The Trump administration has rolled out its approach to revitalizing the U.S. nuclear power industry. It makes about as much sense as the administration’s haphazard approach to covid-19. That’s to say, it’s misguided and unlikely to work.
The work of the White House’s Nuclear Fuel Working Group, a multi-agency endeavor coordinated by a feckless Department of Energy, makes claims that are entirely aspirational, with little connection to reality. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, in a press release April 23, claimed the steps outlined in the group’s report, claimed that the policies it outlined “could enhance the positive attributes of nuclear power, revive capabilities of the uranium mining, milling, and conversion industries, strengthen U.S. technology supremacy, and drive U.S. exports, while assuring consistency with U.S. non-proliferation objectives and supporting national security.”
Brouillette said, “The decline of the U.S. industrial base in the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle over the past few decades has threatened our national interest and national security,” wrapping himself in the flag in a characteristic move by politicians of both parties. He further said the administration’s new policies would “restore America’s leadership in nuclear energy and technology.”
What the heck does that mean? It clearly has nothing to do with the travails of the U.S. domestic nuclear power industry, mired in more than 40 years of decline. The DOE press release and the report stress the “defense needs” for domestic uranium, a totally bogus issue.
The proposed administration policy is entirely loaded on to the front end of the fuel cycle. It clearly looks like the White House is pitching its policy to reward domestic mining, milling, and conversion businesses. The report also portends market conflicts with Russian and Chinese state-owned industries.
The front end of the fuel cycle is irrelevant (although the back end is not). For domestic nuclear power production, the issue is economics, which the Brouillette report glides over without addressing. Fuel supply for U.S. reactors is by far the least problem the domestic industry faces. Nuclear fuel has always been a driving issue, and has always been the industry’s trump card (no pun intended). A chief virtue of nuclear power has always been that fuel is cheap compared to its competitors. The downside has been the capital and operational costs of the plants. That’s hasn’t changed since the 1970s.
As my astute POWER magazine colleague Sonal Patel wrote, the administration report “points out that most nuclear plants that are ‘under economic stress’ are in the deregulated electricity markets that are overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). But while it recognizes FERC’s role in creating a level playing field ‘for all energy sources in power markets,’ it stops short of championing favorable treatment for nuclear power. ‘We’re not intervening in the marketplace in the sense that we’re helping to establish the price of electricity or subsidizing the generation of electricity or anything of that nature,’ Brouillette said.”
That’s a recognition that the administration’s 2017, and foolish, attempt to destroy the competitive markets, which FERC rejected unanimously despite a Republican majority, was a dead end.
What’s next? It appears the administration has abandoned attempts to revitalize the domestic nuclear power industry, which is a hopeless task, and instead looks to actions that it can argue, based on natural security claims, have something to do with a nuclear revival. I don’t buy it and neither should you.
— Kennedy Maize