The Future of Nuclear Energy

Dines Letter (07/29/2009)
"Cooler heads are prevailing in the debate about the future of nuclear energy. In energy policy circles, there is a growing sense that the climate challenge has fundamentally improved the prospects for nuclear energy in the United States.

Bill Reilly, Chairman Emeritus of the World Wildlife Fund and former administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said recently that clean-energy legislation probably will not pass in the Senate without support for nuclear energy. The Senate Energy and National Resources Committee recently approved clean-energy legislation that recognizes the significant role that nuclear energy plays as the nation's single, largest source of low-carbon electricity.

Within five years, nearly every nuclear plant in this country will have dry-cask storage for spent fuel, enabling utilities to move the spent fuel from storage pools to the concrete-and-steel casks. The casks are within the plants' security perimeter. As an interim solution, the casks are safe, capable of holding the spent fuel for several hundred years if necessary. But a permanent repository needs to be built.

Applications have been filed by 17 utilities with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build 26 plants. If we hope to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to acceptable levels, we will need to build 50 to 100 nuclear plants in the U.S. by midcentury. Nuclear energy needs to be included in a renewable energy standard that is part of carbon cap-and-trade legislation. This standard would require states to obtain 15% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2021.

Not to include nuclear energy—the source of nearly 75% of the nation's carbon-free energy—in this standard would be absurd (21% of the nation's energy produced by nuclear plants; 4.1% energy produced from renewable sources [except hydroelectric]; 46.1% energy produced from coal)."

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