Nuclear power: The candidates talk about where they stand

ALBUQUERQUE -- As the New Mexico Independent reported earlier this week, nuclear power has been quietly humming in the background in the United States for decades, but thanks in part to Campaign '08, the buzz is building. And depending on who is elected in November, the next president and Congress could put the country on course for a nuclear power renaissance long sought by some and long feared by others.

Though the U.S. gets almost 20 percent of its power from nuclear plants, the industry's growth has been stagnant for decades. There hasn't been a new plant started here since the early 1970s. In 1979 the industry took a blow when the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown. In 1986 came the explosion and fire at Chernobyl, eventually killing nearly 60 people and creating even greater nervousness about nuclear power. There have been reports that plants are not secure against attack or that the fuel could be used to build weapons.

But contrary to popular belief, it hasn't been safety or nonproliferation that held back the U.S. nuclear power program, said Andrew Orrell, director of Nuclear Energy Program Development at Sandia National Laboratories. The brake has always been economics, he said. Even proven nuclear plants built alongside a second or third reactor can cost $6 billion or more, according to industry experts. Said Orrell, "It's been cheaper and easier to build another coal-fired plant."

Change is in the air, however. Since July 2007, a dozen companies and consortia have filed applications for 18 new reactors with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and applications for three more are expected to be filed this month. John Keeley, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry advocacy group, said as many as eight new nuclear plants are expected to be operational by 2016, with a second and even larger wave of plants following.

The boom is due largely to the efforts of Sen. Pete Domenici, according to numerous news and industry sources. The New Mexico Republican, who is retiring at the end of this term after decades of support for all things nuclear, championed something the nuclear industry has said was a critical component of its expansion — loan guarantees for investors. In 2005, the Senate Resources Committee with Domenici as its chairman authored a bill containing not only loan guarantees for nuclear investors, but risk insurance, catastrophic event insurance and tax credits for when the plants started operating.

The legislation was expanded in 2007, giving the Department of Energy the power to approve loan guarantees for any type of "clean" power, including nuclear, according to The New York Times. The boom in nuclear license applications began within months.

Critics say the subsidies would be better spent on less risky forms of energy, such as wind and solar. The loan guarantees, in particular, put American taxpayers on the hook, said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen, a watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. He pointed to the recent federal takeovers of the mortgagegiants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as examples of how much the government has on the line.

"If that plant doesn't get built for whatever reason — community opposition, bankruptcy of the parent corporation, cost overruns, design flaws — the Department of Energy guarantees the loan," Slocum said. But while the government agrees to share the risk, there is no provision to share the rewards, he noted. "The loan guarantee eliminates the risk for the investor and the builder, but it doesn't make the U.S. taxpayer an equity partner."

The questions that will face the next president and Congress may not be about whether more nuclear power is coming, but rather about how much government support Big Nuclear should have and what to do with the waste.

Where the presidential candidates stand

By all accounts, the nuclear industry will receive a warm welcome if Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain is elected. He wants 45 new power plants by 2030 and another 55 to follow. In contrast, the county has 104 plants operating now.

Calls to McCain's campaigns in Washington, D.C., and Arizona requesting additional information about his nuclear stance were not returned. Here's what his Web site says:

Nuclear power is a proven, zero-emission source of energy, and it is time we recommit to advancing our use of nuclear power. Currently, nuclear power produces 20 percent of our power, but the U.S. has not started construction on a new nuclear power plant in over 30 years. China, India and Russia have goals of building a combined total of over 100 new plants and we should be able to do the same. It is also critical that the U.S. be able to build the components for these plants and reactors within our country so that we are not dependent on foreign suppliers with long wait times to move forward with our nuclear plans.

Some say that's not enough nuclear. It will take all of McCain's proposed 45 plants just to maintain the 20 percent of U.S. electricity generation that nuclear currently provides, said Mohamed S. El-Genk, director of the Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies at the University of New Mexico. And to expand the nation's nuclear capacity will require 50 plants beyond that, he said.

Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama isn't so avid a supporter, despite receiving substantial financial contributions from backers of Big Nuclear. Speaking in Nevada in June, he blasted McCain's plan for 45 new plants as overly ambitious, The Associated Press reported, and said a higher priority than new construction is deciding where to store nuclear waste, how to recycle it and how to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.

“If we can figure that out effectively, then nuclear has some big advantages — the fact that it doesn't release greenhouse gases being the most important,” he said in Las Vegas. Policy papers on his Web site show Obama does not believe the Yucca Mountain Project is a suitable long-term waste storage site, but don't indicate what else he suggests doing with high-level waste.

Some have advocated for long-term research into new reactor technology that reduces the nuclear waste stream and addresses concerns about proliferation of nuclear weapons. But that could be a long, long wait, says the Nuclear Energy Institute. "These reactors are decades away from commercial development," it says.

Where the Congressional candidates stand

The next president will help steer the country's nuclear power strategy, but Congress holds the purse strings. If Democrat Ben Ray Lujan is elected to the U.S. House in the 3rd Congressional District, he said he would favor reassigning subsidies away from nuclear power and into wind, solar and other alternatives.

"The capital costs of nuclear power are orders of magnitude greater than for wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal and others," Lujan said in an e-mail. "We can use our funds more efficiently by investing in renewable energy that can create a clean energy economy in New Mexico that will create new jobs and lower energy costs."

Congress and the White House should invest heavily in energy, said Lujan, a member of the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission, including research funding into the disposal of spent fuel waste and the reduction in the amount of waste produced. But the focus of spending should be on renewable energy.

His Republican opponent, Dan East of Rio Rancho, said he's a staunch advocate of nuclear power, and wishes the country hadn't balked at its atomic prospects. "We missed a bet 20 years ago and should have more facilities up and running now than we do."

East wants fewer regulations on the nuclear industry to spur growth, and said technology is available now to reduce waste. "We're getting to the point now where nuclear waste is not an issue," he said, citing as his source "physicists in Los Alamos."

Republican Ed Tinsley of Ruidoso, who is running for the CD2 seat being vacated by Rep. Steve Pearce, said in a statement that nuclear power is a key component of his energy proposal, which calls for "finding more oil, using less and investing in the future in alternative sources of energy like wind, solar and clean coal technologies."

Congress should promote all sources of energy that are "proven, reliable and effective like nuclear power," Tinsley said. "Excessive regulation, taxation and litigation generally impede development of innovation, which the country needs right now in the area of energy."

His Democratic counterpart, Harry Teague of Hobbs, said in a statement that "nuclear power is another important energy source and we may need to provide incentives to help generate nuclear power." He also believes that further study of Yucca Mountain and other options is needed "to determine the safest and most environmentally sensitive way to dispose of nuclear waste."

In CD1, Republican Darren White did not respond directly to questions posed by NMI about nuclear power, subsidies for the industry, the fate of Yucca Mountain and other issues. In a statement, White said nuclear power is safe, efficient and clean, and called it "an important part of my plan for energy independence." He claims Heinrich has flip-flopped on the issue, noting that the Democrat now says he supports nuclear but was once on the executive committee of the Sierra Club, which has long opposed it.

His Democratic opponent, Martin Heinrich, called nuclear power an important component in the nation's energy mix, but not a permanent part of the solution. Nuclear "is a low-carbon bridge to a renewable energy economy," he said in a statement.

Congress should invest in nuclear research, he said, but should focus more on renewables. The national labs at Sandia and Los Alamos could play a role in developing the technology to reuse spent fuel and reduce the waste stream, Heinrich said.

The U.S. Senate candidates appear to have stances that break down along the same party lines — Steve Pearce, a Hobbs Republican, is a longtime supporter of nuclear power while Democrat Tom Udall says "we have to do it all," including nuclear energy.

Through spokesman Brian Phillips, Pearce said the country needs nuclear energy to meet its needs. If there are roadblocks, "Let's evaluate what those are — waste disposal, plant safety, transportation — and if we need to appropriate funding, fine."

Pearce has slammed Udall on the stump and in TV ads for the Democrat's past opposition to nuclear. “It may not be politically correct, but nuclear energy is a sure way to America’s energy independence,” Pearce claimed in one 30-second spot. “Tom Udall won’t stand up to the far-left environmentalists. I will.”

Udall spokeswoman Marissa Padilla did not return several calls from NMI, but his campaign put out a release illustrating his support of nuclear power in recent years. He voted for the 2005 Energy Bill that gave the loan guarantees to investors and risk insurance to operators, and for the final 2007 Energy Bill that more than doubled spending on nuclear energy research and development.

The candidates shouldn't look to voters to help them pick their way through the thicket of issues surrounding nuclear power. A recent Gallup poll asked whether they were more likely to vote for a candidate who supports building additional nuclear power plants, and the results were almost even: 47 percent said more likely and 41 percent said less likely, with a margin of error of 3 percent.

There was much stronger conviction about other energy issues, however. Voters by far larger margins said they would support candidates who favor tax incentives to encourage energy conservation (69 percent), raising vehicle fuel standards (68 percent) and establishing price controls on gasoline (62 percent).

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