Lift your ban, Minnesota

By Patrick Moore
Updated: 03/03/2010

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama said that creating new jobs must be the nation’s top priority. He then expressed his support for building a new generation of clean and safe nuclear energy plants that would create thousands of high-paying jobs and help the nation meet its energy and environmental goals.

Days later, the president announced the first conditional loan guarantee for a nuclear energy project — two reactors in Georgia in this case. The president, along with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a majority of Americans and a growing bipartisan body of Congress, recognizes that nuclear energy has an important role to play in our energy future.

Nuclear energy provides affordable, around-the-clock electricity that is a cornerstone of the U.S. economy. Producing 20 percent of our nation’s electricity, nuclear energy accounts for more than 70 percent of all U.S. carbon-free electric generation. In Minnesota, the state’s three reactors produced more than two-thirds of the carbon-free electricity.

President Obama also has expressed a strong preference for economic stimulus projects with immediate payoffs and lasting benefits. Nuclear projects take a while, from start to finish, but the benefits last a long time. Each new reactor is a multi-year, multi-billion dollar construction project. More than half of the $6 billion to $8 billion cost of each plant will go into the pockets of the laborers, manufacturers and suppliers who build the facility.

During the four- to six-year construction period, each new reactor will produce as many as 2,400 workers at peak periods. Once up and running, a plant will provide up to 700 full-time positions paying 36 percent more than average salaries in the area. Furthermore, jobs at nuclear plants are local jobs that cannot be exported.

Nuclear power plants are hubs of economic activity, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll and disposable income for at least six decades. Each contributes an estimated $430 million a year in total output for the local community, along with nearly $40 million in total labor income. The plants also yield broader economic benefits. In 2008, more than 1,150 Minnesota companies provided $315 million in materials, goods and services to the U.S. nuclear industry.

Nuclear energy’s climate-friendly operation, job creation, reliability and positive economic impacts appeal to a number of Minnesota legislators who think the state should be able to consider it as an option in energy planning. Some would like to see the moratorium that bans new nuclear plants lifted so the many potential benefits of nuclear energy could be back on the table.

One issue often raised about nuclear energy is long-term management of uranium fuel used in the reactor. This is an issue that has more to do with political science than nuclear science.

Within 40 years after its removal from a reactor, less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity in uranium fuel remains. It isn’t accurate to call this material “waste,” because 95 percent of the potential energy can still be used. Japan, France and Britain recycle reactor fuel and reuse this energy. While used fuel can be safely stored at plant sites for many decades in secure concrete and steel storage pools and dry containers, this is not a long-term solution. President Obama has tasked a special blue ribbon panel of experts to address this very issue.

In supporting the expansion of nuclear energy, President Obama isn’t slighting other clean energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal. He is simply recognizing the findings of the Environmental Protection Agency, National Academies of Science and other national and international research groups which agree that a balanced portfolio of clean energy supplies is needed to protect the environment and meet future energy demand.

Nuclear energy dovetails nicely with other clean energy supplies by providing a stable platform of 24/7, large-scale electricity upon which intermittent supplies such as wind and solar can effectively function. After all, Minnesotans also need electricity when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.

I admire President Obama’s impassioned support for transforming the ways we produce and use energy, including an expanded role for renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. Minnesota’s nuclear plants have a strong record of safe and reliable performance, as graded by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

As Minnesota develops plans for its energy future, it would be a shame if its leaders could not consider a safe, low-carbon and affordable form of energy that could help revitalize the economy and put thousands of Minnesotans to work.