The 30-year itch America’s nuclear industry struggles to get off the floor [View all]

[kristopher]

The 30-year itch
America’s nuclear industry struggles to get off the floor

IN HIS state-of-the-union message last month, Barack Obama said that America needs “an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy.” Mr Obama boasted about a wind-turbine factory in Michigan, America’s abundant supplies of natural gas and the millions of acres opened for oil exploration. He urged Congress to pass tax incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy and to end oil-company subsidies.

But Mr Obama made no mention of nuclear energy, even though America’s 104 nuclear reactors provide around one-fifth of its electricity, and even though the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was poised to approve, for the first time since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, the construction of a new nuclear reactor on American soil. It duly did so on February 9th, giving its first-ever combined construction and operation licences to the Atlanta-based Southern Company to build two new reactors at Plant Vogtle, in eastern Georgia, where they will join two existing reactors that have been in operation for 25 and 23 years. Southern Company got $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees for the Vogtle expansion, and it expects the new reactors to begin operation in 2016 and 2017. This will be the among the largest construction projects in Georgia’s history, representing capital investment of $14 billion and bringing the state, by the firm’s estimate, 3,500 construction jobs and 800 permanent jobs.

Some claim that the Georgia decision heralds a nuclear renaissance in America. Another four reactors—two in South Carolina and two in Florida—are up for NRC approval this year, with the South Carolina decision just weeks away. The coal industry may be fighting new federal emissions standards, air-pollution regulations and even the idea of carbon pricing, but those things are all a boon for carbon-free nuclear power. Steven Chu, America’s energy secretary, has called nuclear power an essential part of America’s energy portfolio, and has been vocal about the administration’s commitment to “restarting the American nuclear industry”. In 2009 Lamar Alexander, Tennessee’s senior senator, called for 100 new reactors to be built by 2030. The following year Mr Obama proposed tripling the nuclear loan-guarantee programme to $54 billion. Mr Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal 2013 (which begins this October) includes money to fund research into advanced small “modular” reactors.

Still, nuclear power faces strong headwinds. A poll taken last year showed that 64% of Americans opposed building new nuclear reactors. The NRC’s last new reactor approval predates Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, all of which dented public support (and not just in America either: nuclear power supplies three-fourths of France’s electricity, yet in one poll 57% of French respondents favoured abandoning it). America’s anti-nuclear movement has been as quiet as its nuclear industry, but as one comes to life so will the other.

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http://www.economist.com/node/21547803