Will Cap-and-Trade Plans Spur Nuclear Revival?
Keith Johnson... Someone in the administration — probably Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who knows in his heart that wind and solar can’t cut it — will suggest that that a carbon tax be coupled with the revival of nuclear power. Suddenly, the dam will break. NRC regulatory mazes that are still trying to protect us from Three Mile Island will be swept aside. Construction schedules will be accelerated. (The TVA just built a new reactor at Watts Bar in three years and under budget, using a license granted in the 1970s.) Tens of thousands of construction jobs will be created overnight. The French and Japanese will provide the financing. We may even revive the steel industry in the process.The idea that the climate-change imperative will give fresh legs to nuclear power isn't entirely new; that's what's pushing once-hostile environmentalists toward the pro-nuclear camp. And a carbon tax or at least expensive emissions in a cap-and-trade program would go a long way toward improving nuclear power's currently grim economics.
But even an Obama administration bear hug that "sweeps aside regulatory mazes" won't necessarily "accelerate construction schedules"-those depend in large part on financing and getting a hold of sometimes limited nuclear components. And while a big nuclear build out would indeed create as many as 20,000 jobs, it would be hard to create them overnight, given the three-decade atrophy of the U.S. nuclear industry.
What's really missing is any discussion of nuclear waste. Now that Yucca Mountain's been given the Old Yeller treatment, there is no long-term solution for storing nuclear waste that's remotely close to fruition. For the current fleet of nuclear reactors, which produce about 2,000 tons of radioactive fuel a year, the death of Yucca Mountain just means business as usual.
But sooner or later, if nuclear power becomes an even bigger part of the nation's energy mix, the nuclear waste problem is going to have to become an even bigger part of the answer.