May-June 2018 NPJ

28 NuclearPlantJournal.com Nuclear Plant Journal, May-June 2018 Making the... ( Continued from page 27) allowed to contribute to this clean energy future. A policy that advances renewables while closing nuclear plants won’t solve any problems. This approach is like running in place. In fact, where the goal is to cut carbon dioxide emissions, we should be thinking in terms of zero- emissions standards, not sun and wind standards. Finally, we are seeing widespread attention on broader policies to address carbon emissions. New Jersey and Virginia are considering joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. New York is assessing whether its state programs to support non-emitting generation could be met through market pricing. Others such as Washington and Maryland are exploring the possibility of carbon taxes. Policies targeted at reducing carbon will create incentives to use nuclear energy as part of a suite of technologies to reach those goals. This is a varied landscape. The decisions that will shape the future of nuclear energy are being made in the state capitals today. Our efforts to sustain the fleet are driving us toward smooth, efficient operations. Again for the last 12 months, our operations have been exemplary; we have a 92 percent capacity factor for the U.S fleet and consistent production of more than 800 million megawatt-hours a year. That means we’re producing more electricity with 99 reactors than we ever have before. In fact, it would have taken 140 reactors in the 1980s to produce as much electricity as our 99 reactors do today. Our generating costs have fallen for the last five years in a row. In 2017 our total generating cost was $33.61 per megawatt-hour. This includes fuel, operations and capital costs but it does not account for returns or risk management. The industry costs are down nearly 19 percent since their peak in 2012. Part of the drop is because of our continued search for efficiencies. We call it Delivering the Nuclear Promise. This is an industry wide effort to spread best practices among the operators. We have so far identified 68 steps, which create the potential for cutting costs by $1.3 billion across the industry. Part of our expense structure is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Our industry pays about 90 percent of the NRC’s budget. As the industry faces changes, so does the NRC. And we remain interested in an efficient regulatory framework that governs the current plants as well as future reactors. The NRC leadership is actively looking for input on how to improve its operations. We have suggested stricter adherence to a principle that we all agree to in theory, risk-informed regulation, which means focusing on what matters, and what is important to safety. We have also repeatedly called for embracing the best available new technology, including digital technology, where appropriate. Digital technology can improve safety and trim unnecessary costs. And our reactors are durable. By the end of the year we expect that owners of six of them will have applied for permission to extend their lives to 80 years. We see a very substantial bipartisan coalition that supports follow-through on the Nuclear Waste PolicyAct. That means two things: relatively small appropriations that will allow the NRC to resume its hearings on whether to grant a license for the Yucca Mountain Repository, and support for an interim storage site. The Trump administration asked for $150 million to support the NRC and the DOE. Eighty members of the House signed a letter requesting that this be made a top priority in the 2019 budget. Last year the House Energy and Commerce committee approved a bill to advance the Yucca Mountain repository. The bill also would authorize consolidated interim storage of used fuel, and locations in both New Mexico and Texas have expressed interest in hosting an interim storage site. Given the legislation’s current momentum and strong vote of 49-4 within the committee, we anticipate the bill will be brought to the House floor in the coming weeks and will pass with overwhelming bipartisan support. In the Senate we could see bipartisan used fuel legislation introduced in the near future as well. We look forward to working with both bodies of Congress to once and for all address the issue of nuclear waste in a comprehensive manner. The hurdles to solving used fuel are political, not technical, and we hope to move the ball forward later this year. And we continue to innovate. In March, Southern Company’s Plant Hatch started up with test quantities of two kinds of accident tolerant fuel. There are four companies developing such fuel, each with its own approach. The new fuels are designed to withstand hotter temperatures without damage. Some of the designs would also allow greater heat production, meaning that existing reactors could produce more electricity. I also want to tell you about the new reactors that are coming. They are being helped along by what Congress did in February; it removed the deadline for qualifying for a production tax credit and widened the scope of who can use it. Extension of the production tax credit was an important component of the decision by Georgia Power and the Public Service Commission to proceed with the Vogtle project, near Augusta. After those two reactors, there will be production tax credits available for another 3,800 megawatts of new reactors. One obvious candidate is the small modular reactor project being developed by UAMPS. UAMPS wants a NuScale plant and already has a site, at the Idaho National Laboratory. NuScale’s design certification is progressing well through the NRC now. We also see a variety of players aiming for a new product category that might best be called micro reactors, that would compete with the dirtiest and most expensive form of fossil generation, diesel fuel. There is strong interest in these reactors for remote, off-grid locations, including military bases. There continues to be a great deal of interest in new reactor designs that take advantage of different fuels or coolants. They are meant to mesh well with intermittent renewables, and to provide higher quality heat.