Democratic Governors Offer Strong Support for Nuclear
Oct. 18, 2012—A new white paper on energy policy issued this week by the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) offers strong support for nuclear energy, with a focus on cost recovery for new nuclear plant construction.
The white paper, “Opportunities to Increase and Diversify Domestic Energy Resources,” also endorses many of the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, which addressed options for used nuclear fuel, including the development of consolidated storage facilities. The DGA and the Center for Innovative Policy released the paper today at the DGA policy forum in Louisville, Ky.
The paper consists of policy proposals that define “roles that states could play to address these [energy] issues, while also benefitting economically.” The DGA says states can “bolster energy production, diversify energy sources and increase energy efficiency” while remaining “ever-aware of utilities’ need for cost recovery.”
The report covers virtually every energy source and offers recommendations for increasing the role of states in promoting their development and use.
The report views nuclear energy as “a safe producer of round-the-clock, baseload energy with near-zero emissions” and notes the growing interest in small reactors as demonstrating “the continuing value of nuclear through continual learning, technology advancement with high capacity and reliability.”
The DGA report aligns with others issued this election year such as from the National Conference of State Legislatures on the need for consolidated used fuel sites, a key recommendation of the Blue Ribbon Commission that reviewed the nation’s nuclear waste management program.
The governors’ group says the consolidated storage sites should be “governed by consent-based partnership arrangements or legally enforceable agreements with host states, tribes and local communities,” as the commission recommended.
The report singles out Govs. Martin O’Malley of Maryland and Peter Shumlin of Vermont as having “already publicly called on Congress to implement the Blue Ribbon Commission’s recommendations.” It added that “several state legislative bodies and the presidents of seven organizations representing minority elected officials at the state and local levels of government” have also endorsed the recommendations.
Cost recovery receives strong attention in the report. The report provides several recommendations, including the implementation of Construction Work In Progress—which allows utilities to institute a small surcharge to ratepayers while a facility is being built to hold down interest expenses on construction projects; the ability to recover expenses if a nuclear project is “prudently cancelled”; partnerships between industry and federal and state governments; and state-granted tax abatements.
Additionally, the governors support:
• Policies and regulations based on cost-benefit analyses “that consider economic impacts and resource availability.” The report recommends that regulators set compliance deadlines that “provide sufficient time to avoid unnecessary costs and prevent other problems, such as threats to electric reliability.”
• Investment in new facilities. The report says that because the energy marketplace does not “provide sufficient revenue predictability to attract the debt or equity financing necessary to construct new generation resources with useful lives of 30 or more years,” it recommends that states develop methods to enhance financing to “ensure that new resources are online where and when they are needed.”
• Increased federal support for U.S. nuclear technologies and manufacturing in the global marketplace. The report notes that “direct and indirect jobs associated with the five new U.S. reactors [currently under construction] alone will exceed 25,000” jobs and that number can increase with a stronger international presence.
“The report shows that Democratic governors recognize that nuclear energy is both a reliable source of clean baseload electricity and an engine for U.S. job growth going forward,” said Michael McGarey, NEI’s director for state outreach. “They support expansions of an educated nuclear workforce, construction of new reactors and a growing nuclear supplier network, U.S. leadership in nuclear technology trade world-wide, and a responsible path forward on used fuel management,” he continued.
McGarey credited the nuclear industry’s steady engagement with Democratic governors for “making these leaders aware of, and comfortable with, the role that nuclear should continue to play to create jobs and economic growth in their states.”
For a story on the Republican Governors Association’s policy on nuclear energy, see Nuclear Energy Overview, Aug. 23. << Mark Flanagan, mpf@nei.org
-Nuclear Energy Institute
