The Nuclear Option

Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican from Tennessee, positively glows when he talks about nuclear power.

Building 100 nuclear power plants in the next 20 years is one of four steps the U.S. should take to control carbon emissions, Alexander said Monday. These steps, he said, would achieve the same goal as legislation that would cap carbon emissions, reducing the greenhouse gases that most scientists believe are a major cause of global warming. But they would save the planet without wrecking America’s economy, he said, unlike the Senate’s pending cap-and-trade bill, which “deliberately kills jobs and deliberately makes Americans poorer.”

Alexander spoke to reporters Monday afternoon, the day before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee begins hearings on legislation sponsored by chairman Barbara Boxer and Senator John Kerry. The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733) would require a 20 percent reduction in carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 2020. It also would allocate emissions credits among various types of utilities and industries. These credits could then be bought and sold.

This measure would send jobs overseas and doesn’t accomplish the goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions as effectively as his four-point plan, said Alexander, a member of Boxer’s committee. Besides building 100 nuclear plants, the plan calls for electrifying half of America’s cars and trucks in the next 20 years, opening more areas off the U.S. coast for natural-gas exploration, and launching “mini-Manhattan projects” to capture carbon emissions from coal plants and make solar energy more affordable.

“Presidential leadership” could help remove the barriers that have kept electric utilities from building any new nuclear plant plants in the past 30 years, he said. There also should be more robust loan guarantees for nuclear projects.

Why nuclear?

“The short answer is clean air and low costs, and large amounts of reliable electricity,” Alexander said.

Wind and solar power may be clean, but they don’t generate electricity around the clock and require extensive subsidies and thousands of miles of new transmission lines, Alexander said.

Some environmentalists have come around to embracing nuclear as a low-carbon way to generate electricity, but many experts dispute the notion that nuclear is a low-cost solution. Nuclear plants are notoriously expensive to build, with a long history of coming in way over budget. Some studies conclude nuclear is cost-effective only if a price is put on carbon, which would make coal-powered plants much more expensive.

Alexander, however, doesn’t want to do that. Instead, he thinks presidential leadership, removal of some regulatory obstacles, and financial incentives would be enough to bring a nuclear plant to everyone’s backyard. It’s possible: Alexander’s own backyard—Tennessee and its surrounding area—will soon get nearly 40 percent of its electricity from nuclear power.

That prospect may scare some people—nuclear power is an “inconvenient solution,” Alexander said. But nuclear deserves serious consideration. Most serious experts, however, don’t see a nuclear renaissance in the United States unless a price is put on carbon. Alexander may just be tilting at windmills.