Nuclear Power Industry On A Comeback

by J.R. Pegg

(ENS) WASHINGTON -- Twenty -five years after the nation's worst nuclear power plant accident, industry experts told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that nuclear power could be on the verge of a comeback.

Proponents at the hearing said the industry's improved safety, reliability and regulatory oversight -- along with the environmental benefits of energy generation free of greenhouse gas emissions -- are ample reasons for the nation to move forward with new nuclear power plants. Critics cite nuclear waste concerns and fears of a catastrophic accident.

There has not been a new nuclear power plant constructed in the United States since 1974. A chill was cast over the industry five years later by the worst reactor accident ever to occur in the United States.

On March 28, 1979 Reactor 2 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown when the reactor core was partially uncovered and severely damaged. Radiation was emitted but none of the more than 2,000 personal injury claims filed was settled in favor of the claimants. In 1996, a Pennsylvania judge dismissed the claims in 10 test cases for lack of evidence.

The Senate hearing on Thursday centered on efforts of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal government agency, to rebuild and restart the Unit 1 reactor at its Browns Ferry nuclear power plant in Huntsville, Alabama -- scene of the second worst U.S. nuclear accident.

The Unit 1 reactor began operation in August 1974. Two years later TVA employees lost control of the reactor after an employee caught the wires below the control room on fire with a candle while looking for an air leak.

It took workers several hours to regain control of the reactor.

Prior to the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, the 1976 Browns Ferry incident was viewed as the closest nuclear meltdown scenario in U.S. history.

The TVA shut down all three units at Browns Ferry in 1985 because of continued safety concerns -- Unit 2 was restarted in 1991 and Unit 3 was restarted in 1995.

TVA Chairman Glenn McCullough told the Senate committee that the $1.8 billion project to rebuild and restart the Unit 1 reactor is 40 percent complete and "is on time and on budget."

Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, welcomed the news and said the rest of the industry was closely watching the Brown's Ferry project.

Alexander has emerged as a leading supporter of the project and as a proponent for a rejuvenation of the nuclear power industry.

"The failure to use more nuclear power makes us more dependent on foreign sources of oil and natural gas," said Alexander, who praised the industry as efficient, reliable and an "enormous contributor to clean air."

"The advantages of nuclear power for cleaning our air are not as well understand as they ought to be," Alexander said.

McCullough echoed these sentiments and said the decision to restart the reactor "supports our commitment to cleaner air."

"Nuclear power plants do not burn fossil fuel so they do not emit combustion products such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere," McCullough told the committee.

Environmentalists contend such statements do not tell the entire environmental, or economic, story of the nuclear power generation.

The concern about harmful air emissions is a worthy one, but it is no reason to jump from "the fire into the frying pan," said Michele Boyd, legislative representative for Public Citizen.

"They presented it as if [nuclear power] is the only alternative to fossil fuels," Boyd said.

Boyd said nuclear power plants emit radiation in the air, but of greater concern to critics is the 20 to 30 metric tons of high level radioactive waste produced each year by the nation's 104 nuclear power reactors.

The waste remains a key environmental, public health and security concern for critics of the industry -- Boyd says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) "is too tied up with the industry" to regulate or address these issues.

Dr. Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said the debate on Thursday "was nothing more than a slick, misleading advertisement to revitalize a dying industry on the shoulders of U.S. taxpayers, yet again."

Smith's organization is a vocal critic of the decision to restart Brown's Ferry. He notes that more than 75 percent of TVA's $24 billion debt is "is directly attributable to its blind faith in nuclear power."

The decision will not translate into lower electricity costs for consumers, Smith said, and will not reduce TVA's emissions of harmful air pollutants from its coal fired power plants.

The TVA is moving forward with rebuilding Unit 1 as the NRC considers its renewal application for all three units of the Brown's Ferry plant -- renewal would extend the operational license of the plant for 20 years.

And the TVA is by no means the only nuclear plant operator eager to extend the lives of its nuclear reactors. License renewal adds 20 years onto the original 40 year operational life of each unit.

Dr. William Travers, NRC executive director for operations, told the committee there is "a sustained and strong interest in license renewal."

To date, the NRC has renewed licenses for 12 sites -- 23 reactor units -- and is considering an additional 11 sites with 19 units, including Browns Ferry.

"If all are approved, 40 percent of plants in the U.S. will have had operating licensees reviewed," Travers said. "Based on industry statements, the Commission expects essentially all sites to apply for license renewal."

The NRC has also approved 100 power upgrades for existing plants and "the industry's interest in renewed construction has recently reemerged," Travers said.

The NRC has developed an early site permitting process, Travers said, that will allow companies to bank potential plant sites for 10 to 20 years.

The failure of the nation to move forward with other nuclear power plants is "perplexing," Alexander said. "After all, we invented the technology."

Other nations including France, Japan, India and China, are moving forward with new plants, Alexander said, and there is little reason for the United States not to do the same.

Senator Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, said the growth of the industry stalled because "we got scared."

"Frankly if historians worked hard enough ... we would find we brought it on ourselves," said Domenici, who blamed regulatory failures and incompetent management for the reactor accidents.

The New Mexico senator made one of the few comments about the waste issue during Thursday's hearing, calling it "nigh on absurdity" to hold up new nuclear power plants because of concerns about what to do with the waste.

In 2002, over the objections of the state of Nevada, President George W. Bush authorized the construction of a permanent geologic high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The state has filed several lawsuits against the repository which are yet to be heard in court, claiming the Yucca Mountain site will not safely contain the radiation. In addiont, at least 290 technical objections must be overcome before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can grant Yucca Mountain a license.

But the Senate panel did not address these issues. The problems that have plagued the nuclear industry in the past -- safety failures, ineffective regulation and poor management -- have been addressed, Alexander said.

Marvin Fertel, of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group, told the committee that the nation's electricity demands will increase 50 percent by 2025 and nuclear power must play a key role in meeting that demand.

But Alexander noted "investors are still wary of nuclear power plants," a point made by critics who say the industry would not exist -- and will not grow -- without massive subsidies.

A key part of the equation is the Price Anderson Act, a 1957 amendment to the Atomic Energy Act that caps the cost of liability insurance coverage for any nuclear power plant accident. Critics say it skews the real cost of nuclear power and potentially leaves taxpayers liable for damages from a severe accident.

It is still in effect for existing plants, but must be reauthorized for new plants -- such reauthorization is included in the Bush administration's controversial energy bill that is stalled in the Senate.

James Asselstine, a research analyst and industry expert with Lehman Brothers, told the committee "it is doubtful that the industry or the financial community would proceed with a new plant commitment without this system in place."