Power shift? Nuclear industry sees resurgence

Waste issue
Rowe, whose Chicago-based utility company owns 17 nuclear reactors, more plants than any other utility, also says his company won’t invest in a new plant until there is more progress in dealing with reactor waste. A proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has had a string of setbacks and the date for its completion is optimistically put at 2012.

Still, Exelon and two other utilities, Dominion and Entergy, have separately applied to the NRC for early site permits for reactors with the idea of shortening the licensing process if a decision is made to go ahead with one.

“There is a growing recognition that if we are going to meet our future need for electric energy and also reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases ... we simply must build the next generation of advanced nuclear energy plants,” said Marilyn Kray, an Exelon vice president and head of the NuStart consortium.

In an interview, she said the goal is to preserve the nuclear option by testing the NRC’s streamlined licensing process.

Also testing the water is Duke Energy, based in Charlotte, N.C., which, moving on its own, is talking about possibly having a new reactor operating by 2014. Dominion, based in Virginia, also is making plans to seek an NRC reactor construction permit. Neither company has made a final decision.

Financial help for licensing
The Energy Department is paying half the cost of the various initial licensing efforts, including an expected $46 million next year.

“Adding nuclear capacity ... makes a lot of sense,” says Henry “Brew” Barron, in charge of nuclear operations at Duke Power, a subsidiary of Duke Energy that serves 2 million customers in the Carolinas. By 2014, Duke will need at least one more large power plant to meet demand in one of the country’s fastest growing regions. Many other utilities around the country are facing similar electricity demands.

Once the logjam is broken with the first orders, the U.S. reactor market could become the world’s second largest, after China, given expected growth in U.S. electricity demand and environmental and cost concerns about rival fossil fuels, says Andy White, president of GE Energy’s nuclear business. (GE is the parent of NBC, which is a partner in MSNBC.)

“We’ve probably never had a better situation,” White said in an interview, predicting that 60 or more new reactors may be built in the United States over the next 20 to 30 years with several designs finding customers.

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