POWER May 2010 - 120

CONFERENCE REPORT
Resurrecting Nuclear:
" We Have to Get It Right "
Offers of nuclear loan guarantees are pending, construction permit applications
are at an industry high, and the political stars seem to be properly
aligned. However, there remains one obstacle in the development path of
the next-generation of nuclear plants: How will these plants be financed?
By Kennedy Maize
" T
his time, we have got to get it
right, " says Fluor's Chris Tye. Tye
is the giant construction company's
senior vice president for nuclear construction
and a veteran of the 1970s and 1980s, when
the nuclear industry did not always get it right
when building new nuclear plants. The historical
record demonstrates a pattern of overbudget,
off-schedule performance that drove up
plant costs and soured utilities, regulators, investors,
the public, and the government when
it came to nuclear power.
With federal loan guarantees now in hand
for at least some new projects-the Southern
Company's two-unit, $14 billion Vogtle expansion
has won an $8 billion-plus guarantee
from the U.S. Department of Energy-Tye
argues that failure on constructing the next
generation of nuclear plants will be fatal to a
nuclear renaissance. (See " Plant Vogtle Leads
the Next Nuclear Generation, " POWER, November
2009.)
Tye was on a construction issues panel at
the annual Platts nuclear conference in Rockville,
Md., in February. Looking at the critical
steps for a real nuclear revival-something
the industry has been awaiting since the 2005
Energy Policy Act and its loan guarantee
provisions-Tye told POWER in an interview,
" We have got to get the first one [of the
new generation of nuclear plants] right. If we
fail, the whole enterprise fails. " Tye said the
key to getting new nuclear generating plants
built is " Construction 101-basic blocking
and tackling. "
Industry Optimism Returns
The Platts atomic confab, which has traditionally
had a fingers-crossed feel about
new nukes, was abuzz with optimism this
year, according to many of those who attended.
The passage of the 2005 Energy
Policy Act and its authorization for over
$18 billion in nuclear loan guarantees had
the industry on a policy high four years
ago. But the Bush administration's inability
(or unwillingness) to implement the
loan guarantees over the next few years
demoralized the industry.
Now the Obama administration, which
many in the industry feared would be reflexively
anti-nuke when it arrived in Washington,
came through with an $8 billion loan
guarantee for the planned Vogtle expansion
(Figure 1). This announcement from the
White House-a quick walk from the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission's White
Flint, Md., headquarters-made just before
the conference started, struck many observers
as intentional, not accidental.
1. We have a winner. Plant Vogtle received the DOE's first offer of an $8 billion loan guarantee for the construction of two new nuclear
units. Courtesy: NRC
120
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POWER May 2010

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