Jonathan Crawford and Mark Chediak report that The Obama administration gave the struggling U.S. nuclear industry some hope this week by allowing new reactors to count more toward meeting federal emissions limits. States can take more credit for carbon-free electricity to be generated by nuclear power plants under construction as they work to comply with emission-reduction targets set in the Clean Power Plan. Cuts from existing reactors will not count, casting the fate of units at risk of premature retirement in doubt. The 10 yet-to-be completed reactors were counted as existing units that would not be fully credited for carbon reductions generated in the future after they had started operating. The nuclear power industry complained that amounted to be a penalty on the plants and made state targets harder to achieve.
The new rules are viewed as potentially the first bit of good news for the nuclear industry. Nuclear operators are facing high clean-up costs, as well as competition from cheap natural gas-fueled power plants and from subsidized wind and solar generation. About 10 percent of the nuclear output may retire early because of low energy prices, according to Moody. The question of waste disposal also hangs over the industry as efforts to open Yucca Mountain in Nevada have stalled, although on-site storage works for now. The NEI said it was pleased that the EPA recognized that nuclear plants under construction should count toward compliance when they are operating but was disappointed that existing reactors will not get credit for their carbon-reduction value, given that some are at risk of early retirement. States would have been allowed to count 6 percent of nuclear generation toward clean energy targets under the EPA draft rule released last year. The final rule does not incorporate the carbon-abatement value of existing nuclear power plants - the largest source of carbon-free electricity, which is a ridiculous omission by the Obama administration.
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