By Keith Johnson
The nuclear option seems to be back on the table, with new bipartisan legislation designed to promote a fresh wave of nuclear power plant construction. Is there an easier way?
Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Jim Webb of Virginia this week introduced the “Clean Energy Act of 2009,” which skips all the contentious bits of current energy legislation—like a cap-and-trade plan to curb greenhouse-gas emissions—in favor of directly promoting low-carbon energy, with special fondness for nuclear power.
The idea is to double nuclear power generation in the U.S. over the next 20 years, in addition to launching mini-Manhattan Projects for other clean-energy sources, such as solar power, electric cars, and biofuels.
“If we were going to war, we wouldn’t mothball our nuclear navy and start subsidizing sailboats. If addressing climate change and creating low-cost, reliable energy are national imperatives, we shouldn’t stop building nuclear plants and start subsidizing windmills,” said Sen. Alexander in a press release.
But the biggest problems with new nuclear construction are the same they’ve ever been: time and money. New plants take a long time to build, and as a result are very expensive, which threatens to strain the balance sheets of even the biggest U.S. utilities. Thus the emphasis in the new legislation on expanding loan guarantees for the industry.
If new nuclear is problematic, what about squeezing existing nuclear plants harder? That’s the idea behind nuclear uprates, or overhauls to existing plants to make them produce more electricity. John Rowe, chairman of Exelon, told Congress last month that the U.S. could squeeze an extra 8 gigawatts of power out of its existing nuclear fleet through uprates.
As an industry, “we’ve put so much emphasis on new build, we’ve kind of overlooked this low-hanging fruit,” Chip Pardee, chief nuclear officer at Exelon Nuclear, told us.
Read more: http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/11/18/nuclear-options-build-more-nukes-or-work-existing-ones-harder/Want to help with Global-Warming? Please visit http://www.whiteearth.org
Please become a fan of the Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/WhiteEarthorg/119367692642 and http://www.facebook.com/pages/WhiteEarth/165767310764
Become a friend on Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/christopherbeau
Follow me on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/christopherbeau
When you buy art on http://www.artsymphony.com 100% of your investment goes to sponsor WhiteEarth
No comments:
Post a Comment