Nuclear Plant Journal, September-October 2015 NuclearPlantJournal.com
19
make sure that you go forward and finish
licensing and make sure it’s safe, and then
be able to do the things to give Nevada
benefits, etc. So, we see a lot of things
that could happen, but they probably will
not happen until after the next election.
First of all, President Obama has said
he won’t go toYucca. So the Department
of Energy in all likelihood doesn’t do any-
thing on it. And you can’t get appropri-
ated dollars anymore because of Senator
Reid. So we’re sort of running in place.
But we think the House is going to look
at a bill even in this Congress, that they’re
going to move forward with a bill, and
every time they’ve moved forward with
anything on Yucca Mountain, it had very
large votes, very significant bipartisan
support. In the Senate we have Senator
Alexander and Senator Feinstein working
on trying to support consolidated storage
and appropriations. We think, that’s a
good thing to do. And we have Senator
Murkowski and the other senators that I
mentioned working on a Nuclear Waste
Administration Act, which would put
everything together except Yucca Moun-
tain, and we think that that is also good.
We see this as a good time to continue
to educate on what has to happen. We
don’t see legislation, in all likelihood,
going forward and getting through in this
Congress, just because it’s coming to the
end of the Congress and because of the
fact that the House will always want to
support Yucca Mountain, and at least the
Democratic side of the Senate won’t.
7.
What is the effect of new EPA rule on
existing and new plants?
The EPA rule just came out on
carbon. It’s very good for new nuclear
plants because they’re treating new plants
the right way. The proposed rule had
put new plants in the rate setting, and
that was really unfair to the states and to
the companies that were making this big
investment in carbon-free energy -- and
they were almost getting penalized for
doing it. So they’d taken that away. And
now the new plants count for compliance.
So they can really help you in a state
if you’re building a new plant. It’s a
good thing. The second thing is they’re
allowing rates to count for compliance, so
that’s also helpful.
The big part that could help our
existing plants is that the rule originally
was all rate based. It was saying to each
state that you can emit so many pounds of
carbon per kilowatt hour or per megawatt
hour or whatever. What they’ve done in
the final rule they’re proposing, you can
still go rate, but you could also go mass.
So you could say you’re capped at so
many tons of carbon, which creates, in
essence, a trading program nationally.
If you shut down a nuclear plant,
you’re going to replace it with a fossil
plant because renewables can’t replace a
1000 megawatt nuclear plant. Well, once
you do that, you now have to offset the
new carbon emissions. So the existing
nuclear plants become much more
important and valuable to the states that
they’re in when you’re looking at mass
as opposed to rate-based compliance. So
we think that’s going to really help.
The other two big issues that we’re
working on right now, one is in the
competitive markets. Half our country
basically is comprised in competitive
markets, and the other half is comprised
of regulated markets. In the competitive
markets the value of nuclear is not
appreciated well in the energy market or
in the capacity market, the way they’re
set up. So we’re working with our
companies and with the Edison Electric
Institute, with The Electric Power Supply
Association to work with Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the
Regional Transmission Organizations
(RTOs) to try and get nuclear and, to
be honest, all baseload recognized for
its value. We always have fuel on-site.
Some of these RTOs are willing to pay
you additional money if you do dual fire
your units with oil and gas or coal and
gas. Well, why don’t you give nuclear
something because they’re always there?
We emit nothing. We get no credit for
that. Renewables get credits for that.
We’re trying to get credit for that,
and I think we’re making progress. It’s
slower than we’d like, but we think
we’re making progress. So that’s a very
important effort that the industry has
going.
8.
Concluding comments.
We see the international market as a
major market for our suppliers. We see
YEARS
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