Nuclear Energy Could Be a Godsend for Biden’s Green Agenda Here’s What’s Holding It Back – Are You Interested in It?
NICK Pope
CONTRIBUTE
Nuclear power is efficient at scale and produces no emissions, but the technology may not be ready to take a leading role in President Joe Biden’s green agenda.
American policymakers, mainly the Democrats and their appointees, are making every effort to realize the goals of the Biden administration. target on getting the U.S. power sector to net-zero emissions by 2035, but wind, solar and other renewable generation sources have yet to demonstrate the same level of reliability that nuclear has demonstrated. Despite these realities, Biden and lawmakers have so far failed to simplify the nuclear licensing and regulatory process, according to energy sector experts who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Biden administration often mention nuclear power alongside solar and wind power, but U.S. nuclear capabilities have remained largely stagnant since 1980, according to of the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). While new solar and wind projects are being announced and built with generally increasing frequency, only a handful of new nuclear reactors have come online in the past 20 years, a trend direction is unlikely to change without significant policy and regulatory changes, according to to EIA and power industry experts who spoke with DCNF.
“Nuclear costs are enormous due to the legal quagmire created by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). It would be better to scrap the whole issue and return it to the Atomic Energy Commission, which actually works to ensure nuclear technologies are safe, secure, and affordable,” said Dan Kish, a senior researcher at the Energy Research Institute, told DCNF. “Nuclear would be the obvious answer if the Greens and Biden really wanted to electrify everything and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but they also oppose natural gas which has reduced coal emissions, so I won’t hold my breath. They don’t seem to want anything that will solve the problems they claim exist, so I expect they will continue to reject things that actually work.”
The Biden administration has spent the least 1 trillion USD to advance the climate agenda and generous subsidies in the Inflationary Reduction Act (IRA) and bipartisan infrastructure legislation of 2021 designed to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels jelly. Both the infrastructure package and IRA includes provisions designed to prevent premature decommissioning of nuclear facilities. However, there is no law that fully streamlines these combination The regulatory environment for nuclear or significantly reduces the overall cost of building new capacity, John Starkey, director of public policy for the American Nuclear Association, told DCNF.
Starkey told DCNF that incentives in the IRA and infrastructure bills are a “great start,” but “more support for cost overruns and early support for advanced reactors first would also be helpful.”
The government does expressed the desire to build a domestic nuclear power supply chain, that is dominate by Russia and China. However, Biden also Nominated Nearly one million acres of uranium-rich soil in Arizona were designated a national monument in August 2023, prohibiting future mining claims in the covered area. (RELATED: Enviros cheers New York for shutting down giant nuclear plant. Then emissions skyrocket)
There are currently 54 operating nuclear power plants and a total of 93 commercial reactors in the United States, totaling about 19% US electricity, according to EIA. The average nuclear reactor has an average lifespan of 42 years, and licensing regulations limit their lifespan to a maximum of 40 to 80 years, according to to DTM.
Many policymakers around the world also clearly see the potential prospects of nuclear energy; more than 20 countries, including the US, commit tripling nuclear energy production to reduce emissions in the process COP28, the United Nations climate summit to be held in late 2023 in the United Arab Emirates. However, recognizing that such a commitment in the US may be more difficult than implementing it given the high costs and regulatory environment that potential nuclear plant builders and operators must navigate, many experts energy and nuclear industry told DCNF.
“I think the fundamental problem with nuclear energy is risk aversion. People strongly associate nuclear energy with nuclear accidents, radiation leaks and very serious health risks. And there is debate,” Brian Potter, a senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress, told DCNF. “There’s a lot of debate, and I’m no expert, about how real those risks are.”
“The organizations tasked with oversight and management tend to be very risk-averse and have a very burdensome process for approving and building these things,” Potter continued. “And so, overall, it actually makes it really, really difficult to build these things or relax the regulations around making them easier to build.”
In terms of levelized capital costs, nuclear power is the most expensive per unit of energy produced of all forms of offshore wind generation assuming that operations begin in 2028, according to EIA data compiled by Statista.
Notably, many Democratic Party And environmentalists oppose nuclear energy largely because of perceived safety risks. Historically, major nuclear accidents – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima – have caused significant environmental damage or loss of life, and have often been followed by an increase in regulations aimed at preventing prevent another disaster.
However, according to Starkey, those incidents, while tragic and devastating, do not represent the overall safety of nuclear energy.
“I sense a cooling even from many of the environmental groups that were critical of nuclear, who are now saying ‘wait a minute,’” Starkey told DCNF. “As for what happened in the past with regard to the nuclear accident, the public and Congress, in a bipartisan way on both sides, I’m starting to see a better understanding of what happened. And the deep fear of radiation from 10, 15, 20 years ago, it’s starting to subside a little bit.” (RELATED: Elon Musk calls for more fossil fuels and nuclear power to prevent energy crisis)
Starkey added that the NRC – the federal agency primarily responsible for regulating nuclear energy – does not impose too heavy a regulatory burden. However, the agency is trying to become “leaner and more compact” while “maintaining high safety standards,” Starkey said.
“We are focused on appropriately balancing our regulatory footprint while continuing to ensure that we are delivering on our safety mission,” an NRC spokesperson told DCNF. The spokesperson also referred the DCNF to a March investigation speech from NRC Chairman Christopher Hanson, in which he said that his agency is planning to apply for two combined licenses, one design certification, one standard design approval, one production license, three operating licenses and nine construction licenses.
Congress has also identified the need to streamline the nuclear sector, passing a package of nuclear reform bills in the House of Representatives this week in strong bipartisan fashion. However, plans by some senators to use a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill as a legislative vehicle for a nuclear package failed, according to to the Washington Examiner.
Despite the missed opportunity in the FAA bill, Starkey remains confident that the nuclear package could still pass the Senate at some point in the coming weeks as more opportunities arise.
The Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment.
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