Nuclear powerU.S. nuclear industry believes its on the threshold of a renaissance

Following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, doubts were raised about  the future of the U.S. nuclear power industry. Now, eighteen months later, a new poll, and changes in NRC’s reactor design approval procedure, have convinced industry leaders that nuclear power could become a significant source of power in the United States.

“The future of nuclear is looking pretty good.” Jack Grobe the executive director of Exelon Nuclear Partners said in a recent industry event.

Forbesreports that Grobe was part of five industry panelists speaking at “The Future of Nuclear” last Wednesday at the Great Lakes Symposium on Smart Grid and the New Energy Economy, held at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

The panelists were confident in a potential boost in nuclear plants as the U.S. fleet of coal plants is not likely to survive much longer as increasingly more stringent environmental regulations will be implemented. 

“We will retire these old fossil fuel plants and have to replace them with something,” Scott Bond of Ameren Missouri toldForbes “The question is, what do you replace them with?”

Power plants which burns natural gas is the first answer most people in the industry come up with. Fracking has made it cheap and easy to generate energy, but the panelists  mentioned the stable price of nuclear fuel as insurance for the instability of other fuel costs, including natural gas.

“It’s not just an economic question,” Grobe said. “It’s an energy diversity question.”

Many, including politicians, still have doubts about nuclear power. 

The public opinion poll released by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) is part of a campaign by the nuclear industry’s institute to encourage politicians to support nuclear power.

“We just did a survey, and we had a strong majority of Americans–81 percent–who believe that nuclear energy is important for the nation’s future energy needs,” Alex Marion NEI’s vice president for nuclear operations said at the event.  “Eighty-two percent believe the U.S. should continue to develop nuclear energy to meet growing electricity demand, and about the same percentage support the idea of renewing operating plant licenses, as long as they meet NRC regulatory requirements. And 74 percent believe the nuclear power plants operating in the U.S. are safe and secure. So there is public support.”

The public support that Marion mentioned is not shared by the political community, but Marion thinks it is mostly because politicians are afraid to go against the grain.

“Many of them are hesitant to go public because they’re afraid their constituents may not like nuclear and they don’t want to upset their constituents. So we develop these kinds of opinion surveys and we provide them to Congressional staff and members of Congress.”

Forbes quotes the industry panelists to say that the NRC’s new one-step licensing procedure will be helpful in overcoming many obstacles to the revival of nuclear power. Utilities, instead of seeking NRC approval for each new reactor design — a procedure which is costly, time-consuming, and uncertain — will now have the option of choosing from pre-approved designs.

There are plans for two new reactors in South Carolina and Georgia which will be online within the next seven years. If those plants are successful, it could lead to more projects being approved and the beginning of the renaissance the industry is hoping for.

“Now you’ve got two large plants that are just about through the licensing process,” Bond said. “I think that’s going to provide utilities with some certainty about all it takes to build a plant. How much it costs and so forth.”