New incentives to go nuclear

The Energy Policy Act of 2005, expected to be signed soon by President Bush, contains $2 billion in subsidies to the first 6 energy companies that build a nuclear power plant.

Chances are good that NC will get at least one of these:

The massive energy bill approved by Congress on Friday could nudge North Carolina's two publicly traded utilities to build the nation's first nuclear reactors in more than a decade.

The bill, passed by the U.S. Senate and expected to be signed into law by President Bush, contains provisions for loan guarantees and risk insurance for utilities that gamble on nuclear plants.

...

Building a new nuclear plant has been regarded as political nonstarter and economic liability for a quarter-century since the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. In recent months, however, rising oil prices and calls for energy independence from Middle Eastern imports have emboldened utilities, including Progress Energy in Raleigh and Duke Energy in Charlotte, to advocate the revival of nuclear power in this country.

...

Duke, which has filed a preliminary inquiry with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, will decide by the end of this year whether to generate electricity with plutonium, or instead use a traditional fuel such as natural gas. Progress Energy officials have said they will make a decision within two years.

Duke serves 2.1 million customers in the Carolinas, and Progress Energy serves 2.9 million in the Carolinas and Florida.

The federal energy legislation includes $2 billion in risk insurance for construction delays of the country's first six new power plants. The money is intended to address matters such as security issues or legal challenges.

"It would certainly give us an incentive to think harder about being in the first six," Johnson [COO of Progress Energy] said.

But what about the nuclear waste? Nothing:

But the bill is silent on the biggest challenge facing the nuclear industry: a permanent disposal solution for radioactive waste, which remains lethal for tens of thousands of years.

...

In the coming decades, nuclear plants are going to start running out of room to store radioactive waste. Meanwhile, North Carolina utility customers have paid $1.1 billion -- second only to Illinois -- into the federal Nuclear Waste Fund, set up to pay for final disposal of radioactive waste.

"The big gaping hole [of the energy bill] is the failure of the government to address the long-term storage of spent fuel," De May [vice president for energy and environmental policy at Duke Energy] said.

Hmmmm, 'nuff said? Or should I mention that it would not be irresponsible to address the negative externality (i.e. pollution) in some way at some time?

Comments

[joshua corning]

hey i have a crazy idea...how about grinding up the all the spent fuel mix it with iron filings and then dump it over wide rangeing areas in the pacific ocean...this would have no negative effect on the enviornment it would have possitive effects of temperarily increasing the planktin food supply (the ocean in plaged by a lack of disolved iron) but it would put Sierra club and Green Peace into a keniption fit.

What people really don't realize is how small the consintrations of nuclear polution is compared to other more traditional energy producers such as oil and coal.

environmental