President Barack Obama and Gov. Deval Patrick see eye-to-eye on most energy issues—except nuclear power. Obama is on board, but Patrick isn’t in any hurry to catch up.
Nuclear power received the White House seal of approval earlier this year when Obama backed federal loan guarantees to the tune of more than $8 billion for Southern Co., one of the country’s largest power generators, to build two reactors in Georgia. If constructed, they would be the first nuclear plants constructed in the United States in more than three decades.
Splitting atoms to generate electricity is moving up the clean energy charts because nuclear plants do not emit carbon dioxide, which has been fingered as the major culprit in climate change. Nuclear power also offers the prospect of reliable, base-load power, in contrast with renewable energy, which depends on intermittent wind or solar conditions. A March Gallup poll found that 62 percent of Americans supported nuclear energy.
Richard Lester, head of MIT’s nuclear science and engineering department, says reducing carbon emissions will require building more nuclear power plants. “There seems to be almost no possibility, in my view at least, of being able to achieve these very ambitious carbon reduction goals without a significant increase in nuclear power nationally,” he says.
But even as nuclear power gains respectability nationwide, concerns about safety, siting, and costs continue to dominate the flip side of the conversation. A 2009 Gallup poll found that 42 percent of Americans thought nuclear plants were not safe. Those strong reservations are reflected in New England, where there is no enthusiasm for building new nuclear plants. Nuclear power accounts for about 30 percent of the region’s electricity, and 14 percent of the power in Massachusetts.
Gordon van Welie, president and chief executive officer of ISO-New England, which operates the region’s power grid, says the memories of the grueling permitting process and high construction costs associated with first generation plants like the New Hampshire-based Seabrook Station, which drove its original owners into bankruptcy, are still fresh. “New England burned its fingers rather badly last time around,” van Welie says. “People haven’t forgotten any of that.”
Fears about the dark side of nuclear landed on Patrick’s doorstep with a thud earlier this year when tritium leaks were discovered at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon near the Massachusetts border. Traces of the deadlier cesium-137 were also discovered in the soil around the plant. Those problems led the Vermont Senate to vote overwhelmingly earlier this year not to renew the license of the Green Mountain State’s sole nuclear plant, when it expires in two years. (Vermont is the only state in the country where lawmakers weigh in on licensing.)
Patrick asked the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider “extensive testing” for both tritium and other radioactive substances at Vermont Yankee and the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, which are owned by the same company, Entergy. His top environmental official, Ian Bowles, subsequently visited the Plymouth plant and came away satisfied with its operations and supportive of its bid for relicensing. Bowles, however, urged the plant’s owners to expand their air and water monitoring efforts.
Compared to coal and natural gas plants, the capital cost of building conventional nuclear plants is astronomical, running in the tens of billions of dollars. Nuclear plants can also take more than a decade to go through the federal permitting process. The industry is trying to develop smaller, cheaper reactors that could be built in factories and transported by tractor trailer to their ultimate destination, but the design hasn’t been tested yet. “Nuclear as it’s currently constituted—that is, plants that people know how to build—is not a climate solution,” says Seth Kaplan, vice president for climate advocacy at the Conservation Law Foundation in Boston.
Van Welie says nuclear power will figure in New England’s future, but he says any rebirth of the industry will probably take place elsewhere. “In the long run, I think nuclear does make sense. [But] I don’t expect anything will be built in the next 10 years,” he says.
