Nuclear Power's Image: Radioactive No More

[Muckerheide <muckerheide@MEDIAONE.NET>]

Friends,



Please forward to colleagues who should be aware of the growing discussion

on "the next nuclear power plant" in the US. Five companies are potential

candidates: Exelon, Entergy, Dominion, Constellation, and Southern.



Regards, Jim

===========



Nuclear Power's Image: Radioactive No More

An industry that was out of power is at the table again, thanks to a friend

in the White House 



Deirdre Davidson

Legal Times 



April 20, 2001 



Jackson Browne might want to load up the tour bus and head for Washington

some time soon. 



The singer-songwriter has been in the forefront of the U.S. anti-nuclear

movement throughout his career, including headlining the landmark 1979 "No

Nukes" concerts in Madison Square Garden, after the incident at the Three

Mile Island nuclear reactor.



In the years since, it seemed the movement had won the war: No new reactors

were on the drawing boards and existing facilities were expected to be

phased out. But like '70s-era bell-bottoms and halter tops, nukes are back.

The remarkable resurrection has been fueled by a sustained public relations

and self-improvement campaign that is now yielding results thanks to the

energy crunch. The industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are

gearing up for the possibility of new reactors. A new regulatory regime has

streamlined licensing and inspections. Members of Congress are drafting

bills to move nuclear power back into the country's energy lineup. And even

Vice President Dick Cheney is touting nuclear power as a key component in

solving the country's energy woes.



"If I had talked about building new nuclear plants two years ago, you would

have died laughing," says David Roberts, a lobbyist for Progress Energy, an

electricity holding company that owns nuclear reactors. "Last year, you

would have chuckled. This year no one is laughing."



So far, no company has made a hard promise to build a new nuclear reactor in

the United States. Until that happens, the resurgence of nuclear power

remains more of a theoretical possibility than a reality. But if building

new reactors becomes a real possibility, the anti-nuclear contingent

promises to go into meltdown mode to stop it.



"I think it would be World War III to propose to site a new nuclear plant,"

says Katherine Kennedy, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense

Council's energy program.



If the nuclear industry has to thank anything for its recovery, it would be

the California energy crisis.



For years the industry had been working to improve its own bottom line and

its public image. But its quiet makeover had been largely a

behind-the-scenes transformation. With the California crisis hitting right

as a Republican administration was taking over, energy became a front-burner

issue. The new administration has been willing to discuss all options -- new

power plants, more drilling and mining, and loosening environmental

restrictions. Nuclear power stepped in.



"We have been working in the industry for years to make nuclear power a

viable option, and it looks like now that is going to happen," says Oliver

Kingsley Jr., president and chief nuclear officer of Exelon Nuclear, which

operates numerous plants. "California has provided the catalyst or the

warning that we do need a national energy policy. And nuclear can play a

very active and very significant role in providing for the energy needs of

the future." 



By the early 1990s, the industry had limited appeal. Plants were expensive

and difficult to build. They often cost billions more than projected and

took years to get running. The plants in operation ran at far less than full

capacity, with an industry average of only 70 percent in 1990, according to

the industry's trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). The plants

also required lengthy refueling shutdowns. And the problem of where to put

nuclear waste was unresolved.



Much has changed, according to the NEI: Operating capacity hit nearly 90

percent in 2000; plants produced record numbers of kilowatt hours in the

past few years, 728 billion hours in 1999; and operating costs are dropping

-- down to 2.13 cents a kilowatt hour in 1998.



Nuclear plants are now a more attractive investment for energy companies to

buy from deregulating utilities. Companies such as the Entergy Corp. and

Exelon have made buying nuclear power plants a cornerstone of their growth

strategies. 



The industry has also been helped by a regulatory shift. Under the auspices

of former Vice President Al Gore's reinventing government effort, the NRC

streamlined its regulatory process, moving toward less extensive, more

targeted regulations and inspections.



"What we have looked at is reducing or eliminating burdensome regulations

that were not contributing to nuclear plant safety and creating a regulatory

climate that would be more predictable," says Victor Dricks, an NRC

spokesman. 



Licensing rules, for old and new plants, have been revamped by Congress and

the agency. In the early 1990s, many expected that nuclear reactors would be

shut down at the end of their 40-year operating licenses. Not now. The NRC

has approved several relicensing applications, and the industry expects a

majority of the 103 U.S. nuclear plants to be relicensed for additional

20-year terms. 



But what is giving nuclear power its traction these days are those

successes, combined with the industry's political clout.

"Nuclear has been quite out of fashion with the public," says Jeffrey

MacKinnon, a lobbyist with Washington, D.C.'s Ryan, Phillips, Utrecht &

MacKinnon who works on energy issues. "But they have never lost a vote on

the floor." 



For the 2000 election cycle, the NEI donated $338,716, nearly 70 percent of

that going to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Companies that own utilities, as well as those that design reactors, are

donors in their own right.



The NEI has a $28 million annual budget, which it spends on lobbying,

advertising, and public information. The group has been leading the

transformation of nuclear's image from environmental nightmare to

eco-friendly energy source that doesn't emit greenhouse gasses. It buys

several rounds of advertising a year, mostly in the print and radio market

for Washington, D.C., to directly target federal policy-makers.



Nuclear's new green campaign has recently been giving the industry one of

its biggest boosts. Cheney himself cited it as a reason for examining

nuclear on a recent Sunday talk show. And that reasoning is making

environmentalists howl.



"In one sense, it's a Bush administration 'gotcha' on the environment and

global warming -- if you are screaming about carbon dioxide, then take a

power plant," says Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer

Federation of America.



BUILDING UP? 



Now the question is: Will a new reactor be built in the United States?

"Everything has its time," says William Carney, a nuclear energy lobbyist

and former Republican congressman from New York. "I think in five years'

time you will see a new nuclear plant licensed."



The Bush administration's long-term energy strategy is due out soon. Bush

advisers and industry executives say the plan will have a large role for

nuclear power. The industry says it was heartened by a Bush policy committee

that has been open to nuclear power. The committee's chief staffer is Andrew

Lundquist, who worked for pro-nuclear Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska.

Murkowski and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., have sent their own signals about

the need for nuclear power with pro-industry bills they introduced this

spring. 



Both industry and the NRC are gearing up for the possibility of new plants.

NEI members created a working group last September to discuss building new

nuclear plants. Made up of chief executive officers from nuclear-owning

power companies and nuclear reactor designing companies, the group is

discussing how best to approach various facets of erecting new reactors --

public acceptance, design, site approval, financing, and construction.



The industry's regulator is also preparing for the possibility of a surge in

nuclear plant construction. On March 30, the NRC created its own working

group on nuclear power plants after getting such strong interest from the

industry. The group, which will be composed of agency staff, is working on

the approval process for new nuclear reactors. The working group will make

recommendations for commission approval on licensing any new nuclear

reactors that may be built.



But they remain working groups. No one has proposed building a nuclear plant

yet. And the waste issue, one of the industry's biggest and long-standing

problems, is still unresolved. Even if President Bush and Congress back the

nuclear storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the site won't be

operational for years. Although many are seeing nuclear power making its way

back into polite conversation, they say a nuclear boom is a long way off.



"Constructing and licensing new power plants is a very big challenge," says

Robert Sussman, chairman of Latham & Watkins' environmental practice and a

former official in the Clinton Environmental Protection Agency. "The track

record in the '70s of building nuclear plants was pretty scary. There were

plants in which huge amounts of money was invested which were then

abandoned. Or there were delays, huge cost overruns, huge battles with the

communities. It was a pretty grim experience all around. I don't know if

anyone is going to go down that road willingly." 



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