A restart for nuclear power?

A restart for nuclear power?

By Mary Jane Credeur
STAFF WRITER

Almost 25 years have passed since a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island sent the fledgling nuclear power industry reeling and led regulators to halt construction of new plants.

But now, nuclear experts say the necessary framework for new nuclear plants is falling into place. American reliance on nuclear energy is likely to grow significantly in coming decades as stricter air pollution laws and rising natural gas prices entice energy companies to invest in fuel that doesn't create toxic emissions, said nuclear industry executives and academics.

Nuclear power

Nuclear power plants are the nation's second-largest source of energy. The Southeast has a total of 32 nuclear plants

*Jointly owned and operated by Southern Co.
Source: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Southern Nuclear Operating Co., a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co. (NYSE: SO), currently operates six nuclear units in Georgia and Alabama., with about 16 percent of all the energy in its entire system coming from those nuclear plants.

"Nuclear is an important part of Southern Co.'s diverse fuel mix ... [and we] believe that new nuclear [plants] should remain an option for consideration in the future," said Steve Higginbottom, spokesperson for Southern Nuclear.

Higginbottom added Southern Nuclear has no immediate plans to build or acquire new units, and is instead focused on running its current units.

In other parts of the country, though, the Nuclear Enerc:Y Institute policy group is advocating new nuclear plants.

Utility companies Enterey Corp. (NYSE: ETR), Exelon Corp, (NYSE: EXC) and Dominion Resources Inc. (NYSE: D) have already applied for early site permits at three locations — one in western Mississippi, one in central Illinois and one near Richmond, Va. — for possible nuclear plants.

"We're not looking to build one or two plants; we're talking a couple of dozen plants over the next decades," said NEI spokesperson Steve Kerekes.

The nation's 103 nuclear plants now supply one-fifth of all the electricity Americans consume — the second-largest energy source in the country behind coal — and many of those plants are running at 90 percent or greater capacity. In Georgia, 28.5 percent of all electricity comes from nuclear fuel.

Federal support

American energy consumption is projected to grow 30 percent during the next 15 years, according to a 2001 report by the National Energy Policy Development Group, which guides the country's energy agenda.

Department of Energy officials have said they hope to bring at least one new nuclear reactor on line by 2010, and they are considering a licensing process that would shorten the nuclear application cycle from 10-plus years to about 5 years.

Last year, the Senate supported $15 billion in federal loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants, and a Senate energy bill under consideration designates $3.8 billion for nuclear subsidies, incentives and research. Several major Wall Street investors have indica~ they would consider financing new nuclear plants.

Surveys by the Nuclear Energy Institute consistently indicate 60 percent of Americans favor the use of nuclear power.

"We've turned a big corner the last few years, from talking about early [nuclear] plant closure to now adding new plants because we need the capacity," said Gilbert Brown, a nuclear engineering professor in the program at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, which has experienced an uptick in enrollment in its nuclear program.

Brown believes a new nuclear plant will be built and fully operational before the end of this decade, followed by the construction of several additional plants during the next 20 or 30 years.

"With new financing, a little government support, prefabricated designs and licensing within five or six years, now you're talking about a potential business deal," Brown said.

He added new nuclear plants would propel the industry forward to recover the "lost ground" from the Three Mile Island incident.

"We did all these projections and planned new plants in the 1970s, and then Three Mile Island happened and it scared the pants off everybody and it set us back a long way," Brown said. "It was a stunning moment in nuclear history, because it showed us how much we didn't know and how much we hadn't planned for."

March 28, 1979

On the morning of March 28, 1979, a partial core meltdown occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pa. On March 30, then-Gov. Dick Thornburgh ordered an advisory evacuation around the Three Mile Island plant. Tens of thousands of Pennsylvania residents fled the area in a panic.

In the decades that followed the worst nuclear accident in American history, regulators have refused to grant any new nuclear plant commissions, though new did allow partially built plants to be completed and brought online.

Vivid recollections of the confusion and pandemonium surrounding the Three Mile Island incident have stuck with many Americans who vehemently oppose nuclear energy, said Charles Harman, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke University.

"A lot of people don't know how nuclear energy works and how safe it is — they just remember the panic," Harman said.

Most importantly, Harman said, the Three Mile Island incident sparked a massive review and overhaul of the American nuclear industry. The accident also led to the creation of the ln1tltute of Nuclear Power Operators, an Atlanta-based group that allows nuclear companies to share information with each other.

"Because of Three Mile Island, the nuclear industry now has one of the safest records of any other industry in the country," Harman said. "We've never had a nuclear casualty, not a one. And we don't use the flammable materials they used at Chernobyl."

The commercial nuclear energy industry still faces many hurdles to building new plants.

Soutt1em Co.'s Edwtn I. Hatch Nuclear Plant: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission renewed the license for the Baxley, Ga., plant in 2002. Southern's Joseph M. Farley Nuclear Plant in Dothan, Ala., is currently up for license renewal.

Anti-nuclear advocates also argue the plants would be prime targets for potential terrorists.

The Nuclear RtCufltory Commfttlon mandated security improvements and additional training after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and nuclear companies will have collectively invested nearly $1 billion by the end of 2004 meeting the9e new safety requirements, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. The FBI classifies nuclear plants as "!Mgets" bccaJse of their security and monitoring practices.

More pressing is the billions of dollars needed to finish development of the nation-spent fuel repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and the tens of millions more required to transport spent rods via truck or rail to Yucca Mountain.

Another issue is the age of the country's 103 nuclear plants, all of which are 30-plus years old and will eventually need to be decommissioned.

In recent years, about half of all nuclear plants that have applied for license renewals would allow them to operate 20 or more additional years.

Duke professor Harman predicts some sort of political "watershed event" will occur within a few years, allowing licensing of several new nuclear plants. The frequency of license renewals for existing plants is a strong indicator regulators are open to the idea, he said.

"The industry has done as much as it possibly can with the capacity it has today," he said. "Nothing new can happen until we start building new plants."

Reach Credeur at mjcredeur@bizjournals.com.