Biden signs a big nuclear bill. Can it remake the industry?

EE News, By Zach Bright | 07/10/2024

President Joe Biden signed legislation Tuesday that aims to deploy advanced nuclear reactors more quickly, placing wind at the backs of companies feverishly striving to carve out a bigger niche for nuclear technology as a zero-carbon source of electricity.

The ADVANCE Act, aims to further streamline permitting for new reactor designs, give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission more resources, and promote deployment across the globe.

For the NRC, it’s a chance at redemption. The pace of permitting projects is regarded by nuclear advocates as a major impediment to any future nuclear renaissance. The latest injection of support from Congress builds on the agency’s ongoing effort to sift through applications and put easier safety assessments on faster tracks.

……. close observers of the industry cautioned that it comes down to implementation. A vacant seat on the five-member NRC means the pace of licensing the next generation of reactors could hinge on who occupies the White House in 2025.

Both Biden and former President Donald Trump — with much of the Republican Party in tow — tout a return to nuclear energy as a potential solution to U.S. energy and climate challenges. Biden’s Department of Energy has helped shore up existing reactors and cast a $1.5 billion lifeline to a shuttered nuclear plant in Michigan that aims to restart in 2025. At the global climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, last December, the United States pledged with more than 20 other countries to triple the world’s nuclear energy capacity by 2050.

The Trump administration also took actions aimed at developing and exporting U.S. nuclear technology.

Yet given the huge financial commitment required to build out the nuclear industry, Trump’s strategy is less clear today. During his previous four years in office, he wanted to eliminate the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office. And through political surrogates such as the Heritage Foundation, Trump’s backers have indicated they’d significantly pare DOE spending on nonfossil energy.

The DOE loan program provided support to the $30 billion Vogtle nuclear expansion in Georgia that slogged its way to completion earlier this year.

Changing its mission

The ADVANCE Act passed with bipartisan support. But it’s also the first significant nuclear legislation in almost two decades.

Since 2005, the last time Congress put its foot on the scale hoping to spur more nuclear projects, the energy mix has changed significantly. Natural gas is the largest source of electricity. Solar power is dominating new generation. Battery technology and more transmission are enabling remote wind power to travel longer distances. And investment in technology to pull more carbon pollution out of the air is advancing.

Westinghouse is no longer the only company developing nuclear technology at scale. And the leading companies developing smaller-scale nuclear reactors are rooted in the West Coast tech industry — not Pittsburgh.

The other tough reality is that building a new nuclear reactor from scratch has proven extremely expensive.

Under the ADVANCE Act, Congress directed the NRC to revise its mission statement to ensure it uses its oversight authority “in a manner that is efficient and does not unnecessarily limit” the use of nuclear energy.

……… the tweak to the commission’s mission statement marks a big change for nuclear scientists and public health advocates who say it makes advancing civilian nuclear energy a top priority of the agency.

“It essentially compromises the independence of the NRC’s regulatory authority by forcing the agency to have to consider the health of the nuclear industry in everything it does,” said Edwin Lyman, nuclear power safety director for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“If this mythology that nuclear power is completely safe — that it doesn’t need to be heavily regulated — takes hold, we could see a whole generation of really dangerous experimental nuclear facilities being licensed and built around the world,” Lyman continued. “And the first time that there’s a catastrophe, it’s going to set back the industry for decades.”……………………………… https://www.eenews.net/articles/biden-signs-a-big-nuclear-bill-can-it-remake-the-industry/

July 11, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA

1 Comment »

This was a bad decision by President Biden to sign this legislation to give more government welfare to the profit addicted, dying nuclear industry. Nuclear power is too dangerous, too expensive and totally unnecessary for our energy needs. An “All of the Above” energy strategy is simply insane, not cost effective, not safe and contrary to the economics of the market place, the real, unregulated, “invisible hand of the market place. Wind and solar continue to expand their market share and electricity generation capacity because it is cheaper, faster, safer and easier to build. It lends it self to decentralization, making it more resilient. Nuclear power was never “too cheap to meter,” that we were told back in the 1950’s. There is no permanent, safe, long term storage for the dangerous radioactive wastes. No one wants it in their back yard anywhere on the planet. Without government subsidies, like this Bill that President Biden signed and the Price-Anderson Act which limits the liability from any nuclear accident and that is based on 350 Megawatt reactors from the 1950’s not the behemoth’s of the 1.5 Megawatts reactors that we have now. Now they want to mass produce mini-nuke, SMR’s cooled by molten salt or liquid sodium of 350 Megawatts or smaller. That is simply insane, not cost effective and suicidal. Has everybody forgotten their high school chemistry of how ordinary sodium reacts with air or water? No leaks would ever be aloud in any heat exchange between the reactor core heating loop and a steam generator loop that would turn a turbine. That is simply maddening, stupid and insane. We have the technology and the natural resources to meet are energy needs with nuclear or fossil fuel. All we lack is the political will to do so, because the profit addicted, dying nuclear, fossil fuel and centralized, for profit electric utilities have bought the votes of our elected leaders in the Congress, the White House, our governors offices and our state legislatures. Go to the Websites of The Solutions Project and the Rocky Mountain Institute to see the plans and research on transition to a renewable energy economy.

Comment by paulrodenlearning | July 11, 2024 | Reply

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