Plan to add nuclear units resurfaces old battle lines
by Mike W. Thomas
With its recent recommendation to move forward with construction of two new nuclear power units in South Texas the staff of CPS Energy has placed San Antonio at the forefront of a national debate that has been raging for more than two dozen years.
There hasnt been a new nuclear power reactor constructed in the U.S. since the 1970s but now there are five potential units on the horizon including two that would be located in South Texas supplying power for CPS Energy which serves San Antonio and Bexar County.
Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman came to San Antonio recently as co-chair of a group advocating for the expansion of nuclear energy nationwide and acknowledged the Alamo Citys central role in the debate.
Everyone is watching (San Antonio)" Whitman says. What happens here will set the pace for nuclear energy elsewhere. It will be very important."
Whitman who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush is co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition (CASEnergy) which was founded to build support around the country for new nuclear plant construction.
In San Antonio
CPS Energy is considering a proposal by NRG Energy Inc. its partner in the South Texas Project to add two 1350 mega-watt nuclear-fueled electrical generating units to the two existing units. The South Texas Project is located 90 miles southwest of Houston in Matagorda County.
Between now and September there will be numerous public hearings and a public education-and-input process leading up to a vote by the CPS Energy Board of Trustees on the staff recommendation related to the proposed nuclear power units. If the board approves the expansion plans the proposal will go before the San Antonio City Council for a final decision sometime this fall.
We know there is strength in numbers and we are here to provide support for when it is time to make the hard decisions" Whitman says. We want to help educate the public before the naysayers start using the scare tactics left over from the 70s."
Growing demand
Whitman says the growing demand for energy especially in a state like Texas is the driving force behind the push for new nuclear plants. Also fueling that push is the desire for more clean energy" sources that dont contribute to the problem of global warming.
Nationwide there will be a 20 percent increase in energy demand over the next 10 years and a 40 percent increase in Texas Whitman says. At present the nation gets most of its energy from coal-fired power plants while only about 20 percent comes from nuclear plants. As the demand for energy increases more nuclear facilities will have to be built just to keep nuclear energys contribution at the 20 percent level she adds.
Mike Kotara vice president of energy development for CPS says as aging coal plants reach the end of their life cycle they will need to be replaced and nuclear plants have been deemed to have the lowest cost to consumers.
The reason our energy bills are low in San Antonio is because we get so much energy from those plants (South Texas Project)" Kotara says. Nuclear energy has the highest likelihood to be the lowest cost source of energy over the long-run."
Still the initial price tag is not cheap with cost estimates for constructing the two new nuclear facilities ranging from $10 billion to $13 billion depending on financing costs. But CPS notes that the project has been deemed eligible for possible receipt of some of the $18.5 billion in government loan guarantees that are available.
Whitman says the high cost is a concern but nuclear energy is still the best option.
It is going to cost no matter what" Whitman says. But it is better to pay that cost up front and amortize it and spread it out over time."
Whitman says the high cost of building new nuclear plants is mainly due to the stringent safety and security regulations and the highly technical nature of the process.
Safety concerns
Despite nuclear powers reputation as a clean energy source that produces no greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming many environmental and consumer groups are still opposed to any expansion of nuclear energy because of the unresolved problem of what to do with nuclear waste. Public Citizen a consumer advocacy group based in Washington D.C. recently issued a report outlining what the group considers to be Nuclear Energys Fatal Flaws."
Nuclear power is not a clean energy source" the report states. In fact it produces both low and high-level radioactive waste that remains dangerous for several hundred thousand years.
Currently over 2000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste and 12 million cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste are produced annually by the 103 operating reactors in the United States" the Public Citizen report continues. No country in the world has found a solution for this waste and building new nuclear plants would mean the production of much more of this dangerous waste with no where for it to go."
Whitman acknowledges that a long-term solution is needed to deal with the nuclear waste issue but for now the waste is being stored safely and securely on-site at the nuclear plants. It is not ideal and I think there should be one national repository but the current system is good for another 30 years at least" Whitman says.
Whitman says there is also the possibility for spent nuclear rods to be reprocessed and as technology improves that could help clean up some of the waste and provide new energy sources at the same time. The report by Public Citizen says the current technology for reprocessing is extremely expensive poses a security threat leads to environmental contamination and does not eliminate the need for a repository."
Whitman says the U.S. nuclear industry has had an impeccable safety record for the past 30 years ever since the partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. But the Three Mile Island accident was successfully contained demonstrating that the security features were working even back then she adds.
Still critics of nuclear power contend that there is no such thing as fail-safe technology. They argue that there is always a risk of a catastrophic nuclear-reactor event such as the one that occurred in 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. Two people were killed from the initial explosion and more than 600000 people are believed to have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. The World Health Organization has attributed 56 direct deaths to the accident and possibly as many as 2000 more cancer deaths among the exposed population.
A real opportunity
Chris Tierney vice president of The Kenrich Group LLC a national business and litigation consulting firm with offices in Chicago Dallas Minneapolis New York and Washington says the expansion of the South Texas Project is a real opportunity for South Texas to demonstrate the economic benefits of a nuclear renaissance that could result in dozens of new facilities being built over the next decade.
Given the encouragement and support (the South Texas Project) is getting from the federal government this is a real opportunity to develop expertise in areas that will have real value in the coming years" Tierney says. I suspect that peoples concerns of risks will not be as high as they were in the 1970s and 80s.
The technology today is significantly improved and there is a strong track record of safety that people can see" he adds. The new facilities will be much more sophisticated and will have redundant systems that will even further reduce and make the risks much lower."
