Should New Nuclear
Power
Plants be Built?
Should new nuclear power plants be built in the United
States?
Such plants will be built by private industry, but companies
will only
do so if the government gives them incentives and arranges
regulation
and insurance for nuclear power plants in favorable
ways. Should
the government do so? Focus not on the advantages and
disadvantages of nuclear power in general, but rather on
whether
building new nuclear power plants is the right choice now.
In favor:
Reports from the Nuclear
Energy
Institute
Nuclear
Power
2010 Program and also here
Bush proposes
new nuclear power plants
Advantages
of
Nuclear Power
Want Clean?
Go Atomic
Nuclear
Now
American Nuclear Society: Areas for Focus
Advanced Nuclear Power
Reactors
various points of view:
Cost
Estimates
for New Nuclear Power Plants
Nuclear
Energy
Tax-payer
support stuck in Congress
Is
Nuclear
Power the Solution to Global Warming?
The
Nuclear
History Site
Against:
Nuclear
Power
Too Expensive to Solve Global Warming
Nuclear
Power:
No Solution to Climate Change
Price-Anderson
Act
Spinning
Nuclear
Power into Green
Security Meltdown
An article from the Greenville News:
October 19, 2005
Section: Front
Page: 1, 3A
Counties vie to win new nuke facility
Cherokee pushes incentive package; Oconee, Pickens hope for
plant jobs
By Anna Simon
CLEMSON BUREAU
asimon@greenvillenews.com
WALHALLA -- Oconee County and Pickens County are players in
what is
becoming a race to attract a Duke Power nuclear plant, with
Cherokee
County backing an incentive package to draw a facility that
would bring
jobs and tax revenues.
Duke Power, which already has three reactors at its Oconee
Nuclear
Station on Lake Keowee, hasn't requested an incentive
package from
Oconee County, Ron Rabun, the county administrator, said
Tuesday.
Duke has asked "for an indication of interest," and "is
certainly aware
of our interest," said Rabun, who has met with Duke
officials and said
he asked if Oconee should prepare incentives.
Rabun asked if Duke was "looking for a particular incentive,
or a cash
package or bonds and they said no," he said.
But on Monday night Cherokee County Council approved the
second of
three readings of an incentive package with a reduction in
property
taxes for the site should Duke select that county, said Jim
Inman,
director of the Cherokee County Development Board.
Duke is "asking the other counties to make some type of
indication of
their interest," Inman said.
Lake Keowee borders both Oconee and Pickens counties, but
Pickens
County Administrator Alan Ours said Duke hasn't approached
him, though
he's contacted them and expressed interest in Duke building
the plant
in Pickens County.
"My take is that Pickens County is not under consideration,"
Ours said.
But Ray Farley, director of the Economic Development
Alliance in
Pickens County, said, "If Oconee is in the running, we are
their best
cheerleader."
Selection of Oconee "would be Christmas morning in Pickens
County,"
Farley said. "We know that that facility would employ, as
the current
nuclear facility employs, a lot of Pickens County folks,"
Farley said.
A new nuclear plant would likely be a $4 to $6 billion
investment in
2005 dollars and could bring 800-1,000 full-time jobs
varying from
maintenance to engineering to office workers, Rita Sipe, a
Duke
spokeswoman, said.
The region has suffered from job losses in the past year,
including the
closing of the huge WestPoint Stevens textile plant near
Clemson in
Oconee County that affected more than 1,300 people.
Duke Power is studying about 14 possible sites in its
service area in
the Carolinas that should be complete at the end of the
year, Sipe said
Tuesday.
Sipe wouldn't disclose any locations being considered. None
of the
original sites on the list have been eliminated, she said.
Bryan J. Dolan, Duke's managing director of nuclear
projects, had said
in an earlier interview that the Charlotte-based utility
"will be
looking at Lake Keowee to see if it's viable to build a
plant there."
When asked if a fourth reactor could be built on the current
nuclear
station site, Sipe said "we built what we planned" on the
Oconee site.
She did not elaborate.
The study looks at factors such as available land mass,
access to
transmission, water availability and "a long list" of other
things that
are "being applied consistently to sites across the
territory," Sipe
said. Sipe said Duke's plans are to have a site for a
nuclear plant
selected by the end of this year, as well as a decision to
prepare an
application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on what
could be the
nation's first new nuclear plant in three decades.
Any decision to build would be made after a successful
commission
review and based on customer need at that time, which would
be four or
five years out, Sipe said.
It could take Duke two years or more to complete an
application and the
commission review process would take about 33 months, Sipe
said.
Construction of a new nuclear facility would take another
four to five
years, Sipe said.
POWER PLAY
A new Duke nuclear power plant in Oconee or Pickens county
could bring
needed jobs and tax revenue to an area that has suffered
major
employment losses. If approved, the facility also would be
the nation's
first new plant in three decades.
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