President Biden is traveling the West to promote his net-zero emissions goal while one of the nation’s largest generators of clean energy powers through its second week of operation in Georgia without windmills or solar panels and with an awkward fit into the left’s climate change agenda.
Plant Vogtle, the nation’s first nuclear power station to come online in seven years, began commercial operation on July 31. The reactor, about 30 miles south of Augusta, is generating enough power for a half-million homes and may herald a renaissance for the U.S. nuclear power industry, which has been declining since 1991.
Although the advancement of nuclear energy is not at the top of the Biden agenda, the administration has poured billions of dollars into maintaining existing nuclear reactors and is helping fund a new generation of nuclear power plants to help fulfill the president’s clean energy goals.
“The Biden administration has embraced nuclear in a way that previous Democratic administrations haven’t,” said John Kotek, senior vice president of policy development and public affairs for the Nuclear Energy Institute.
The Department of Energy identified nuclear power this year as one of three emerging technologies to help reach Mr. Biden’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
Kathryn Huff, Mr. Biden’s top administrator for nuclear energy, told Inside Climate News that building new reactors and keeping older plants running will allow “really large scale-out and build-out of renewables.”
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The reactors will provide energy when wind and solar sources aren’t supplying any power, she said, to ensure a grid “that’s also stable.”
Nuclear reactors use nuclear fission to heat water and produce steam that generates electricity without emitting carbon dioxide or pollutants.
Reactors have powered the U.S. energy grid for decades, but the shuttering of older plants is reducing nuclear’s overall energy output. Thirteen nuclear power plants have closed since 2013. According to the Energy Information Administration, 94 commercial nuclear reactors are operating at 55 power plants in 28 states.
The Biden administration has provided $1.1 billion to keep two more reactors operating in energy-starved California.
It has become nearly impossible, however, to win federal approval for new nuclear power plant projects, and building the stations can take more than a decade and billions of dollars.
Construction of the Vogtle project, which includes two reactors, began in 2009, endured repeated delays and ultimately cost roughly $30 billion, more than double the original estimate.
Nuclear power generates nearly 20% of all energy in the U.S. and half of all clean energy production. Wind supplies about 10% and solar about 3% of electricity.
A second reactor that Vogtle expects to begin operating by the end of the year will be the nation’s largest clean energy generator. It will power 1 million homes for up to 80 years.
The Energy Department is promoting next-generation, advanced nuclear power reactors such as the Vogtle plant and smaller, less-expensive nuclear power plants that can be built faster.
The plants will help deliver much of the 550 to 770 gigawatts of clean power that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said is needed to reach Mr. Biden’s net-zero goal.
“Nuclear power is one of the few proven options that could deliver this at scale, while creating high-paying jobs with concentrated economic benefits for communities most impacted by the energy transition,” Energy Department officials said in a recent presentation.
Critics say Mr. Biden has done little to lift the regulatory hurdles that hobble the nuclear power industry or reverse several decades of Democratic appointments of nuclear opponents to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Mr. Biden nominated Jeff Baran to a third term on the commission this year over the objections of nuclear energy advocates and Republicans.
Mr. Baran voted to block regulations to help modernize and speed up the approval of advanced nuclear reactors, and he has pushed for maintaining a regulatory regime designed for older nuclear reactors that does not reflect nuclear’s long safety record.
He also has been a leading opponent of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in the Nevada desert. The project has been stalled for decades and has further hobbled the nuclear power industry by forcing plants to store waste on-site.
Jack Spencer, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate and Environment, said the nuclear commission has micromanaged power plant construction over crippling and outdated safety concerns.
“The primary reason is they operate within the context of the public and cultural narrative that nuclear is really dangerous, and the result of that is there’s too much of a mindset of government bureaucrats know best,” Mr. Spencer said. “That culture of regulating translates into inefficiency, things taking too long and things costing too much.”
Tim Cavanaugh, a senior editor at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said Mr. Biden’s nuclear energy agenda is merely paying “lip service” to the industry now that administration officials recognize the limitations of intermittent solar and wind power, which have threatened or caused brownouts and blackouts during heat waves and extreme cold spells.
“The industry needs more than quick fixes,” Mr. Cavanaugh said. “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which inflicts a 32-step construction licensing process, has blocked almost all new nuclear power generation since Gerald Ford was president. Neither Biden nor Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm is trying to reform the regulatory framework for what is already the safest form of energy on the planet.”
Americans have viewed nuclear energy skeptically and fearfully since the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania.
One of the reactors partially melted down. When its core overheated, the destroyed reactor emitted radioactive gas.
According to the World Nuclear Association, the radiation level was below “background levels” and the accident did not cause any injuries or deaths.
Still, it caused widespread fear and nearly froze the U.S. nuclear power industry.
According to the Energy Information Administration, 67 planned nuclear reactor projects were scrapped from 1979 to 1988.
Other accidents have hindered nuclear power in the U.S.
The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine ultimately killed 30 workers at the plant and spread dangerous levels of radiation that injured hundreds more.
The World Nuclear Association blamed the accident on “a flawed Soviet reactor design coupled with serious mistakes made by the plant operators [as] a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture.”
The 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, caused by an earthquake and tsunami, injured 16 workers but otherwise had no physical health impact on the area’s residents. Still, it led to new fears about existing nuclear plants.
California began shutting down its Diablo Canyon Power Plant after Fukushima because of fears that a large earthquake and tsunami would cause a similar accident. The shutdown has been halted.
With rising energy prices and the push to eliminate fossil fuels, Americans are viewing nuclear power more favorably now.
A Gallup poll in March found that 55% of Americans either strongly or somewhat favor nuclear energy, up from 44% in 2016.
The poll found that 44% strongly or somewhat oppose nuclear power, a 10 percentage point drop from 2016.
Along party lines, 62% of Republicans, 46% of Democrats and 56% of independents now favor the use of nuclear energy to power the grid.
Steven Biegalski, chair of the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics Program at Georgia Institute of Technology, told The Washington Times that young people are studying nuclear engineering in significant numbers.
Georgia Tech reported a 40% increase in freshman applications for its nuclear engineering program, he said.
“What it tells me is that the views of our 17-year-old and 18-year-old high school seniors are significantly changing to have a positive view of nuclear,” Mr. Biegalski said. “They see nuclear as being a clean energy source, vital to our future. They see a lot of other nuclear technologies, including nuclear medicine, as being very beneficial to society. And these all are adding together to have a sort of resurgence that we’re seeing here directly.”
Nuclear power plants are in the works in Texas, Idaho and Wyoming. Major energy providers, including Duke Energy, Dominion Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority, are either in the planning process for nuclear power generation or have included nuclear in their resource planning scenarios for power generation.
Power providers see nuclear as an essential part of an energy mix that is increasingly moving away from fossil fuels. Unlike wind and solar sources, nuclear plants can generate power without interruption.
“I do think nuclear is on the upswing and will remain that way,” the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Mr. Kotek said.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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