The Committee’s hearing will explore the potential for nuclear power to
provide an increased proportion of electric generating capacity in the
U.S. Nuclear power generation offers the opportunity for increasing
electricity generation without associated increases in greenhouse gas
emissions, however, challenges to this expansion remain including high
costs, waste disposal, and concerns about nuclear proliferation issues.
The hearing will also examine the Department of Energy’s programs to
support and advance nuclear technologies and their potential to address
the challenges associated with expansion of nuclear power generation.
_ Witnesses _
- Mr. Robert Fri is a Visiting Scholar at Resources for the Future, and
the Chair of a recent study conducted by the National Academies on the
Department of Energy’s nuclear research and development program. Mr.
Fri will testify on the findings of this report.
- Mr. Jim Asselstine is a recently retired Managing Director at Lehman
Brothers, and a former Commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. Mr. Asselstine will testify on the current overall state
of financing for new nuclear power plants.
- Dr. Thomas Cochran is a Senior Scientist in the Nuclear Program at the
National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Dr. Cochran will explain
NRDC’s position on whether nuclear power
merits additional federal support in comparison to other sources of
energy.
- Mr. Robert Van Namen is the Senior Vice President of Uranium
Enrichment at USEC. Mr. Van Namen will
describe the current status of the domestic uranium enrichment
industry, and provide background on advancement of uranium enrichment
technologies.
- Ms. Marilyn Kray is the President of NuStart Energy, and also the Vice
President of Project Development at Exelon Nuclear. Ms. Kray will
provide the perspective of utilities on the ability for nuclear power
to significantly increase its share of electric generating capacity in
the U.S.
- Vice Admiral John Grossenbacher is the Director of Idaho National
Laboratory. Mr. Grossenbacher will testify on
DOE’s programs to support and advance
nuclear energy.
Nuclear power is derived from energy that is released when relatively
large atoms are split in a series of controlled nuclear reactions. The
resulting heat is used to boil water which drives a steam turbine to
generate electricity. The process of splitting an atom is known as
nuclear fission. Nuclear power represents approximately 20 percent of
the total electric generating capacity in the U.S. with 104 nuclear
plants currently operating. Because they are a low-carbon emitting
source of energy in comparison to fossil fuels, increased use of nuclear
power is being proposed by the Administration and several electric
utilities as a way to mitigate climate change while meeting the nation’s
growing energy needs.
There are, however, several drawbacks to the expanded use of nuclear
power. Disposal of radioactive waste produced in nuclear power plants
has been a significant issue for decades. While on-site storage has
become a default interim solution, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982
(NWPA) called for disposal of spent nuclear fuel in a deep, underground
geologic repository. In 1987, amendments to the
NWPA restricted
DOE’s repository site studies to Yucca
Mountain in Nevada. Technical and legal challenges have since delayed
its use until at least 2017. All operating nuclear power reactors are
storing spent fuel in Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)-licensed
onsite spent fuel pools. Most reactors were not designed to store the
full amount of the spent fuel generated during their operational life.
Currently, there is over 50,000 metric tons of spent fuel stored in the
United States. Earlier this year, the Administration proposed draft
nuclear waste legislation repealing the 70,000 metric ton limit on the
amount of waste that can be stored at the repository at Yucca Mountain.
It is expected that the 70,000 metric ton limit would be exceeded by the
waste generated from the nuclear plants currently operating in the U.S.
Reprocessing spent fuel could also eventually be necessary to meet
nuclear fuel demands if worldwide growth meets projected targets. The
Administration has proposed a multi-billion dollar federal program
called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) to foster the
expansion of nuclear power internationally by having a select set of
nations reprocess nuclear fuel for the rest of the world.
GNEP expands upon the Department of Energy’s
Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, which has conducted a program of
research and development in spent fuel reprocessing since 2002. A second
objective of the GNEP program is to reduce the
amount of radioactive waste requiring disposal in a geologic repository.
Technologies required to achieve the goals of the
GNEP program are not yet fully developed and
tested. Therefore further research is required before the facilities
necessary to accomplish the intended goals of the program can be
constructed and operated. GNEP includes the
design and construction of advanced facilities for fuel treatment,
fabrication, and an advanced reactor which raises concerns about the
financial risks associated with the program. In addition, reprocessing
spent fuel raises concerns about the potential for proliferation of
weapons-grade nuclear materials because existing reprocessing
technologies separate plutonium from the spent fuel. While the plutonium
can be recycled into a new fuel for use in nuclear reactors, as is done
in France, it can also be used to make nuclear weapons.
DOE has yet to identify a
proliferation-resistant method to achieve this goal.
The nuclear fuel cycle begins with mining uranium ore, but naturally
occurring uranium does not have enough fissionable uranium to make
nuclear fuel for commercial light-water reactors. Therefore, the uranium
is first converted to uranium hexafluoride before it is put through an
enrichment process to increase the concentration of the fissionable
uranium. Finally, the enriched uranium is fabricated into fuel
appropriate for use in commercial light-water reactors. The United
States’ primary uranium reserves are located in Arizona, Colorado,
Nebraska, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. According to
the Energy Information Administration, five underground mines and five
in-situ mines were operating in the U.S. in 2006. Much of the world’s
uranium supply comes from Canada and Australia. While the security of
uranium supplies is a policy concern, over-production in the industry’s
early years and the United States’ maintenance of military and civilian
stockpiles of uranium have helped to provide confidence that uranium
resources can meet projected demand for multiple decades. There is one
conversion facility operating in the United States in Metropolis, IL.
The expansion of the facility is expected to be completed this year. The
United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) operates the only uranium
enrichment facility in the United States. Commercial enrichment services
are also available in Europe, Russia, and Japan. Recently, four
companies announced plans to develop enrichment capabilities in the U.S.
According to March 5, 2008 testimony in the Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee by the President of the Louisiana Energy Services,
it is more than a year into construction of an advanced uranium
enrichment plant in New Mexico. In addition,
USEC is undertaking the development of
advanced enrichment technology through the American Centrifuge Plant,
which is U.S. technology originally developed by the Department of
Energy.
There is an ongoing debate about the ability of the United States to
ensure we maintain a reliable, domestic source of nuclear fuel. A major
element of that debate is whether or not an agreement between Russia and
the U.S., which limits Russian fuel imports, will be enforceable. If
not, there is concern that Russian fuel would be imported without limit,
potentially jeopardizing the domestic enrichment industry.
- Federal Programs to Support Nuclear Energy *
Another important issue with nuclear power is cost. The 2003
MIT Report The Future of Nuclear Power
discusses nuclear power as an energy source which is not economically
competitive because nuclear power requires significant government
involvement to ensure that safety, proliferation, and waste management
challenges meet policy objectives and regulatory requirements. In
addition, the success of nuclear power depends on its ability to compete
with other energy production technologies. However, the
MIT report points out: “Nuclear does become
more competitive by comparison if the social cost of carbon emissions is
internalized, for example through a carbon tax or equivalent ‘cap and
trade’ system.”
While high oil and gas prices are helping to revive interest in nuclear
power and improve its economic viability, another factor adding to the
interest in nuclear power is the improved performance of existing
reactors. However, there is little doubt that the federal incentives
included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 for the nuclear power industry
make the economics more attractive. The last order for a new nuclear
plant came in 1973, and many in the industry have expressed that strong
federal incentives are necessary to build new plants. Such incentives
authorized within the last three years include: $18.5 billion in loan
guarantee authority for new nuclear plants and $2 billion for uranium
enrichment plants; cost-overrun support of up to $2 billion total for
the first six new plants; a production tax credit of up to $125 million
total per year, estimated at 1.8 cents/kWh during the first eight years
of operation for the first 6 GW of generating capacity; and Nuclear
Power 2010, a joint government-industry cost-shared program to help
utilities prepare for a new licensing process. It is expected that
currently authorized loan guarantees will only cover the first 4-6 new
plants, depending on their size, and utilities will advocate for more
federal loan guarantee authority before building additional plants. In
all, nearly 30 applications for new plants are expected to be submitted
to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of 2009 in order to meet
the eligibility criteria for the production tax credit in addition to
the other incentives.
The federal government provides other indirect financial support for the
nuclear industry as well. While costs to develop the Yucca Mountain site
are primarily covered by a fee on nuclear-generated electricity paid
into the Nuclear Waste Fund, the government takes full responsibility
for waste storage. Because the project is decades behind schedule,
DOE estimates that the U.S. government has
incurred a liability of approximately $7 billion for the department’s
failure to begin accepting spent nuclear fuel from existing commercial
plants. The nuclear industry is also given Price-Anderson liability
protection for any accident involving operating reactors. This
establishes a no fault insurance-type system in which the first $10
billion is industry-funded, and any claims above that level would be
covered by the federal government. Furthermore, any accelerated
development of reprocessing technology, such as
GNEP, may cost the government tens of billions
of dollars.
As advanced technologies transform the energy industry there will be an
increased demand for an appropriately skilled workforce to meet its
needs. As the energy sector of our economy changes and grows, the
nuclear industry faces increasing competition for engineering talent. In
addition to greater demand, the Nuclear Energy Institute’s 2007 nuclear
workforce survey estimates that 39 percent of nuclear utility
maintenance workers, 34 percent of radiation protection workers and 27
percent of operations staff may reach retirement eligibility within five
years. There is a general concern that a revival in the nuclear power
industry could be hampered by the availability of the necessary skilled,
technical workforce. November 2007 testimony by the Assistant Secretary
of Labor underscores the need for creative workforce solutions because
energy industry workers are difficult to replace as training programs
were reduced during the downturn of the industry in the late 1980s and
early 1990s. She goes on to state that training programs have not
expanded at the same rate at which the industry is rebounding. The
MIT report The Future of Nuclear Power
punctuates concerns about workforce development acknowledging that the
nuclear workforce has been aging for more than a decade “due to lack of
new plant orders and decline of industrial activity.”
House Science, Space, and Technology Committee
2318 Rayburn
04/23/2008 at 10:00AM