What Can Save the Staggering U.S. Nuclear Industry?

Nuclear Power Industry

Date posted: 10/24/17

Kennedy Maize asks what are we to do about the faltering nuclear power industry? Two analysts from the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, in a new book, lay out what they believe is a policy agenda that can stem the growing closures of existing nuclear plants. In their book – “Keeping the Lights on at America’s Nuclear Power Plants” – research fellow Jeremy Carl and research analyst David Fedor write, “There are many good policy improvements and energy technology options available to our country on energy going forward.” They say they became interested in the U.S. “nuclear situation in part because we were surprised by the silence around it.” They also cite what they perceive as “a sense of resignation” about the decline of existing nuclear plants and the lack of new units. The nuclear industry’s challenges are real,” write Carl and Fedor, “and solutions to that are not perfect, but they are better than the status quo.” What should policymakers who want to change that decline to do? The book lays out desirable state and federal policy proposals. * State actions, such as those in Illinois and New York, “guaranteeing medium-term supplementary revenue streams to existing nuclear plants through legislation or regulation can be done with bipartisan support, at a reasonable ratepayer cost, and are likely to pass federal scrutiny.” * For the longer term, “states should avoid heavily relying on renewable power generation quotas beyond moderate scales to guide electricity market development. Any requirement for one technology is also a prohibition on everything else.” * At the federal level, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission “should appreciate that it no longer simply plays the role of impartial power market referee – it has involved itself directly in the relative competitiveness of nuclear and other power generation technologies and should own up to that reality in how it conducts itself, or change its charter.” * Congress should recognize that it is also complicit in the weakness of nuclear power “through years of selective, politically-expedient subsidies to competing technologies.” They suggest bringing back nukes “as part of a deal that then gradually rolls back these preferences across the board to zero – getting taxpayer money out of the day-to-day energy business.”