Michael Hiltzik: Is a nuclear renaissance in the offing?
America’s nuclear power industry has been pronounced dead almost as often as Rasputin, so it may be a testament to the nation’s appetite for electricity that it’s still looking ahead to a renaissance.
The industry’s strongest argument today for its continued relevance is that as the nation’s fleet of more than 100 nuclear plants faces retirement for old age in the coming decades, the only practical way to replace the 20% of electricity they currently generate is by building more nukes.
“We’re going to have a renaissance, no matter what,” James E. Rogers, the chairman and CEO of Duke Energy, told a conference of “green” investors in Santa Barbara on Thursday. Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke produces about a third of its energy for domestic markets from nuclear plants, Rogers told me, but will have to start decommissioning the aging facilities in 2031. It expects to receive federal regulatory approval for a replacement plant next year.
Speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s ECO:nomics conference on ecology-wise investing, Rogers observed that nuclear’s 20% share of nationwide generation equates to more than 70% of the country’s non-fossil-fuel generation. That means that as old coal plants edge into retirement too, pressure to raise nuclear’s profile to fill the gap will intensify, he says.
Nobody expects the process to be easy. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission only recently approved two new plants after a hiatus of some three decades, and both, like Duke’s proposed plant, are in the Southeast and in communities that have coexisted comfortably with nuclear plants. Finding new communities willing to host a plant will be tough; and not all existing plants are viewed by their locals as perfect neighbors. That includes the two in California, Pacific Gas & Electric’s Diablo Canyon plant and Southern California Edison’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station — to which an NRC team was dispatched just last week to look into a spate of equipment failures.
Industry critics say nuclear enthusiasts overlook cheaper and safer alternatives in renewable technologies. Environmentalist Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, who believes that solar and wind power, supplemented by upgrades to the nationwide power transmission grid, can fill the nuclear gap, noted at the conference that private investors are so wary of nuclear power that despite lavish federal loan guarantees and a huge oil-price spike in 2008, no proposed U.S. reactor projects have attracted private capital.
“Renewable energy is what’s eating nuclear’s lunch,” he says.
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