Going nuclear after a 30- year break
By John Temple Ligon Temple@TheColumbiaStar.com

Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and former chief of EPA, speaks to an audience at the Moore School of Business.

Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency for President Bush (#43), was at the Moore School of Business Monday afternoon to discuss nuclear power as the putative green path to adequate electric power. She is co- chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, and her co- chair is Dr. Patrick Moore, a founding official of Greenpeace.

Just last month, NRG Energy from Princeton, N.J., applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a permit to build the country's first nuclear plant in over 30 years. The NRC is preparing for 32 nuclear- power- plant applications by 2009, and nine of those should be complete by the end of this year.

In the U.S. there are 104 operating power plants, and of those there are 80 different designs. Whitman said to expect maybe three or four different designs in the current wave of applications. She noted it was fair to assume the plants can come pre- approved or pre- certified in that the designs are coming off the same shelf of already approved proposed plants.

Four new reactor designs are certified for use in the U.S., but only two have actually attracted attention from domestic customers. The two are offered by General Electric and Westinghouse, and the Westinghouse model AP 1000 has been selected by the most companies.

Congress has sweetened the deal, somewhat, for the early applicants. The first two units of the 32 anticipated can qualify for federal risk insurance of as much as $500 million each. The insurance drops by half for the next four and then disappears. The first to apply also qualify for a production tax credit.

In the classroom audience at the Moore school was a foursome in the center of the seating, and all four appeared hostile to Whitman and to the idea of a return to the development of nuclear power. The accusation of corporate welfare and the certainty of socialism were positions taken by the four. Whitman explained the financial feasibility of the new nuclear plants, and she couched her explanation in the context of government support in general and alternative power sources subsidies in particular.

The cost of developing nuclear power has to be compared in the language of a carbon constrained economy. In other words, there should be no pulverized coal burning power plants like the one proposed by Santee Cooper in southern Florence County once the considerations of constraining carbon kick in. Coal gasification and carbon sequestration jacks up the cost of coal, well above what's proposed by Santee Cooper.

South Carolina has seven nuclear power plants, and the state's electric power is 51.1% nuclear, according to Whitman. By using its seven nuclear plants for generating electric power instead of burning coal, South Carolina benefits by breathing air reduced by 7,900 tons of nitrogen oxides, which is the equivalent of taking 4.2 million passenger cars off the road. South Carolina, however, only has 1.9 passenger cars registered.

By 2030, the state's electric power demand is projected to grow by 26%, while the country's demand should rise by 40%. In the meantime, there is a frightening rise in asthma cases, something that's not being called an epidemic because there's no contagion, but the country is experiencing enough gains in asthma cases to begin accusing the quality of the air.

From the audience came the question, "Why can't we learn from the French? They never dropped their nuclear power program as we did. It's stupid not to take advantage of what they've learned in their decades- long head start."

Whitman responded with the observation the French and the Japanese have developed their nuclear waste processes down to where the spent rods lose 97% of what is still being stored in the U.S. Getting rid of radiation before storage greatly modifies the main objection to nuclear power.