Crowell says future demand may depend on nuclear power

[John_Sukosky@dom.com]

ASSOCIATED PRESS NEWSWIRES
By Duncan Mansfield


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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Nuclear power will get more valuable
as the pressure grows to reduce air pollution from coal-fired power plants,
Tennessee Valley Authority Chairman Craven Crowell said Tuesday.

"I think it has to end up being nuclear in the long term because it is very
friendly to air quality," Crowell said during a civic club appearance.

Crowell conceded that no permanent disposal method has been
developed for radioactive waste from the nation's more than 100
nuclear reactors, including the five operated by TVA.

"But I think air quality issues are going to become more and more
significant for us," said Crowell, whose agency is battling federal
regulators and environmentalists over pollutants from its 11 coal-fired
plants that cause smog and acid rain.

Weighing those concerns against forecasts of a growing population
and subsequent increased demand for electricity, Crowell predicted,
"We are going to have to go forward with nuclear power."

He said TVA, the country's largest public power producer, isn't yet
ready to order another nuclear plant. But Crowell, who chairs the
industry's Electric Power Research Institute, said it is both a national
and international issue.

While "green" technologies - from solar power to fuel cells - are
promising and deserve more research, he said, they aren't capable
of meeting power demands immediately.

"I think it is a simplistic approach to a complex problem," responded
Stephen Smith, director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

"To fix the air pollution and environmental problems associated with
coal-fired power plants by going to nuclear power is sort of like giving
up smoking and taking up crack," he said.

Smith said environmentalists worry that TVA may respond to clean
air enforcement actions by closing some fossil plants and resurrecting
the mothballed $4 billion Bellefonte nuclear station in Alabama.

"Our opinion is that TVA needs to be more engaged with independent
 power producers (particularly those using cleaner natural gas) and to
 be more aggressive about conservation and efficiency," Smith said.

He said relying on nuclear power "shows they may not have learned
their lessons."

However, Crowell said TVA has learned from its mistakes with
nuclear power. An aggressive plan adopted in the 1970s for a
17-reactor system is now mostly scrapped, leaving TVA billions of
dollars in debt.

Only six reactors were completed. The five now operating are rated
among the best in the industry, and TVA has trimmed $2 billion off
the debt.

"We got into nuclear too big," Crowell said. "We didn't create the
right kind of culture at TVA to manage the nuclear program
correctly ... (and) through our own sense of importance we didn't
get out of it soon enough.

"But," he said, "we are coming out of that now."


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