Third Way Recommends New Strategy for the Future of U.S. Nuclear Energy Industry

Earlier today, the Washington think tank Third Way issued a major public policy paper on how government and industry can work together to support the nation's global leadership position in nuclear energy. To shed some additional light on the paper, we asked Robert Walther, a Senior Policy Advisor in Third Way's Clean Energy Program, to write a guest blog post concerning the paper and the future course it outlines.

A Strategy for the Future of Nuclear Energy in the U.S.

Today’s nuclear energy technologies offer our nation a resource that can safely provide around-the-clock energy at affordable prices while minimizing emissions. One in five American homes is powered by clean nuclear energy. But the future of this vital energy source is dependent upon an interwoven set of decisions made by the public and private sectors. On one hand, private industry must make business decisions about constructing and operating nuclear facilities which involve expensive up-front investments, despite uncertain government policies and regulations. On the other, the policy goals of the government—the production of safe, affordable, and clean base-load energy—cannot be achieved without private sector cooperation and investment.

This industry is at a crossroads. Cheap natural gas has become the fuel of choice for electric utilities, while the Fukushima accident has forced nuclear plant operators to once again win the confidence of policymakers and consumers, despite their track record of safe operation. While we struggle with these issues in the U.S., other nations are rapidly ramping up their nuclear investments, threatening to diminish our authoritative role in issues of nuclear technology and safety.

Despite these challenges, nuclear energy remains a proven source of reliable, clean energy. The public and private sectors, working together, can and must address these concerns and craft policies that will attract private investment to the nuclear industry and maintain America’s role as the pacesetter for nuclear energy.

To develop a strategy for addressing these needs, Third Way and the Idaho National Laboratory convened the New Millennium Nuclear Energy Partnership in December 2010. This bipartisan group of elected officials and experts from industry, government, academia, technology, and finance has spent the last year and a half tailoring a series of recommendations. These address the following five topic areas:

General: Offers insights on the vital role of nuclear energy in national energy policy and the need to develop a politically sustainable national energy policy through a Quadrennial Energy Review.

Public-Private Partnerships: Recognizes the value of public-private partnerships in meeting challenges and identifies crucial elements for developing successful partnerships.

Financing New Nuclear Energy Projects: Provides options that will enable initial and long-term financing for this capital-intensive industry. Recommendations address issues relating to revenue insufficiency in the construction of new plants, financial risk mitigation, and project finance challenges.

Infrastructure Development: Considers the importance of rebuilding the U.S. nuclear industrial infrastructure and positioning U.S. industry to continue to be a leader in the global nuclear energy marketplace.

New Nuclear Energy Technology: Investigates technological advancement issues that could provide new advanced reactor designs for electricity generation and for industrial use, the regulation and licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of new nuclear energy technologies, and options for a sustainable nuclear fuel cycle.

It is our hope these recommendations can be thoughtfully reviewed by policymakers and industry representatives, and later form the basis for a consensus strategy that will allow the U.S. to continue to reap the benefits of nuclear energy for many years to come.

Just a few moments ago, NEI President and CEO Marv Fertel issued a statement praising the report, calling it, "[A]n excellent, consensus approach to capitalize on the significant economic and environmental benefits of nuclear energy at home and abroad ... The Nuclear Energy Institute welcomes the opportunity to explore this positive contribution to U.S. energy policy in greater depth with federal policymakers.”

Click here to read the paper right now.

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog