Disaster in Japan: U.S. Could Rethink Nuclear Reliance --- Industry Ponders Political Fallout
in America Following the Problems in Japan
By Stephanie Simon
923 words
14 March 2011
The Wall Street Journal
(Copyright (c) 2011, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
The U.S. nuclear power industry believed it was poised for a renaissance.
President Obama's 2012 budget proposed $36 billion in loan guarantees to build nuclear power plants. He called, too, for spending hundreds of millions on nuclear energy research and modern reactor design. Powerful Republicans were on board, calling for expansion of nuclear power a
rare opportunity for bipartisan cooperation.
Then, the massive earthquake and resulting damage at two nuclear facilities in Japan occurred over the weekend. Industry experts and analysts at once began to ponder the political fallout in the U.S.
The 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania froze the nuclear power industry in the U.S. No new licenses were granted for 30 years. The Three Mile incident -- sparked by the failure of a cooling system -- didn't cause any deaths, but many Americans were terrified by the plant's move to vent radioactive steam into the air and by ominous talk of a potential meltdown.
The 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl reinforced American skepticism of nuclear power.
But in recent years, the industry has steadily chipped away at that wariness. Industry executives and their political allies promote nuclear power as "clean energy," because, unlike coal or natural gas, it doesn't produce the greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now reviewing 20 more license applications from a dozen companies seeking to produce nuclear power. Site preparations for new reactors have begun in Georgia and South Carolina, and plans are under way to finish a reactor that was started years ago but never completed in Tennessee. That reactor should come online in 2013, and those in South Carolina and Georgia are expected to begin operations in 2016.
All told, the industry expects up to eight new reactors to be churning out power by 2020, according to Mitchinger, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group.
The U.S. currently has 104 nuclear plants in 31 states. Together, they produce 20% of the nation's electricity. Mr. Singer said he doesn't think the accident in Japan will derail the U.S. nuclear boom. In
fact, he said the explosion should reassure Americans that their own plants will be prepared for any emergency, because the industry will disseminate lessons learned in Japan around the globe, helping other reactors shore up their defenses against even devastating natural disasters, like the quake and the tsunami that followed.
"At this point," Mr. Singer said, "I don't think we're going to see a major impact on the U.S. nuclear industry."
But Peter Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, predicted Americans would respond to the Japanese disaster with "greatly heightened skepticism and heightened unwillingness to have nuclear power plants located in one's own neighborhood."
He predicted as well greater regulatory scrutiny of existing nuclear plants that are seeking to extend their operating licenses, especially when those plants are located in seismically active zones, such as Southern California's San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station and Diablo Canyon Power Plant.
"The image of a nuclear power plant blowing up before your eyes on the television screen is a first," Mr. Bradford said. "That cannot be good for an industry that's looking for votes in Congress and in the state legislatures."
Mr. Obama's proposal to expand loan guarantees to aid construction of new reactors might also take a hit, especially given the push in Congress to cut spending, said Robert Alvarez, a former senior policy advisor for the U.S. Department of Energy who now works on nuclear disarmament issues. "There might be a political tsunami," Mr. Alvarez said.
Within hours of the blast at the Japanese nuclear plant, Rep. Edward J. Markey, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, called on the Obama administration to impose a moratorium on building new reactors in seismically active areas and to require those already in
earthquake-prone zones to be retrofitted with stronger containment systems. He also called for a thorough investigation of whether design flaws contributed to the Japanese accident. Twenty three reactors in the U.S. use the same design parameters as Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi
plant.
"The unfolding disaster in Japan must produce a seismic shift in how we address nuclear safety here in America," Rep. Markey said.
Rep. Joe Barton, a Republican from Texas who has long supported nuclear power, said he hoped the damage to the reactor in Japan didn't turn the American public off nuclear energy. But he added that "even proponents of nuclear power want to get to the bottom" of what happened in Japan --
how to fix it.
"I believe very strongly in the future of nuclear power," Mr. Burton said, "but those who support it have to insist that the safety redundancy features perform" even during a catastrophic natural disaster.
Even before the explosion in Japan, economic reality had taken a bite out of the nuclear industry's ambitious expansion plans in the U.S.
Natural gas has been so cheap that utilities have turned to it to generate electricity, rather than contemplate building multi-billion-dollar reactors. The recession has also dampened demand for electrical power, further diminishing the appeal of a massive investment in nuclear
facilities.
Naureen Malik contributed to this article.