By BEN LANDO The U.S. nuclear power industry ends 2006 optimistic as what has been dubbed a nuclear renaissance is on the horizon and applications for the first new nuclear plants in more than two decades are expected to be filed in 2007. But the head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is warning stagnant funding from Congress could slow the regulatory process and push back nuclear energy expansion.Nuclear energy has survived the black eye of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the near incident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island in 1979 (although the United States stopped while the rest of the world continued building nuclear plants).Only 103 reactors are online in the United States, less than a quarter of global nuclear power reactors, delivering 20 percent of the U.S. energy supply.The last U.S. reactor was licensed in 1979 and the last one came online in 1996.But technology has improved, industry officials say, making nuclear energy safer and more economically viable.There have been no licenses for new nuclear plants submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission yet, let alone approved or reactors built and turned on.Dale Klein, chairman of the NRC, expects five to seven license applications next year, another eight in 2008 and more than 30 within the coming half decade.It really is a fun time to be in nuclear power and it is somewhat of a nuclear renaissance, said George Vanderheyden, senior vice president of Constellation Generation Group and president of UniStar Nuclear, a joint venture between Constellation Energy and Areva Inc. He added: 2006 was a tremendously interesting year.And it all kicked off the year before, when President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which included three provisions aimed at jumpstarting new nuclear in the country.This includes federally backed insurance against regulatory process delays and indemnification from nuclear incident liability; tax credits; and federal loans for the first applications to traverse the NRC's new combined construction and license permitting process.There will be lots of challenges as we move forward with nuclear power, said Vanderheyden, even though there's a lot of optimism building throughout the country today.The nuclear sector lacks domestic manufacturers for nuclear plant parts and faces a shortage of qualified workers across the industry. There's also no final solution for nuclear waste being stored around the country, mostly at active plants.But nuclear power is buoyed by many factors besides industrial evolution: the increased price and volatility of fossil fuels, especially natural gas which boomed during nuclear absence; and a new focus on global warming that some eye nuclear as a response to.We have a need for a lot of electricity, said Buzz Miller, senior vice president of nuclear development for Southern Nuclear Operating Company. Southern has filed an application for an early site permit to add two new reactors at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant near Waynesboro, Ga., the most advanced of new reactor developments. The U.S. Energy Department's data arm, the Energy Information Administration, estimates the nation's energy demand will increase by 1.1 percent a year through 2030. Nuclear energy will increase by .6 percent annually.The EIA estimates that by 2020 an additional 9 gigawatts of nuclear capacity will be added to today's 100 gigawatts due to the Energy Policy Act provisions and another 3.5 gigawatts as a response to fossil fuel costs. If this model proves true, nuclear power's share will drop from the 20 percent it holds now.It's imperative that we press hard on nuclear to keep that same desired fuel mix to help level out the volatility from any one fuel at any one time, Miller said. But keeping the 20 percent share of the energy market needs to be nuclear ' s top priority, he said. When we demonstrate the ability to get new nuclear online, I think at that point people can start to make decisions about displacing other fuel.It's unlikely a new nuclear plant will come online before 2015. That gives time for coal, another source of cheap, domestic energy, to get past a key barrier: that it is a major toxic polluter.Competition will be between coal and nuclear to meet the expected increase in demand for baseload electricity, said Gary Hunt, president of Global Energy Advisors, an analyst division of Boulder, Colo.-based Global Energy Decisions. With a regulatory process ready and waiting to evaluate and approve the new technology line of nuclear plants in the United States next year, the nuclear industry said in 2006 one issue could be a lagging detractor: stagnation on a nuclear waste resolution.A sole repository planned for inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain seems dead with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., becoming Senate Majority Leader. Other options include temporary storage or permanent storage elsewhere, including at the nuclear plants themselves.If we don't have an effective way of disposing the waste, nuclear potential decreases, Hunt said. Congress couldn't agree on a budget for the NRC, among other spending plans, before wrapping up this year. It passed a Continuing Resolution keeping funding at 2006 levels, at least until mid-February.Earlier this month Klein, chairman of the NRC, said that could result in a 12 percent overall funding cut.A 12 percent reduction for a year long Continuing Resolution would definitely impact our business, he said. He said the commission is looking at various operating scenarios based on the funding it receives, though the NRC will not reduce oversight or requirements for existing fleets.WASHINGTON, Dec. 29
