Dems Unlikely to Dim Nuclear Plants' Future

A Democratic takeover of Capitol Hill shouldn't doom the U.S. nuclear-power industry's resurgence.

Utilities and their partners intend to file applica­ tions in 2007 and 2008 for up to 31 new reactors, says Adrian Heymer, the Nuclear Energy Institute's senior director for new plant deployment. The first should come on line around 2014. The plans are a re­ sult of a program Congress passed in 2005 that offers generous production tax credits to nevv plants in opera~ tion by 2021. The legislation was approved with bipar­ tisan support by a Congress seeking to cut U.S. depen­ dence on foreign oil.

Five of the proposed reactors are rated at 1,600 megawatts. Their combined capacity is 1,191 mega­ watts greater than the three power plants at Washing­ ton state's mile-long, 700-feet-tall Grand Coulee Dam, which holds back a man-made lake 150 miles long. The total capacity of all the proposed new reactors would be 40,000 megawatts, versus the 200,000 additional megawatts experts say the nation will need by 2024. The U.S. now has 103 operating nuclear reactors in 31 states, with a capacity of 99,988 megawatts. They pro­ vide 20% of the nation's electricity.

Meanwhile, Nevada's Harry Reid, who will become Senate majority leader in January, staunchly opposes a plan to store 77,000 tons of nuclear waste from around the country in a 1,000-foot-deep vault at Yucca Flat, an old nuclear-bomb testing site about 90 miles from Las Vegas. The waste would stay lethal for 10,000 years. Reid and state officials say the facility is geologically un­ sound. He suggests storing spent fuel at reactor sites.

Reid could block the project indefinitely. But Heymer points to alternate plans for the spent fuel. One possibility: moving it to an interim site for partial recycling, to reduce its lethality before it is buried at Yucca Flat. That could keep the building on track.

-JIM McTAGUE