Posts Tagged ‘Debate of the Week’

When the Senate and House reconvene after the November election either for their lame-duck session or the new Congress in January, it’s likely that a national renewable portfolio standard will be again surface. The Senate Energy bill, already out of committee, mandates that 15 percent of our national electricity should come from “renewable resources” – i.e., sun, wind, geothermal and biomass – by 2020.
 
It all seems so simple. Just pass a law and we’ll be on our way to a world run on “energy from sun, wind and soil,” as President Obama put it in his Inaugural Address. But of course it won’t work. The 29 existing state mandates are notable for their lack of compliance and have produced rising electrical rates.
 
More important, a national renewable standard will inhibit U.S. nuclear energy development. Billions of dollars will be sunk into wind farms and solar collectors while new reactors remain on the drawing board. A few sensible voices – including the Washington Post editorial page – are pushing for a “carbon-free” standard, but, an amendment appears uphill without a shift in the balance of the Senate and House.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the illusion of a renewable standard remains enormously popular with the public, scoring as high as 70 percent approval in some polls. So, how do you sober up the public with respect to the allure of a renewable electricity?  And how do you reposition the end game to focus on  clean energy standard, based on carbon-free energy?  Can a clean energy standard that includes nuclear energy, garner support in the new Congress as part of the President’s new energy climate legislation in “chunks” strategy?

On February 22, 2010,  just 21 days after the U.S. Department of Energy formally announced it would suspend the Yucca Mountain national nuclear spent fuel and high-level waste repository project in Nevada, the first of a bevy of lawsuits seeking to overturn the action was announced by three state of Washington businessmen.

Just nine days later, on March 3, the Department filed a license withdrawal request with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (ASLB).  A month later, on April 6, the NRC’s Atomic Safety Licensing Board – in the face of mounting legal challenges and interventions relevant to the DOE action– announced it was freezing consideration of the matter to await guidance on the matter from U.S. Court of Appeals proceedings.  Less than 17 days later, on April 23 – without waiting for their newest colleague, Commissioner George Apostolakis, who was scheduled to be sworn in just hours later – the Commission vacated the ASLB decision and ordered the Board to render a decision on the DOE withdrawal request in 39 days or less (June 1).

Twenty-eight days after the June 1 deadline, the ASLB issued a unanimous decision rejecting DOE’s license withdrawal request.  Less than 24 hours later, in an unusual action, the Commission set immediate ground rules for an appeal of the decision requesting briefs from interested parties by July 9,  just nine days later.  On July 15, just six days after parties to the proceeding filed a motion seeking the disqualification of three commissioners based on their Senate confirmation hearing testimony earlier in the year, freshman Commissioner Apostolakis recused himself citing other considerations.
In a process that has been defined by days and hours for the most part, it is now 86 days and counting since the ASLB’s June 29th ruling and the initiation of the Commission’s review of the lower panel’s decision.  The full Commission has now exceeded the 39 days they initially provided to the ASLB to sift through considerably more complicated issues.  Meanwhile the U.S. Court of Appeals , which was scheduled to begin oral arguments on September 23 on the mountain of legal contentions now filed in the matter, has put a hold on the proceedings awaiting a Commission determination.  In just six days, the Yucca Mountain project will be in purgatory with the expiration of the fiscal year, a likely continuing resolution and given a DOE edict that it will terminate all remaining employees in the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management on September 30.

The Commission’s delay with regard to an ASLB verdict has lead to much conjecture in Capitol Hill, legal and nuclear policy circles.  Does the NRC Chairman – a former disciple of chief Yucca Mountain antagonist Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — lack the Commission votes to override the ASLB?  Was he waiting to get a consensus on an updated waste confidence rule, which was consummated on September 15?  Or for conspiracy theorists is he seeking to help his old boss’s up-hill re-election campaign by deferring a possible affirmation of the decision to reject the DOE license withdrawal until after the November 2 election or until Congress leave towns town for its elections recess?  Or for the more charitably-inclined was Jaczko just concentrating on his keynote speech on September 22 to the 54th International Atomic Energy Agency Conference on the  scintillating topic of “The Essential Role of the Safety Regulator?”

During the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD,  Roman Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus purportedly fiddled while Rome burned.  One authoritative source claims there wasn’t a fiddle to fiddle at the time – although perhaps he was playing a lyre.  Other revisionists suspect that the story was invented by Nero detractors who took power shortly thereafter.

Years later, Clairol’s hair color advertisements famously touted the tag line – “Only her hairdresser knows for sure.”  So perhaps while only Chairman Jaczko knows for sure, what’s your view?  Thus far, in the Nuclear Townhall poll on the subject, 63 % believe the NRC is delaying the decision until after the election; 14% feel the Commission should take as much time as they need ; 9 % say they are deadlocked.  A 2-2 vote by the eligible Commissioners would effectively rebuff a reversal of the ASLB decision.

Last week the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission directed the NRC staff to produce a plan on how to integrate the use of risk insights into the review of small modular reactor applications. The commissioners set a deadline of six months.
 
The move is seen by some as a potentially promising harbinger that the NRC is beginning to feel a ramped-up sense of urgency with regard to commercial nuclear technology license reviews. NRC Monday-morning quarterbacks maintain that the commission has taken a laissez-faire approach to new technology licensing — operating under the assumptions that NRC licensing is the world’s “gold standard” and America is still at the forefront of the world in nuclear technology and safety.
 
Yet this paradigm may be rapidly evolving. Last March Secretary of Energy Steven Chu suggested American companies might be able to find a technology niche in the world market by championing small modular reactors (SMRs). In the short time since, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia have all announced plans to pursue their own SMR designs and several are already in active development. Meanwhile, initial commercial deployment in the United States is not currently envisioned until 2020 at the earliest – in large part because of anticipated licensing schedules and ques.
 
So the question arises – should the NRC embrace more time limits and/or date certain targets in its licensing application procedures?  Britain, in beginning its nuclear revival, has given its Health and Safety Executive – the equivalent of the NRC – schedule parameters to complete license reviews on reactor proposals.
 
Could or should the U.S. do the same?  Will schedule definitization compromise safety or the “gold standard.”  Or should the U.S. stay the course with the current open-ended process, where reviews are ball-parked at five years and little is likely to get deployed on the U.S. Renaissance front in this coming decade?

You don’t have to be involved in nuclear very long before you start hearing about thorium. It’s the other naturally occurring radioactive element that exists in large supplies and can produce nuclear fission.

The story is that Eugene Wigner, Alvin Weinberg and other pioneers of the Manhattan Project era believed thorium offered a much better way to tapping nuclear energy.  We went the uranium route instead because uranium was the more practical option for the immediate task of building a bomb.

Nevertheless, thorium is three-to-four times as abundant as uranium.  It doesn’t require isotope separation – a huge cost saving.  When bombarded by neutrons, thorium doesn’t fission but converts to uranium-233 — which does.  With U-233, the production of transuranics is orders of magnitude lower.  This obviates any proliferation issues. (U-233 can be used to make a conventional weapon but is consumed all along within the reactor.). Depending on the reactor, the spent fuel can be much easier to handle.  India has large supplies and is developing a thorium-based nuclear cycle.

While it might be a potentially appealing package for the U.S. — and was actually pursued to some extent in the 1990s — there are significant hurdles.  The U.S. is obviously fully committed to the uranium fuel-cycle — as is the balance of the world — for the Renaissance.  We are heavily invested in the status quo, both to meet U.S. demands and to compete internationally.

Can or should a thorium fuel cycle play a side-by-side role in Renaisssance Rev 1.0?  Is there a plausible business case for the massive investment necessary?  Or do public acceptance and first-of-a-kind licensing issues make it impractical?  Are there other more appealing Generation IV options?  In short, what’s the best way to proceed — if any — with the Thorium option?

The possibilities for any kind of carbon economics within the context of a Senate energy bill now seem over.  The terminology of “cap-and-trade” has become so poisonous that Harry Reid won’t even pronounce the words anymore. As the Senate moves on to a more limited energy bill, however, some nuclear supporters are left wondering if the Nuclear Renaissance may end up in limbo until the subject is revisited – if ever. With the balance of Congressional power expected to change in the mid-term election, it seems unlikely that the issue will resurface anytime soon.

The scaled-back Kerry-Lieberman compromise — which limited cap-and-trade to utilities — rewarded nuclear’s carbon-free electricity and made it more competitive with coal and natural gas. In a letter to Energy Daily this week, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers noted that as the EPA begins to crack down on coal plants -­ 70 percent of which are more than 30 years old – one-third of this aging fleet will probably be replaced with natural gas or nuclear.  “Without a carbon price,” said Rogers, “it is very difficult to justify nuclear power.” 

And as a Wall Street Journal editorial warned this week, while cap-and-trade fades, chances grow that Republicans and Democrats could settle their differences instead by adopting a national renewable energy standard that might exclude nuclear.  The potential result might be billions invested in gigantic solar and wind farms that will require constant backup from natural gas – with nuclear left out in the cold.

Or, if the first wave of early movers proceed on time and on-schedule — with the first unit at Vogtle looming on the horizon in 2016 — and public and Wall Street confidence blooms while new initiatives like small reactors blossom, does the Renaissance need a leg-up from a carbon tax?

Is Jim Rogers wrong? Can the Renaissance proceed without a carbon regime?  Or is a utilities-only Kerry-Lieberman style plan pivotal to the Renaissance?

By William Tucker
The Vermont State Legislature has voted not to re-license Vermont Yankee. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is insisting that Oyster Creek close down if it does not build cooling towers. New York State is doing the same at Indian Point, which provides New York City with one-quarter of its electricity, as is California with San Onofre and Diablo Canyon.

When told that all these plants play a critical role in providing these state with electricity, the bureaucrats and environmentalists wave these concerns aside and insist the reactors can be replaced by wind and solar.

People who understand energy are assigned a simple role in these controversies. They must defend these aging reactors at all costs. Yes, Vermont Yankee has leaked small quantities of tritium but it poses no danger to the public. Yes, Oyster Creek warms Barnegat Bay slightly but there is no serious threat to fish life. Yes, Indian Point warms the Hudson, but putting up cooling towers would require a yearlong shutdown and make the two reactors unprofitable. (And why hasn't the Department of Environmental Conservation required cooling towers at an almost identical coal-and-gas plant across the Hudson at Bowline Point?)

In the coming years, countless hours and millions of dollars will be spent in court and before regulatory agencies trying to defend these reactors.

So the question is:  How damaging would it be to the U.S. nuclear energy revival if one or more of these plants were to close? Sure, Vermont would lose one-third of its electricity and have to go to Canada begging for hydro. Sure, New York City would lose 2,000 megawatts and suffer brownouts and blackouts during summer peaks. Sure New Jersey would seriously have to investigate covering its entire 125-mile coastline with 45-story windmills. (What a nice background that would make for the Jersey Shore!)

But that's the whole point. American society has become dangerously divided into two groups — people who understand how electricity works and people who hardly know anything about it. Increasingly, it's the people who don't know that much who are running the show. The authors of the Waxman-Markey Bill seriously think passing a renewable standard of 17 percent will set us on the road to energy utopia. Speaking on Meet the Press two years ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described natural gas as a "cheap, clean alternative to fossil fuels."  A few weeks ago I had the chance to quiz one of the chief litigators in the New York Attorney General's office who is diligently trying to close Indian Point because ­as he put it "it's in the wrong place."  When I asked where he thought New York City was going to find a replacement 2,000 megawatts, he gave a weak smile and said, "That's not our problem."

The whole premise of energy generation has become that a small cadre who understand technology are assigned the task of providing for the public while everyone else hounds them for allegedly disturbing the environment. Orchestrating this opera bouffant is a caste of environmentalists who insist that their form of energy generation will have no impact on nature and that covering the Tehachapi Mountains with 40-story windmills will only enhance the scenery.

How important is the battle with nuclear opponents over a small percentage of the U.S. nuclear operating fleet?  Will one or more closures cause a ripple effect in the current fleet with opponents moving onto other targets?  Or is the priority to just concentrate on building new ones as soon as possible or maybe multi-tasking? 

How about adding your opinion to the debate?

William Tucker is editor-at-large of Nuclear Townhall and author of Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey.