Back to the Future with Nuclear Power?

An obscure provision in the Senate’s newly enacted energy bill may breathe new life into an energy sector that until recently seemed to be at a dead end.

A one-sentence provision buried in the bill would make builders of nuclear plants, along with other manufacturers of so-called clean energy, eligible for billions of dollars of government loan guarantees. Lobbyists have stressed to U.S. lawmakers and Bush administration officials that the nuclear industry will need as much as $50 billion over the next couple of years to undertake a major expansion of this energy sector.

Currently, the nuclear industry plans to build 28 new reactors at a projected cost of $4 to $5 billion each. However, the loan guarantees outlined in the bill also may spur construction of power plants that use clean coal technology and renewable fuels.

In one respect, the provision is not surprising, considering that many energy experts, including the Alabama Cooperative Extension System’s Mark Hall, view the path to U.S. energy independence as anything but linear. While acknowledging there is a handful of alternative energy technologies on the horizon that could greatly benefit and even revolutionize energy production, Hall does not foresee a magic bullet completely replacing oil. Adopting many different alternative energy sources, not just one, will be critical to ensuring U.S. energy efficiency, he believes.

Nuclear power conceivably could play a major role in this diverse energy picture.

At least one of the nation’s leading presidential contenders also sees it that way — the reason he believes the government should invest in nuclear energy and other renewable forms of energy.

Writing last week in RealClearPolitics.com, a leading Web journal of news and opinion, GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, chastised federal policymakers for not grasping this essential truth. He also upbraided them for failing to exploit the largest and most lucrative sources of cheap, readily available energy — atomic power.

Why is it that the French have pulled so far ahead of the United States in the use of atomic power, even though Americans were the pioneers in this alternative energy source? Giuliani wonders.

Currently, almost 80 percent of electricity in France is supplied by nuclear power. Meanwhile the United States derives only about 20 percent of its electricity from this source, and this share is expected to dwindle even further, down to about 15 percent, unless policymakers provide more incentives for expanding this energy sector, Giuliani says.

The last few years have been good for nuclear power, not only in the United States but throughout much of Western Europe, where this energy source has been regarded with the same dread and even loathing by environmental activists.

Perhaps more than any other single event associated with nuclear power, the Three Mile Island incident in 1979 served as a rallying point among environmentalist groups opposed to wider adoption of this alternative energy source. However, the event also drove away potential investors. Consequently, nuclear power was left to languish for almost 30 years.

However, concerns about global warming and foreign oil dependence have been big factors behind a resurgence of interest in nuclear power within the past few years.

Georgia Power and other major energy providers across the United States are fleshing out to build new power plants and to upgrade older ones. For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority approved the reactor for the site south of Knoxville at Spring City, a five-year $2.5 billion project to be funded by the public utility's revenues and by adding debt. The public energy provider also is considering additional reactors for the abandoned Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant site in northeast Alabama's Jackson County.

Posted by Jim Langcuster at August 3, 2007 03:06 PM