by John J. Fialka
President Bush says the nation needs advanced nuclear-power plants, calling them a clean, “renewable” energy source for the future. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Monday, Mr. Bush said he looks forward to working with Congress on an energy bill that includes incentives for the nuclear-power industry. “It [nuclear power] certainly answers a lot of our issues. It certainly answers the environmental issue,” he said.
“It’s always gratifying to have the president on your side,” said John W. Rowe, chairman and chief executive of Exelon Corp., of Chicago, which operates the nation’s largest group of nuclear-power plants.
New Mexico Republican Pete V. Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, said he welcomed Mr. Bush’s remarks. “Without any question,” he said, the long-term electricity-generating alternative to the nation’s dwindling supplies of natural gas “will have to be nuclear power. If America is afraid of it, the world will use” advanced nuclear technology. Sen. Domenici is expected to offer an energy bill that will include financial incentives for the first new nuclear-power plants.
Nuclear power now supplies 20% of the nation’s electricity, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, while coal-fired plants provide 51% and natural-gas-fed plants generate 17%. Unlike other major sources of electrical energy, nuclear-power plants don’t pollute the air or produce carbon dioxide, which is thought to cause global warming. But nuclear wastes must be disposed of in a way that protects people from radiation.
Mr. Rowe said the industry needs Congress and the White House to help remove the legal and regulatory obstacles to using Yucca Mountain, the federal repository for nuclear wastes in Nevada. The industry is also looking for government help in building and licensing prototypes for a new generation of nuclear plants with safety systems that would be relatively immune to accidents caused by operator error or equipment malfunctions. For the first prototype, the engineering and design work alone are expected to cost $520 million.
Mr. Rowe said he felt that the next nuclear-power plants to be built would include the new safety systems. The industry projects that the earliest construction start for a private plant would be 2013.
Environmental groups were quick to challenge the president’s use of the word “renewable,” which they have reserved for wind and solar-energy projects. “Most people’s idea of renewable energy is not anything that produces toxic wastes that you have to keep isolated for hundreds of thousands of years,” said Carl Pope, president of the Sierra Club. “It’s absolutely flabbergasting that they would try to revive this technology.”
While President Bush appeared to be trying to jump-start energy bills pending before both houses of Congress, he also cautioned that his appetite for financial incentives is limited. “The price of energy is such that I don’t think any energy bill ought to provide that many incentives for people to find oil and gas,” he said.
Lee Fuller, vice president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents companies that produce about 85% of the nation’s natural gas, agreed that high prices are solving most producers’ borrowing problems.
Still, he said, his industry will seek tax incentives “to keep capital moving in, particularly if prices fall.” Producers also want the government to open more federal land for exploration and royalty incentives to find gas and oil in deep water and other difficult places to drill.
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