat, with a raft of Republicans.
Mr. Domenici said new technologies promise to make nuclear "totally
safe" and are prompting new interest in Congress.
"We'll be talking about this in 18 months," he predicted. "The U.S.
can't just sit by and say we don't need this. We need it."
National strategy
The Senate's energy development bill, introduced this month by Senate
Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Frank H. Murkowski, Alaska
Republican, also offers incentives for nuclear production, including
liability protection in case of nuclear accidents.
Nuclear is also expected to get support from the Bush administration,
which views nuclear as "an integral part of U.S. energy security," though it
has not offered any detailed proposals. Recommendations from a White House
energy task force headed by Vice President Richard B. Cheney are expected
within weeks.
In a sign that the administration will take a strong pro-nuclear stance,
U.S. representatives at environmental negotiations on sustainable development
last month insisted that nuclear power be considered a "sustainable" and safe
energy source — prompting an outcry from environmentalists.
"We do not understand how a technology whose radioactive waste could be
used to build a weapon of unthinkable destruction could be considered
sustainable under any definition," said a group of 65 environmental, consumer
and health organizations in a letter last week to Secretary of State Colin
Powell.
While the environmental groups raise questions about nuclear
proliferation, House Republican leaders see nuclear as a key component of a
national energy strategy aimed at enhancing national security through energy
independence. They too are promising incentives for nuclear power in the
House's energy bill later this year.
"The nuclear industry has been stagnant for years, yet it offers the
capacity for clean and emissions-free power," said Rep. J.C. Watts Jr.,
Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the House Republican Conference.
Environmental groups dispute the nuclear industry's claim to be
emissions-free and question whether it will remain competitive for long. Kit
Kennedy of the Natural Resources Defense Council says extensive drilling will
force natural gas prices down again within a few years and nuclear will
become less attractive.
"We think natural gas will continue to be a lot more tempting than
taking on the huge task of building new nuclear plants," which face stringent
opposition from local activists, she said.
The environmental group has challenged advertisements by the Nuclear
Energy Institute that portray nuclear as "clean and green," asking both the
Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau to investigate the
claims, she said. Neither agency has taken enforcement action.
Ms. Kennedy said nuclear is not emissions-free because huge amounts of
electricity from "dirty coal-burning plants" must be used to enrich uranium
fuel.
In addition, the cooling systems in nuclear power plants suck up water
from nearby rivers and bays, heat and then discharge it, killing billions of
fish eggs and fish larvae, she said.
And while the possibility of major life-threatening accidents at nuclear
plants is "remote," she said, any meltdown would have "tremendous public
health implications."
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