Skip to main content

NEI’s Nuclear Policy Initiative

home_branding_logo We gave you a heads up the other day with some fact sheets that outline what the industry - and NEI – has been doing as hearings on the energy bill get underway today (Look at the Twitter feed on your right for some quotes coming out of the hearings. We’ll see about fleshing them out later).

Toward this end, NEI has released a detailed nuclear policy initiative outlining where nuclear energy fits into the climate change debate. And here, in brief, is where that is:

Analyses of H.R. 2454 [the House climate change bill passed earlier this year], the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which passed the House on June 26, by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) demonstrate that substantial increases in nuclear generating capacity will be essential to meet the legislation’s carbon-reduction goals.

All true. Now, anti-nuclear folks argue that nuclear energy tries to hoover up all available resources set in its path, leaving little for renewables and new technologies. This takes advantage of the undoubted fact that building a new plant requires high capital costs.

But the arguments depend on how legislation is ultimately constructed and how industries – all of them – that are helpful to a government goal partner with government to achieve an effective outcome.

Nuclear energy has a key part in any climate change legislation. And as you’ll see, it’s not all about money, anyway – a lot of it is about getting nuclear energy plants licensed and built in a timely way.

And let’s not forget the jobs:

A nuclear [energy] construction program will also breathe new life into the U.S. manufacturing sector, as it rebuilds and retools to produce the pumps, valves, vessels and other nuclear-grade equipment needed for new nuclear plants.

Tens of thousands of jobs.

Here are the bullet points:

  • new plant financing, principally through creation of a Clean Energy Deployment Administration that would function as a permanent financing platform;
  • tax incentives for nuclear energy manufacturing and production facilities, and work force development;
  • ensuring effective achievement of the efficiencies in the new-plant licensing process that was established in 1992 but is only now being tested;
  • management of used nuclear fuel, including limited financial incentives for the development of voluntary interim storage facilities for used uranium fuel;
  • nuclear fuel supply, to enhance the certainty and transparency associated with the disposition of government inventories on uranium markets; and
  • other areas, such as creation of a National Nuclear Energy Council to advise the Secretary of Energy and authorization of a cost-shared, public-private partnership to advance development and deployment of small modular reactors within the next 15 years.

We’ll have a lot more to say about this in the weeks ahead, but consider this the outline of the industry’s goals as the legislation is developed in the Senate. Take a read and see what you think.

Let’s note to that nuclear energy is scarcely the only group to present a detailed legislative initiative. It’s what industry associations do – openly and to the benefit of industry, sure, but the benefits are multiple, in this case even ultimate. After all, this is one of the most important issues today, speaking directly to the fate of the Earth. It just doesn’t get more important.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I'm currently at "Materials Science and Technology 2009" in Pittsburgh, PA. Yesterday, Steve Koonin, DOE Undersecretary for Science, gave a great keynote talk regarding the future of energy research in the US, and nuclear featured predominately.

John Marra, an associate director at Savannah River lab, also gave a brilliant talk that discussed how, even with massive increases in renewables, only through large increases in nuclear power (I think he suggested 370 GWe) to reach Obama's 2050 goals.

You should try to get copies of their talks for summary or publication here, they would fit in nicely

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should