Two unusual bills promoting nuclear power were introduced in the Maine Legislature this session. One, from Sen. Eric Brakey, R-Auburn, would have fast tracked Maine’s path to a reactor using thorium to create a uranium isotope different from those that fuel nearly all of today’s power reactors. The other, from the office of Gov. Paul LePage, would have exempted “small modular reactors” from the referendum process Maine requires for other nuclear power plants.
Neither bill passed as proposed.
Still, what on earth is going on here? No license applications for these designs have ever been filed at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. No one knows what they would cost or how reliably they would operate.
New, conventional reactors being built at customer expense in South Carolina and Georgia will have to charge well over twice the prevailing and projected market price of electricity in New England. No private company wants to build or finance a reactor under anything resembling New England power market rules. Large subsidies will be essential to the development of new reactors, including thorium and small modular reactors.
When it comes to much smaller subsidies for solar energy, LePage has vetoed legislation that would have added a surcharge amounting to less than one-tenth of a percent to Maine electric bills. He asserted that the legislation “unilaterally selects solar above other solutions that have proven to be more cost effective.” He is equally dismissive of support for wind energy or energy efficiency.
What is it about taxpayer subsidy and big government cronyism that pose such an irresistible attraction for conservatives only when directed to nuclear power? Like a reverend preaching temperance from a barstool, LePage vetoes and disparages government support for proven technologies while embracing an unproven and subsidy-addicted reactor technology as a solution to Maine’s electricity needs.
Subsidies for today’s reactors pale beside past nuclear largesse. Reactors — including thorium reactors — and nuclear fuel enrichment facilities were invented in government laboratories and given to private industry in combination with massive incentives to build power plants. The federal government made unique commitments to own and dispose of the waste fuel while limiting liability for serious accidents. States were preempted from any safety judgements about nuclear power. When electric industry restructuring threatened nuclear profitability in the 1990s, a multibillion-dollar surcharge was added to customer electric bills to cushion the impact on investors. A Congressional Research Service Report estimates that half of all federal energy expenditures on energy research and development have gone to nuclear power.
Tempting as it is to ridicule these two bills, perhaps a more constructive course is available. The governor and Brakey have implicitly acknowledged a need for governmental support of technological innovation in power generation. If they and those who favor the technologies the governor has opposed could at least agree on the principles that justify such support, many technologies could be evaluated against these criteria. Given an understanding that neither the governor nor the Legislature would block the technologies shown to be most promising, real progress toward greater energy security from cleaner sources would be possible.
Of course, subsidy claimants would have to commit to deliver the most rapid security and environmental benefits for the most favorable prices, just as independent power producers and energy efficiency purveyors have done for many years.
Readers of the December 1, 1980, Lewiston Sun were greeted by a five-column lead article headlined “Gov’t Sponsored Study Sees Maine as Breeder Reactor Site.” The article explained that the Maine Yankee reactor site in Wiscasset had been chosen as one of six “nuclear parks” in the nation to house four breeder reactors and a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant to reprocess the fuel from the breeders and from other countries. The “park” was to be completed by 2025.
The study was the work of Oak Ridge Associated Universities under contract with the Department of Energy. It was headed up by Dr. Alvin Weinberg, the nuclear energy pioneer to whom Brakey attributes the thorium reactor concept.
Sensible governmental support for more clean and secure new energy technologies should not be controversial on ideological grounds. However, given Maine’s experience with past nuclear mirages, the state should not anoint any single technology without an even-handed evaluation of the alternatives.
Peter Bradford chaired the Maine and New York utility regulatory commissions and was a member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He is an adjunct professor at Vermont Law School.