Hip, hip, hooray! President Obama is reportedly about to announce an expansion of the loan guarantee for nuclear plants from $18 billion to $54 billion — probably after hearing that applause, the biggest outburst of the night, when he mentioned nuclear in his State of the Union Address.
I know people are going to say, “Oh, he doesn’t mean it” or “It’s still a drop in the bucket,” but don’t be fooled. This is going to get the ball rolling. The thing to recognize is that nuclear already has so much momentum behind it, all it will take is a little push and it will be all downhill from there.
The most humiliating thing about our prima-donna approach to nuclear is that the rest of the world has now steamed ahead without us. There are 54 reactors under construction worldwide, none in the United States. In 2006, the Chinese sent over a delegation of nuclear officials to ask our advice about starting a reactor program. (I happened to meet them while visiting the Idaho National Lab.) They subsequently bought designs both from Westinghouse (now a Japanese company) and Areva, the French giant. Now they’ve done some reverse-engineering and have 16 reactors of their own design under construction as well. They’re not asking our advice anymore. In 20 years, China will be selling mini-reactors at Wal-Mart.
South Korea gets 45 percent of its electricity from nuclear (we’re at 19 percent) and has entered the international market. For years they relied on foreign technology. Then in 1995 they took an old blueprint from Combustion Engineering and came up with their own design. They now build their own reactors, operating them at 95 percent annual capacity, the only country that beats our 90 percent. (We’re still the best in the world at running reactors, we just aren’t allowed to build them anymore.) Last month the Koreans beat out both Areva and Westinghouse for a $20 billion contract to build four new reactors for the United Arab Emirates. The whole world is going nuclear and there’s a lot of business out there. We once led the world in the technology. Now we’re in last place.
Fortunately, the $54 billion will be a starting gun. There are currently 33 proposals before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, several ready to break ground. If Wall Street doesn’t fund them, some foreign government will. The problem is the NRC, which hasn’t issued a license in 30 years. Two of the seats on the five-member commission are now vacant and deliberations proceed at a glacial pace. When Chairman Gregory Jasko took over as chairman last May, he said he hoped to issue at least one license before his term ends in 2013. That may be optimistic. When the British government recently announced plans for ten new reactors, it gave its NEC equivalent one year to deny or approve the licenses. We could use that kind of dispatch here.
Reactors now cost at least $5 billion apiece and $18 billion wasn’t going to get us very far. But $54 billion will get at least ten projects out the door. Then if all goes smoothly — i.e., if nuclear opponents don’t tie them up for a decade in court — other companies will jump in. The rewards are too enticing. The average nuclear reactor in this country is now making $1 million a day.
And don’t worry about that so-called problem of “nuclear waste.” The French have already solved it for us. The amount of highly radioactive material that can’t be recycled is so small that the French store all their waste from 30 years of producing 75 percent of their electricity with nuclear beneath the floor of one room at Le Hague. Areva now wants to build a reprocessing center here as well.
In the past ten years, the rest of the world has sprinted ahead of us on nuclear. Now at last we’re ready to join the race.
– William Tucker is author of Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Power Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey.