Experts agree that the tide has turned in favor of nuclear power, but obstacles remain
Duggan Flanakin
How has the Trump administration fared in addressing the multiple challenges that have nearly stalled nuclear growth in the US? And what are the prospects for nuclear energy in a Biden Harris administration? It’s time to destroy the anti-nuke crowd, and it appears to be happening.
It has now been seventy-five years since the US ended the war against Japan by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (both are currently thriving). Eight years later, President Eisenhower, in his world-famous “Atoms for Peace” speech at the United Nations, invited citizens to debate the use of nuclear science and technology to generate electricity.
President Kennedy drew the nation’s attention from nuclear power to the space program, but beginning in the Nixon administration and exacerbated after the 1973 oil embargo by the incident on Three Mile Island in 1979, the US approved most of the 61 plants and 99 nuclear reactors that run are still operational in 2017. When President Trump took office, the Aspen Institute issued a report that said, “Nuclear power in the US is in a moment of existential crisis. If the current challenges are not addressed, the future of nuclear energy may be far less promising and the superior US nuclear literacy will decline. “
President Obama’s Clean Energy Plan provided funding for nuclear energy, including the creation of the Gate for Accelerated Nuclear Innovation (GAIN). Despite the chairman’s objections, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) authorized Southern Company in 2012 to build and operate two new reactors at its Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, the first in the United States since 1979.
The Aspen report boldly asserted that the US needed a strong domestic nuclear program to maintain its exceptional competence in addressing security, threat reduction and non-proliferation issues. They wooed the environmental community by stating that nuclear power is a necessary part of the war on climate change if we are to maintain adequate supplies of affordable electricity. “A world without nuclear power,” the authors concluded, “would require an incredible – and probably unrealistic – amount of renewable energy to meet the climate goals.”
The Aspen writers noted that Americans support nuclear power in general but are concerned about nuclear waste. Worse still, far too many nuclear power plants in development have broken their budgets and lagged behind schedule. Given the lack of political will or a national energy crisis at the time, the authors hoped for advanced reactors that would use new types of coolants, operate at different pressures and temperatures, or be smaller and more modular.
Many today view nuclear waste as an over hyped, unscientific problem. In a 2019 paper, Aspen Institute Trustee Bill Budinger argued that the fear of nuclear waste was largely unfounded – an issue that was “grossly exaggerated when we tried to deter people from nuclear weapons.” The total amount of nuclear waste accumulated by all US nuclear power plants over the past 60 years would fit in a two-story building covering a city block. Unfounded fear also applies to power plant radiation.
Cost overruns and delays are largely the result of anti-nuclear attitudes that have pushed regulation to extremes unsuitable for newer reactor designs.
In April 2020, President Trump unveiled his strategy to restore US nuclear leadership and competitive advantage in the nuclear field. The first step outlined in the plan is to revitalize and strengthen the American uranium mining industry, support uranium conversion services, end reliance on foreign uranium enrichment, and preserve the current fleet of aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines.
Other goals include creating a uranium reserve, streamlining regulatory reform and land access for uranium extraction (reducing bureaucracy), supporting the National Reactor Innovation Center and the versatile test reactor, and demonstrating the use of small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors for power supply to federal institutions and additional safeguards to prevent future uranium injections into the US market.
In November, the Associated Press reported that the Idaho National Laboratory was the Energy Department’s first choice to build and operate the Versatile Test Reactor (VTR). This first new test reactor, built in the United States in decades, would offer the nation a specialty test facility for a fast neutron spectrum. Energy Minister Dan Brouillette stated that the VCR “continues to be a priority project for DOE to ensure that nuclear energy plays a role in our country’s energy portfolio.”
Meanwhile, Llewellyn King reports that an active community of entrepreneurs is promoting reactors of various types (including modular molten salt reactors) and using seed capital for SMRs provided through the Obama-era GAIN program. The surge in private investment in nuclear technology and development is a strong sign that nuclear technology may have finally overcome the media stigma of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima.
In reality, the Chernobyl accident happened largely because a test procedure went wrong when senior technicians were off duty and less experienced technicians made wrong decisions that quickly exacerbated the disaster, explains nuclear physicist Kelvin Kemm. Environmentalist Michael Shellenberger notes that Chernobyl radiation “will kill a maximum of 200 people, while radiation from Fukushima and Three Mile will kill zero”. Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of women abort their babies after the Chernobyl incident, UCLA researchers found that children born near Chernobyl had no detectable abnormalities.
The Senate’s Committee on the Environment and Public Works continued President Trump’s efforts to establish a national strategic uranium reserve in the United States and recently passed a non-partisan bill, the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act (ANIA). Amir Adnani, CEO of Uranium Energy Corp, called it “sweeping laws important to support the US nuclear fuel industry, national security and clean energy.”
Under ANIA, the Department of Energy is only allowed to purchase uranium extracted from facilities licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or government agencies with an equivalent agreement. Uranium from companies owned, controlled by, or under jurisdiction owned by Russia or China would be excluded.
According to several forecasters, the alleged Biden administration will continue or even accelerate the efforts of Obama and Trump to revitalize and prioritize US nuclear energy programs. The main difference between Trump and Biden’s nuclear policies, according to progressive political analyst James Conca, is that Biden is part of a climate change agenda, while Trump focused on national security concerns.
“Leading climate researchers” say we cannot tackle climate change without significant nuclear power, claims Conca. Supporting nuclear power – or not – is a clear signal of how serious the candidates are about man-made climate change and how serious they are about supporting science over mere activism. He added, “If Democrats want a clean energy plan to be successful at all, it better include nuclear power.”
Washington Examiner Energy Auditor Josh Siegel says, “Biden’s support for nuclear power … promises to be one of the rare instances of energy policy continuity between incoming and outgoing administrations.” Democrats, he believes, are eventually realizing that wind and sun alone are not enough to decarbonize the electricity grid and are beginning to give up their longstanding opposition to nuclear power.
All of this, of course, also requires a new, realistic public stance on radiation risks, whether from nuclear power plants, nuclear waste storage or other sources, says energy journalist Robert Bryce.
There is one more major caveat. Should Kamala Harris for any reason replace Biden as commander in chief, their support for nuclear power is far less certain. When asked during the 2020 presidential campaign whether she supported nuclear power, she replied several times: “Yes, temporarily, while we invest more in cleaner, renewable alternatives.”
That is neither a sounding confirmation nor a recognition of the growing non-partisan energy reality. And it certainly doesn’t explain how millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of battery modules – and massive gains in mining, metalworking and manufacturing to build these technologies – are “clean, green, renewable or sustainable” alternatives to fossil fuels .
Duggan Flanakin is director of policy research on the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org).
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