Nuclear: Get Ready to ‘Ride the Wave’

The market for nuclear used to consist mostly of decontamination and deconstruction efforts, but the situation has greatly changed, and “it’s amazing who has come over to the ‘dark side,’” joked Gary Wolski of Curtiss-Wright Flow Controls’ Commercial & Power Services Division.

Operating a nuclear facility is not that much different than operating a fossil fuel plant, and even the environmentalists and politicians have gotten behind nuclear because of its carbon-free operation and because the nation truly needs a source for sustainable energy, he said.

Put simply: the nuclear renaissance has arrived, pushed along by many years of successful operation and safety, and the world is about to “ride the wave” of the movement into the next generation of nuclear plants, he said.

Already, 60 plants are in the planning stages in the world, 31 are under construction, and 150 are under consideration, he pointed out.

Some of the initiatives that affect that growth include:

The U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005, which was designed as a tool to encourage (not pay for) nuclear growth – The act created new programs such as loan guarantees, risk assurance, production tax credits and more, and created research and development sources for looking at the fourth generation of power plants, a “phenomenal technology” that actually will burn the nuclear waste, Wolski explained.

The Nuclear Power 2010 program, a joint government/industry cost-sharing effort that allows companies to go through an approval process before the plant is built—Although the program has stretched out how long it takes before a plant is built (from five to six years to about 10 to 12), “you take care of all the political issues beforehand,” instead of investing before the process begins, he added.

The next step is the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, an international joining of companies for the purpose of finding ways to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. The U.S., France and Japan (the three countries with the most plants currently) signed an agreement in February 2006 to work together to develop reactors that will reuse nuclear fuel.

And while the U.S. has the most plants currently with 104, there are now 438 operating reactors worldwide, and in 20 years, the market will be much different, Wolski said. Russia has a nuclear renaissance rivaling ours, and China is also looking to increase its participation.

One challenge of the U.S. renaissance will be consolidation. Currently, seven utilities own 52 of the 104 reactors and this consolidation will grow as the industry gets stronger. Also, as with other types of manufacturing, one of the main problems domestically will be finding adequate staff to help with new builds, as well as supporting the existing 104 facilities.

FOR MORE ON NUCLEAR POWER: See the article on page 38 of this issue, “The Rise, Fall and Renaissance of Nuclear Power.”