November 7, 2006

Austin American-Statesman
Global Warming has Some Rethinking Nukes. Once-reviled Plants Have an Upside: No Greenhouse Gases.

By Asher Price, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Would you rather live next to a nuclear reactor or a coal-fired power plant?

It's a question a lot of environmentalists have been asking themselves lately.

Even as they favor energy conservation and investment in solar and wind power, the realities of a looming power crisis, the political landscape and concerns about global climate change have led some activists in Texas to re-examine longtime opposition to nuclear power.

For at least 25 years, or since the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979, utilities have mothballed plans for nuclear reactors. But with new federal money up for grabs, utilities have told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission they plan to build 30 reactors nationally, including at least seven in Texas. The state currently has only two nuclear sites, near Bay City and Glen Rose.

The environmental issues are thrown into sharpest relief in Texas, where Gov. Rick Perry has pressed the state environmental commission to approve plans for 17 coal-fired power plants to meet growing energy needs. The plants would significantly increase carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global climate change.

Broadly speaking, the environmental community remains opposed to the construction and operation of nuclear plants. Environmentalists say uranium mining can pollute groundwater, and they fear the possibility of a catastrophic accident. They also are dissatisfied with the disposal methods for radioactive waste.

But as the effort to stop global climate change leapfrogs to the top of most environmentalists' agenda, some say they are re-examining their opposition to the plants, which emit little in the way of greenhouse gases.

"We're looking at it again," said Jim Marston, who heads the Austin office of Environmental Defense.

An industry rebirth?

Most of the nation's 103 operating nuclear reactors were built during the 1960s and 1970s. But the industry was bogged down with cost overruns in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The incidents at Three Mile Island and at Chernobyl in 1986 galvanized public opposition to new plants and seemed to doom the industry: No construction of U.S. reactors has begun since 1978.

Many environmentalists remain flat-out opposed to plans for nuclear reactors.

"We just don't want them at all," said Donna Hoffman, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club, which counts 24,000 members in the state and adopted a no-nuke energy policy earlier this autumn. "It's an unsafe alternative. It's too much of a risk."

But utilities are betting the public's memory is short, and there is a lot of money at stake now.

The 2005 energy policy act extends government insurance in case of an accident at a nuclear plant, authorizes $2 billion for cost-overrun support and has a tax credit for new reactors of up to $125 million a year. None of the money has been appropriated, however.

The magazine Nuclear News has started a journal item called "Renaissance Watch," dedicated to tracking a rebirth of the nuclear energy industry.

Although a radioactive leak from nuclear reactors has the potential for environmental disaster, the reactors carry a simple, increasingly important environmental upside: negligible greenhouse gas emissions.

"A nuclear power plant operating under normal circumstances does not give off any greenhouse gas emissions," Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the nuclear regulatory commission, said.

Yet environmentalists offer lukewarm support for nuclear power in part because they worry about shifting political momentum ‹ and dollars ‹ away from renewable energy.

"If it's as good as promised, the market ought to demonstrate that: Liability should not be shared by taxpayers," Marston said.

The resurgence of nuclear power in Texas is part of the larger energy crunch in the state, and the governor supports the construction of nuclear power plants.

Colin Leyden, the executive director of the Texas League of Conservation Voters, which has about 1,000 members, has not taken a stance on nuclear power, saying, "It's an evolving situation."

Rocky beginnings

Austin Energy gets 28 percent of its power from the South Texas Project in Bay City, which came online in the late 1980s.

The reactors are enormously costly to build, often at least $3.5 billion each, and can take much longer to build than other kinds of plants, thanks in part to the stiff permitting process. But once they're online, the fuel is relatively cheap.

"On a fuel-cost basis, it's like 10 times less than natural gas and five times less than coal," said Ed Clark, a spokesman for Austin Energy.

Electricity generated at the two South Texas Project reactors in 2005 would have required the burning of 9.8 million tons of coal at a coal-burning power plant, according to Edward Conaway, a spokesman for the South Texas Project.

Austin's decision to buy nuclear power in the 1970s was a fraught one. Austinites initially narrowly voted down a $161 million bond package to buy a stake in the proposed nuclear plant, then known as the South Texas Nuclear Project.

But after a series of brownouts in 1973, the city's voters narrowly approved the bond package when it came up for another rancorous vote.

At the time, the plant was estimated to cost $964 million, and the reactors were expected to open in 1980 and 1981. As overruns boosted the price of the plant ‹ it would eventually cost $5.9 billion ‹ subsequent bond packages generated more bitter elections, and the city became embroiled in a handful of lawsuits.

"It was like cowboys and Indians," said Paul Robbins, a longtime anti-nuclear power activist. "It was a culture war. I remember distinctly we had a no-nukes bumper sticker. The establishment came back with this joke: "No freaks" with a picture of a mustached guy."

Ultimately, Austin Energy's share of the construction costs amounted to $967.1 million.

Beyond the capital costs of nuclear power, environmentalists continue to debate whether it can stave off global climate change.

"We cannot turn off our energy-intensive, fossil-fuel-powered civilization without crashing," writes James Lovelock, an influential British scientist who makes some gloomy predictions about climate change in his new book, "The Revenge of Gaia." For "the soft landing of a powered descent," new nuclear building "should be started immediately."

But opponents of nuclear power say it wouldn't be an antidote to climate change because reactors approved over the next couple of years probably would not come online for nearly a decade.

A cultural shift in energy consumption and investment in renewables are more affordable strategies with faster results, they say.

Environmentalists who are reconsidering nuclear power "haven't thought through the pro-nuke propaganda, and they're so worried about global warming, they're willing to leap at anything," said Jim Riccio, a nuclear policy analyst with the environmental group Greenpeace.

"I'm unwilling to leap from the global climate change frying pan and into the nuclear fire," he said.