As EPA chief under George W. Bush, Christine Todd Whitman never met a fossil fuel she didn’t like. She owned oil wells in Texas and Colorado. She belonged to Vice President Dick Cheney’s secretive Energy Policy Group, a cabal of high-ranking government officials and oil and gas industry executives, that among other recommendations, called for fracking.
But now Whitman, who resigned from the EPA in 2003 after just two years, is carrying the torch for the nuclear power industry. As the chairwoman of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a pro-nuclear group, she travels the country touting the benefits — and downplaying the environmental and economic costs — of nuclear power.
CASEnergy, as it’s known, is the public face of the Nuclear Energy Institute which lobbies on behalf of the industry. It bills from $1 million to $2 million in lobbying fees annually; the NEI’s political action committee receives contributions from utility executives, including Lynn Good, CEO of Duke Energy, and passes that money along to congressional campaigns.
Duke Energy did not respond to an email asking for an interview.
At a Duke University last night, Whitman joined another former EPA administrator, William Reilly, (appointed by George H.W. Bush and served from 1989–1993) for a chat about the possibilities and economic challenges of nuclear power.
The discussion was presented by Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. Reilly is on the institute’s board of advisors.
Nationwide, there are 100 nuclear reactors at 60 nuclear power plants. Their output counts for about 19 percent of the overall energy mix, which includes coal, gas, renewables and hydroelectric. But carbon-fueled climate change, helped along by the very policies the Bush administration encouraged, is colliding with an increasing demand for electricity.
Whitman’s EPA tenure was marked by the recommendation that a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge be opened for oil and gas exploration. She also backed away from stronger environmental rules in lieu of Bush’s Clear Skies Plan; that legislation diluted air pollution standards and allowed utilities to trade emissions, known as a “market-based approach.”
Nonetheless, Whitman is now using carbon emissions as a way to justify nuclear power. “This is a real issue,” Whitman said. “We need a mix of energy. No one form that is going to solve all of the problems. If nuclear energy were eliminated today, carbon emissions would be 27 percent higher.”
That’s not necessarily true, countered Jim Warren, executive director of NC WARN, which advocates for renewable energy and energy efficiency. He told NCPW that the nuclear industry actually delayed carbon reductions by shifting money away from clean energy. “The industry squandered billions of dollars and years of precious time hoping to build nukes,” he said. “And what we knew then and what we know now is that [renewables] could cut carbon pretty rapidly. The utilities and the corporate executives have put humanity behind the eight ball in a major way.”
During recent legislative sessions, conservative lawmakers fought, with varied success, to undo the state’s clean energy programs. The legislature allowed the state’s 35 percent solar tax credit to expire, in an attempt to curb the enormous growth in the sector.
Lawmakers also unsuccessfully tried to pull the plug on North Carolina’s Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard, which requires utilities to generate or buy up to 12.5 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2021. As a result, there are more than 1,500 renewable energy projects in North Carolina, according to N.C. Utilities Commission data.
Renewable energy has fewer social and environmental costs — air and water pollution in low-income and minority communities, and climate change, globally — associated with fossil fuels and nuclear power, Warren said. “You can’t eliminate those costs if you want to have a straight-faced conversation with somebody,” he said.
Whitman downplayed those costs, including the environmental risks associated the storage of nuclear waste. (The effects of uranium mining and waste get less attention, but are as important.)
Congress once considered burying all of the nation’s highly radioactive waste — at least 75,000 tons — under Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. The point of the mass burial would have been to remove the waste from storage at individual plant sites. But Yucca Mountain has been dead in the water since last year, when the Obama administration defunded it. Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, also opposed it, on environmental and social justice grounds.
Since Reid is retiring after the November elections, Whitman said,“That’s good news for Yucca Mountain. Nevada won’t have the power to stop it.”
Whitman emphasized the reliability of nuclear reactors, which she said, “run 24/7 and are down only for a planned refueling,” which averages about 29 days. However, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported last week that from June through August, nuclear power plant outages were 51 percent higher than the same time last year. On June 17, 10 percent of the total U.S. nuclear capacity was offline. Indian Point 2 in New York and Salem 1 in southern New Jersey, were out for 100 and 101 days, respectively, to replace damaged reactor core baffle bolts.
None of Duke Energy’s three North Carolina plants — Shearon Harris in Wake County, Brunswick in Brunswick County and McGuire in Mecklenburg County — experienced outages this summer, according to the EIA.
North Carolina ranks sixth in the nation in net nuclear power generation, yet in the bottom third of energy consumption per capita, according to the EIA. Duke hasn’t built a nuclear plant in the state since Harris, which went online in 1987. (The utility is building two units in South Carolina and Georgia; it canceled another unit in Florida.)
Other states, such as California, are also canceling or retiring their plants. Part of the issue is economic: These plants run in the billions of dollars and can take decades to build. Ratepayers often wind up footing the bill for plants that may never come online. (Construction Work in Progress, also known as CWIP, allows utilities to pass along a portion of the building costs to customers, even though they aren’t getting any electricity from the plant yet. CWIP is legal in North Carolina.)
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is to blame for some of the hold up, Whitman said. The agency is understaffed and the permitting process lengthy. “You have to go to the NRC for everything, and it takes time, which drives up costs.”
The other challenge, Whitman said, is cosmetic. Opposition is based not on science, she said, but “political science.” Public relations, which is Whitman’s charge, can dampen public objections to a new plant. “One of the things CASE does is get into the community before the shouting starts,” she went on. “Once you answer their questions, confidence goes up. People know about nuclear energy from The Simpsons. That’s not the best place to get information. We have to make sure we are dead honest about transparency.”