Continued: No protests as Xcel ramps up nuclear plans

As Xcel Energy makes plans to begin storing spent nuclear fuel in dry casks at its nuclear power plant in Monticello next month and pursues hopes of launching a $100 million expansion of the generating capacity at the 38-year-old facility next year, one element is missing:

Protests.

Xcel's plans have not triggered the superheated attacks from critics that usually accompany attempts to increase nuclear power production. There's been none of the outcry that occurred in the early 1990s, when the power company sought to increase radioactive waste storage at its Prairie Island nuclear facility.

One reason, some observers say, is that concerns about global warming, high energy prices and increasing demand for electricity are producing something of a global nuclear renaissance. As a result, even some lifelong environmentalists are starting to wonder if being anti-nuclear is such a clear-cut choice anymore.

They remain concerned about the potential for a dangerous accident. But in Merrillville, Ind., last week for the annual meeting of the Izaak Walton League of America, Bill Grant, Midwest director of the conservation organization, said he would not be surprised if the group revises its policies to include a nuclear option in its vision of how to fuel the nation's future energy needs.

Supporters say the main attraction of nuclear plants is that reactors do not produce the carbon emissions that are being linked to global warming.

Also, while alternative energy sources such as wind and solar power are more palatable to nuclear opponents, they are immature technologies and cannot come close to satisfying the nation's growing thirst for energy.

"I think it's fair to say that concerns about global warming and the fact that nuclear power has very low or some would say no emissions of global-warming gases ... had a part in muting the response to this," Grant said.

Fears remain

Still, environmentalists remain concerned about the potential dangers they have always feared with nuclear power.

Chuck Laszewski, communications director for the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, said the group remains opposed to Xcel's plans to store waste at Monticello and is also opposed to expanding the capacity of the plant, in large part because of the increase in radioactive waste that will be produced.

"There's no sign that it is going away anytime soon," he said. "Somebody has to be there monitoring that stuff for 100 years. ... Who handles this if Xcel goes out of business in 100 years?"

What worries environmentalists most is that there is not yet a permanent storage facility for spent nuclear fuel.

Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982 and named Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the choice for permanent storage of nuclear waste. But the U.S. Department of Energy has indefinitely delayed the facility's opening, which was supposed to take place in 1998, because of costs, legal challenges, concerns about its geology and questions about the transportation of the nuclear waste over long distances to the site.

Until Yucca Mountain opens, the roughly 72,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste produced by the 110 nuclear reactors in the United States are being stored at more than 120 sites around the country.

While Xcel also would like to have a permanent storage site for the waste, company officials maintain that the storage facility it will build at Monticello is safe and will be able to stand up for decades.

"There is very low risk," said Terry Pickens, Xcel's director of nuclear regulatory policy. "We are set up to go quite a while."

Company officials also believe that the expansion of the plant is safe and economical because of technological advances in the past 40 years. "Monticello became operational in 1970," Pickens said. "We now have 38 years of experience."

The renaissance?

Evidence of the nuclear renaissance can be found in the number of new plants that are being proposed by utilities around the country.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is currently reviewing applications for 15 new nuclear reactors and expects to be weighing as many as 34 applications within the next two years, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Also this year, the NRC has been approving "uprate" permits at a near-record pace. The permits allow companies such as Xcel to upgrade the generating capacity of their existing nuclear reactors at a fraction of the cost of building all-new facilities.

Xcel estimates that expanding the capacity of the 600-megawatt Monticello plant by 71 megawatts will cost $100 million to $135 million. That compares with $270 million to $650 million to build a natural gas, coal or biomass plant to meet the needs of its more than 3 million customers, the company said.

The NRC has approved nine such uprate permits this year, and four more are pending approval. If all 13 are OK'd, that would be more than the previous three years combined, when the NRC approved 12 such uprate permits.

"A lot of plants are taking a look at this," Pickens said, "and taking advantage of advanced analytical techniques and equipment."

Another sign of nuclear energy's growing popularity is that as many as 90 new reactors are in the planning stages worldwide, most of them in Europe. France, which already gets most of its energy from more than 50 nuclear reactors, is planning on adding plants.

And in Minnesota, which has a moratorium on the construction of new nuclear plants, there is talk that the ban might be lifted next year by the Legislature.

Just an illusion?

But Grant and others believe the renaissance could be more illusory than real -- and the reason might be financial. Submitting an application for a reactor is not cheap, but it pales in comparison to the $4 billion to $9 billion it costs to build one.

"The costs of such projects are extraordinarily high and going higher all the time," he said. "Very few investors have shown interest in being part of any renaissance."

Another factor against nuclear energy as a quick fix is the fact that it can take 10 or more years for a nuclear plant to be built, so the earliest energy relief from nuclear would not happen until about 2020.

"I don't think we're heading into any big uptick in construction of any new nuclear power plants," Grant said. "I don't see that changing anytime soon, at least in Minnesota.

"What's happening now is that companies with large balance sheets are getting in line because they know how long it can take. But that doesn't mean that they have made a firm commitment to build."

Still, that could make projects like the one at Monticello -- squeezing more power out of an existing plant for a tiny fraction of the cost of building a new facility -- all the more attractive to the industry.

Heron Marquez Estrada • 612-673-4280