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NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2015
All of the vendors are doing
joint ventures. When Westinghouse
was looking at building in the Czech
Republic, they had signed up a whole
bunch of Czech companies as part of their
team to help make it as much homegrown
as possible. What they can’t do as well
as the Russians, maybe, and the Chinese,
ultimately, is have part of their joint
venture be what their government brings
to the table. The Chinese are willing to
finance everything, if they wanted to, as
are the Russians at times. The Russians,
again, have this advantage of being able
to lease the fuel and take it back, if you’re
a country that can’t manage the waste at
all. The Russians will construct, own and
operate projects they bid on.
That’s something that our companies
just can’t do. The Russians can do
it because it’s the government. The
government owns Rosatom. So if they
are willing to own it and operate it, they
can do that. I think what our companies
are looking at is, we can build, and I think
they’ll often operate because they are
teaming up with operators like Exelon
and others. So what we’re missing,
because it’s not part of the structure, is
that in a lot of other countries, the nuclear
program is actually state owned and state
run. And in America, it’s much more of
a democracy in a competitive market, the
way we operate.
I would say that the technology that
America offers in the AP1000 and the
ESBWR is clearly the most advanced
reactor technology in the world, from
an operational standpoint, and from
a safety standpoint. So, we have an
edge on technology. We have an edge
on operating experience. If you have
Exelon as part of your team or Entergy
or Southern Company or any of our big
companies, they bring excellent operating
experience. There are places where we
have a lot of leadership on technology, on
operating experience. I think that even
with respect to our regulator, we have
the best regulator. So we have edges.
What we don’t have that countries like
Russia have is, again, this state-owned
arrangement where they can make a
conscious decision that helps Russia put
nuclear everywhere. And they can, as
a country, go out and do it. They can
have Putin go visit countries and market
nuclear. We, through the good efforts
of, again, the White House, and Joyce
Connery there, were times where senior
administration people have aided with
notable industry advocacy. Secretary
Clinton, before she stepped down as
secretary, made a last trip to the Czech
Republic and basically was marketing US
nuclear capabilities on that trip.
5.
What is being done to facilitate
foreign investment in US nuclear energy
establishments?
The Atomic Energy Act has a
provision addressing foreign ownership
and control and domination. And
again, it was written in 1954. So, it was
attempting to make sure that we didn’t
allow the wrong countries to somehow
get control of our nuclear assets. I think
that there’s been a lot of work done with
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
to try and update the law in 2015. So
they are, right now at the NRC, looking
at how they’re going to modify their
requirements to allow certain foreign
ownership. You have historically been
able to have some foreign ownership.
You couldn’t have control. So the
board of directors had to be controlled
by Americans. The plant operational
activities, organizational-wise, had to be
controlled by Americans, not by foreign
entities. But foreign ownership, we think,
is something that should be allowed.
What’s the difference whether the money
comes from that entity, as from Chinese
entities or banks that want to invest or
French entities or banks or whatever?
So, we think that’s going to be changing.
We see that moving in the right direction,
actually, from the ownership standpoint.
We’ll still always have to make sure that
control and domination is not turned over,
and that stays in America’s hands.
6.
What is the status of the high-
level and spent fuel waste management
program?
Where we are right now is the law
of the land is still the Nuclear Waste
Policy Act. It still exists. It’s the law.
With respect to Yucca Mountain, there’s
been some major developments related
to Yucca in just the last year. The safety
evaluation report was issued in 2015 by
the NRC, which basically says that the
site is safe for a million years. This is the
staff review. They still need to execute
the hearing process, the adjudicatory
process. The NRC doesn’t have adequate
money to do that, and the Department of
Energy won’t do anything because the
president has said that he’s not going to
allow Yucca Mountain to proceed. So,
basically, on Yucca, where you are right
now is you’ve got a significant wait for
the licensing to progress, and it is passing
all of the necessary tests. You need to still
finish that.
You also have two court decisions
that have been very, very important. One
held that NRC must go forward and do the
licensing, with the caveat that Congress
has to give them the money. If Congress
doesn’t give them the money, they can’t
do it. So Congress needs to appropriate
dollars for the NRC and the department
to continue licensing. The other court
decision was also very important, which
stopped the nuclear waste fee because
it said to the government, ‘you’re not
implementing the program.’ So, the
government’s no longer collecting three
quarters of a billion dollars a year from
our ratepayers. Companies aren’t paying.
In addition to going forward with Yucca,
we think we need a new organization
that’s set up specifically to manage the
waste program.
We support consolidated storage
going forward because even ifYucca goes
forward, we’re going to need someplace
for a while to store waste because you’re
not going to get Yucca built, fast enough.
So we’re pleased to see Waste Control
Specialists and Holtec, both taking
actions to potentially develop consent-
based siting.
The other thing that has happened is
Senator Reid, who obviously has been the
most significant obstacle to anything on
Yucca, has announced that he’s not going
to run in 2016, which we think really
changes the discussion in the Senate. You
can’t have a discussion in the Senate right
now because of Senator Reid. So with
him not there, it doesn’t mean everything
just goes through fast, but you can now
actually have a discussion, and we think
that there could be strong support to
The American...
