Global warming heats up a nuclear energy renaissance

The industry aggressively pushed for the waste generated at plants to be buried at Yucca Mountain, an enormous cavern in the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But the Obama administration shelved that idea, bowing to decades of angry resistance from Nevadans. Obama recently appointed a commission to study the waste issue, with Domenici a member.

For now, industries are content to let the spent fuel rods that make up most waste sit parked above ground at their sites in 100-ton metal and concrete containers (called dry casks). That satisfies converts such as Mr. Brand, who expects better ways to deal with waste to be developed.

"The long-term waste issue was the one that freaked me out as an environmentalist all those years," Brand recalled in an April panel discussion in Laguna Niguel, Calif. "But then ... I came to realize that dry-cask storage for spent fuel [is] a really good place for it. Because we can leave it for half a century or a century while we think about it."

Brand added that he thinks his former allies are disingenuous to bring up nuclear power's price: "Environmentalists are not famous for worrying about money. We're perfectly happy when we have environmental impact reports and delays and things that raise the cost of all kinds of things ... that happen in the world."

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Dominion Energy officials took public sentiment as well as cost into consideration when thinking about applying for a new reactor at North Anna. Two years before submitting its application, Dominion commissioned a poll of local residents. More than three-quarters said they backed having a Nuclear Regulatory Commission feasibility study for an expansion. Dominion has since received the agency's approval for an early site permit, and in May it selected Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. to design and build the reactor.

But environmentalists have fought the proposal. Last year, a state circuit court judge in Richmond ruled that the company's water quality permit violated the federal Clean Water Act. Dominion appealed the ruling, which was overturned in June.

The plant draws water from Lake Anna, sending it to cool in a series of lagoons before discharging it back into the river at a warmer temperature. "To me it looks like baling wire and duct tape on a problem that can be solved in a much better and cleaner way," says Louis Zeller, science director of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, which initiated the court challenge. "Wind energy and solar energy don't carry these kinds of problems."

The company rejects claims that the new reactor will harm the environment. But Dominion still hasn't made a final decision to build the reactor.

"We're being careful – that's why we're doing this methodically," Grecheck says. "When we are finally convinced this can be done for the right price and on schedule ... we'll be doing this with a great deal of confidence that we can deliver.

"That," he adds, referring to the 1970s planning process that led to the two reactors being scrapped, "is not what happened last time."

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