Nuclear power group asks DOE to share cost of new licensing

Allen Baker

Petroleum News Contributing Writer

With high natural gas prices eroding the profitability of adding new gas-fired generating plants, a consortium of nuclear power companies wants the government to put up $400 million to pay half the cost of developing a new construction and operating license for advanced nuclear reactors.

The industry group, called NuStart Energy Development LLC, includes General Electric and Westinghouse, the two big reactor vendors, as well as several big power producers. Among them are Duke Energy, Entergy Nuclear, Southern Co. and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Neither the industry group nor any of its members are making any commitment to build a new power-generating reactor.

The industry group was responding to an announcement last November by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham seeking the partnership, with a target of bringing at least one new commercial reactor into service by 2010. According to the energy secretary, the old licensing system required separate processes for construction and then for operation, which caused costs to skyrocket.

The most recent U.S. nuclear power plant began operation in 1996, well after Congress approved the new licensing process in 1992, but it was built under the old NRC licensing system.

The industry has been essentially marking time since the two big nuclear power accidents, one in 1979 at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, and the other at Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986.

There was no radiation released from Three Mile Island, even though much of the core melted, but it still brought orders for new power plants to a halt in the United States.

The Chernobyl incident killed 31 people directly and sickened thousands more, as well as rendering a huge area uninhabitable for years.

There are currently 104 commercial nuclear generating units licensed to operate in the United States, according to the Energy Department. They supply about 20 percent of the nation’s power.