New Nukes or No Nukes?
Energy needs refuel the nuclear debate…
Wisconsin hosts three of the nation’s
104 active commercial nuclear reactors. One produces the lowest
cost-per-kilowatt-hour base-load generation in the state, and
the three combined account for about one-fifth of Wisconsin’s
electricity output.
That makes them crucial to meeting
electricity demand. And since their current licenses expire
in 10 years or less (not long for power-plant development),
whether they continue operating or are replaced by something
else—and if so by what—is already an important question.
Cut off in the late 1970s from
any apparent prospect of further growth, the U.S. nuclear power
industry looked to be on a path toward extinction, but that
has changed. Albeit far behind schedule, the federal government
is moving somewhat purposefully to open a Nevada repository
for spent power-plant fuel. Last fall in Madison, top university
scientists held a public seminar on future nuclear generation
using new, smaller, safer technologies with dramatic reductions
of waste. A few of the nation’s large utilities are buying
nuclear plants and some clearly have thoughts of building new
ones. Pending state legislation would repeal Wisconsin’s
20-year-old ban on Public Service Commission approval of new
nuclear-fueled generation.
Polar Opposites
Last fall, the Wisconsin Federation
of Cooperatives decided to provide a forum for two strong advocates,
one pro-nuclear, the other anti-, to make their best arguments.
State Representative Mike Huebsch (R–West Salem), author
of the above-mentioned Wisconsin legislation, and Minnesota
State Senator Ellen Anderson (D–St. Paul), a prominent
opponent of nuclear energy, accepted invitations to debate during
November’s joint annual meeting activities with the Minnesota
Association of Cooperatives.
The lawmakers were asked to debate
the proposition that developing new nuclear plants would yield
a net benefit to electric reliability and the environment. Huebsch
opened by reeling off a list of nuclear energy’s environmental
virtues.
“It produces no greenhouse
gases or other atmospheric pollutants,” he said. “It
improves environmental conditions in the atmosphere by reducing
our reliance on the oil, coal, and natural gas plants that emit
those kinds of pollutants.
“In fact, in the United
States there have been no deaths from nuclear power plants in
their entire 45-year history. No other energy source can boast
such a record,” Huebsch said.
Given the Dr. Strangelove image
many attach to nuclear power, such remarks might appear rather
bold. But Anderson directly refuted none of them, which is not
to say she agreed.
“We’ve been there,
we’ve done that, we’ve tried it, and I think it’s
an experiment whose time needs to come to an end at some point
in our near future,” Anderson said.
This was no idle talk. Ten years
ago, when federal tardiness in opening a promised facility moved
Xcel Energy (then Northern States Power) to seek legislative
authorization for spent-fuel storage at its Prairie Island plant
near Red Wing, Minnesota, Anderson countered with legislation
that would have closed the plant more than a dozen years ahead
of its scheduled license expiration. Last year, when the same
federal delay made Xcel ask to expand its authorization, she
proposed a softer compromise that would have precluded renewal
of the plant’s license when it runs out in 10 years.
Anderson offered her own list
of reasons for the position she takes. She told Huebsch and
the debate audience she believes nuclear power “is not
safe, it’s not clean, and it’s not cheap. Nuclear
power is actually dangerous, highly toxic, and very expensive,
not only for us but for future generations.”
She also focused on security,
reminding the audience that Al Qaeda safe houses in Afghanistan
had been found to contain maps of American nuclear plants.
“A jetliner flying into
a nuclear plant would cause death and devastation for 50 to
100 miles around that plant, easily,” she said. “And
if you’re talking about a plant by the Mississippi River
for example, like Prairie Island, you can expand that to the
consequences downstream.”
A well-aimed rocket from a hand-held
launcher could also produce widespread devastation, she argued,
“if they aimed and hit the right part of a nuclear plant
that’s not within the containment vessel.”
Huebsch countered that the Progressive
Policy Institute, think tank of the Democratic Leadership Council,
analyzed Homeland Security across several sectors of American
society and gave its only “A” rating to the nuclear
industry.
Reading from the Institute’s
report, Huebsch said, “If anything, the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory
Commission] could be faulted for overkill, as nuclear power
plants have always been extremely secure and additional security
measures may not be the best use of resources. Worst-case scenarios
of terrorist attacks on plants or nuclear waste under transport
indicate the very low likelihood of collateral injury.”
Hot Rods in Cold Storage
On both sides, it was clear the
central issue was what to do with high-level radioactive waste,
in the form of spent fuel and control rods that need to rest
undisturbed for a long time.
Anderson cited toxicity and storage
costs in what boiled down to a contention that the residue of
nuclear energy makes it not worth having.
“Who can accurately predict
what will be the cost of protecting a highly toxic substance
for 20 thousand , 30 thousand years?” she asked. “The
fact is that future generations are going to be picking up that
cost forever.”
The planned federal facility at
Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, she said, is intended to hold
only the amount of spent fuel today’s plants would produce
if they all run to the end of their current licenses. New plants
would require developing another permanent waste site, she predicted,
contending, “The public reaction is going to be highly
negative and it could be very difficult to go through that process.”
It certainly hasn’t been
easy the first time. Congress passed legislation in 1982 requiring
the federal government to have a storage site accepting high-level
waste by 1998. The result was Yucca Mountain, and while its
stalled development has begun moving in recent years, 2010 is
now considered a very optimistic date for its opening. Meanwhile,
nuclear plants continue holding their spent fuel on site, facing
the prospect of early shutdowns and loss of their generating
capacity if they use up their safe storage space before a repository
opens.
Huebsch agrees that “the biggest
concern always is waste.”
Spent fuel is “a very dangerous
substance,” he says, but “I would not be moving
forward with the legislation I have in Wisconsin had I not had
confidence that Washington has finally recognized its responsibility”
to provide permanent, secure storage.
He pointed out that to store the
waste produced “over the entire history of the nuclear
age…you would take a football field and you would fill
it about 15 feet high. That’s all the nuclear rods, all
the spent fuel that is in all the storage facilities all over
the country.”
Huebsch maintained the practical
aspects of storing nuclear waste are now settled questions.
He cited statements by Bruce Babbitt, a geologist and interior
secretary during the Clinton administration, that the issue
has moved beyond the technical argument and the feasibility
argument and is now a political argument over the specific site.
That seems to be reflected in
litigation strategies the State of Nevada has adopted in efforts
to block the opening of Yucca Mountain. Rather than argue that
the thing can’t be done, the state has concentrated on
disputing whether federal officials have followed required procedures.
Unthinkable or Indispensable?
No one has built a nuclear power
plant in the United States since 1978. No one we know of contemplates
building a new one in Wisconsin or Minnesota, Iowa or Michigan.
But in 2003, major nuclear power
operators asked the NRC for two “early site permits”
to begin preparatory work for developing plants. The applications
are for existing nuclear generation sites in Virginia and Illinois.
That these applications would
be widely considered politically unthinkable can be traced to
one event: the partial core meltdown at Pennsylvania’s
Three Mile Island plant in 1979, invariably identified in media-speak
as “the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.”
Yet, in testimony prepared for a December legislative hearing
on Rep. Huebsch’s bill to lift the Wisconsin moratorium,
Max Carbon, University of Wisconsin emeritus professor of nuclear
engineering, pointed out that no member of the public was harmed
by radiation in that episode. In November 2002, the journal
Environmental Health Perspectives published a 20-year University
of Pittsburgh study revealing no elevated incidence of cancer
deaths among people living within five miles of the plant, compared
with those living farther away.
Three Mile Island’s disastrous
effects appear to have been confined to the nuclear industry
itself. Last month, Prof. Carbon told the Assembly Committee
on Energy and Utilities he regarded nuclear power as “essential”
to protect the environment. Whether the industry will unexpectedly
recover and the environment will benefit, we may soon see.—Dave
Hoopman
