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61–529 2010

NUCLEAR POWER IN A WARMING WORLD: 

SOLUTION OR ILLUSION? 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SELECT COMMITTEE ON 

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE 

AND GLOBAL WARMING 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

MARCH 12, 2008 

Serial No. 110–28 

( 

Printed for the use of the Select Committee on 

Energy Independence and Global Warming 

globalwarming.house.gov 


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SELECT COMMITTEE ON ENERGY INDEPENDENCE 

AND GLOBAL WARMING 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts, Chairman 

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut 

HILDA L. SOLIS, California 

STEPHANIE HERSETH SANDLIN, 

South Dakota 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

Ranking Member 

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

PROFESSIONAL STAFF

DAVID MOULTON, Staff Director 

ALIYA BRODSKY, Chief Clerk 

THOMAS WEIMER, Minority Staff Director 


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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hon. Edward J. Markey, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, opening statement .................................................... 1 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 3 

Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Wisconsin, opening statement .............................................................. 5 

Hon. Emanuel Cleaver II, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Missouri, opening statement ............................................................................... 6 

Hon. Marsha Blackburn, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Tennessee, opening statement ............................................................................ 8 

Hon. Jerry McNerney, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, opening statement .................................................................................... 8 

WITNESSES

Mr. Alex Flint, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, Nuclear Energy 

Institute ................................................................................................................ 9 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 12 

Ms. Sharon Squassoni, Senior Associate, Nonproliferation Program, Carnegie 

Endowment ........................................................................................................... 17 

Written Statement and prepared mapping material ..................................... 20 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 94 

Mr. David Lochbaum, Director, Nuclear Safety Project, Union of Concerned 

Scientists ............................................................................................................... 38 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 41 

Mr. Amory Lovins, Chairman and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute .. 63 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 65 

SUBMITTED MATERIAL

Article by Roger H. Bezdek and Robert M. Wendling on ‘‘Real Numbers: 

The U.S. Energy Subsidy Scorecard’’ in Issues in Science and Technology, 

National Academies of Science, Spring 2006 ..................................................... 101 

Hon. Joe Barton letter from Congressional Budget Office on 27 July 2005 ....... 105 

Article by Amory B. Lovins on Nuclear Power: economic and climate-protection potential, Rocky Mountain Institute on 6 January 2006 .......................... 109 

Article by Amory B. Lovins and Imran Sheikh, ‘‘Forget Nuclear’’ for Rocky 

Mountain Institute prepublication draft 11 March 2008 .................................. 136 

Article by Amory B. Lovins on Mighty Mice for Nuclear Engineering International, December 2005 ..................................................................................... 146 


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NUCLEAR POWER IN A WARMING WORLD: 

SOLUTION OR ILLUSION? 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2008 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SELECT COMMITTEE ON ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

AND GLOBAL WARMING, Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:05 a.m. in Room 311, 

Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Edward J. Markey [chairman 

of the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Markey, Herseth Sandlin, Cleaver, 

Hall, McNerney, Sensenbrenner, and Blackburn. 

Staff present: Jonathan Phillips. 

The CHAIRMAN. Good morning. This is a hearing conducted by 

the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. We welcome you this morning to this very, very important 

hearing. 

The hearing is now called to order. 

Decades ago, Americans from Wall Street to Main Street rejected 

nuclear power. After years of construction delays, reactor shutdowns and massive cost overruns, the private sector abandoned nuclear energy. Americans nervous about the health and safety of 

their families and communities had few objections to seeing the nuclear construction age grind to a halt. 

However, the growing threat of global warming has thrust nuclear power back into the debate. With the health of our planet on 

the line, some believe that all options, even those set aside long 

ago, merit our support. I called this hearing today to take a deeper 

look at whether continuing taxpayer support of nuclear power gets 

us closer to achieving our energy and climate goals or whether it 

is holding us back. 

All of the available evidence suggests the prospective costs, risks 

and uncertainties facing the nuclear industry are higher today 

than they have ever been. The domestic manufacturing and human 

resource capacity of nuclear power has dwindled. Nuclear construction worldwide has slowed to a crawl. And the nuclear projects currently under construction are plagued by the same delays and cost 

overruns that have always riddled the industry. 

In addition to these profound, direct problems, the collateraldamage issues—uranium mining impacts, long-term waste storage, 

nuclear weapons proliferation, targets for terrorism—are even 

greater. 

The last new nuclear plant opened in 1996 in Tennessee after 22 

years of construction and at a cost of $7 billion. Are delays like this 

acceptable in any other industry? 


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Florida Power & Light recently announced its plans for two new 

reactors at its Turkey Point facility, which it projects will cost from 

$12 billion to $24 billion. Could the most ambitious solar- or windgenerating station succeed if its cost projections included uncertainties of $12 billion? 

Another electric utility, Progress Energy, announced yesterday 

that it plans to build two reactors at an estimated price of $17 billion, passing on an additional cost to customers of about $9 per 

month per household. Customers would begin paying this surcharge beginning in 2009, 7 years before the project would produce 

a single kilowatt of electricity. Can the wind industry ask for and 

expect to receive a 7-year cash advance from future customers? 

At the Select Committee hearing last week, we witnessed the 

power of free markets rising to meet our energy and climate challenges. Private capital markets are moving billions of dollars into 

clean, renewable energy technologies, in the process creating new 

jobs and driving economic growth. As proof that this green revolution is taking hold, the wind industry installed over 5,200 

megawatts of new generating capacity in the United States last 

year, about 30 percent of all new capacity installed in the United 

States. 

Worldwide, the story is the same. The 20,000 megawatts of wind 

energy capacity built in 2007 was more than 10 times that of nuclear. Between now and 2016, the year in which we are likely to 

see the first new nuclear plant come on line in the United States, 

the world is projected to add 361,000 megawatts of wind. That 

means, in the next 10 years, as much wind-generating capacity will 

be installed as the total amount of nuclear capacity built worldwide 

over the previous half-century. 

The job of Congress is not to fix problems by creating new ones 

or, in this case, recreating them. The innovative spirit of the American entrepreneur is forging a path forward. It is clean, it is scalable, it is distributed, it is safe, and its price is falling. These are 

claims that nuclear power cannot make. 

Taxpayer support for the nuclear industry over the past 50 years 

has been massive. From 1950 through 2000, the nuclear energy industry received $145 billion in Federal subsidies in constant 1999 

dollars, or over 96 percent of the total subsidies allocated to wind, 

solar and nuclear energy. 

The American public and financial investors are responsible for 

putting nuclear power on mothballs. Congress must think long and 

hard about the wisdom of reversing that decision. Let’s trust and 

encourage the ingenuity of the American people to solve the energy 

and climate challenge. The nuclear industry is not going to be the 

economic driver of the 21st century, but there is abundant evidence 

that renewable energy will. 

That completes the opening statement of the Chair. 

I now turn to recognize the ranking member of the committee, 

the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Sensenbrenner. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Markey follows:] 


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Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Today, I will talk about the merits of nuclear energy, which is 

a technology that stands to produce real results in reducing greenhouse gasses. 

But, first, let me be clear. I understand that nuclear technology 

has drawbacks too, as do renewable resources and fossil fuels. 

While some here today will try to sell the merits of one technology 

over another, I will not do that, because, in the end, Members of 

Congress are setting policy, not selling energy. It is the utilities 

and the energy producers who will sell energy and electricity in the 

marketplace. I believe it should be the marketplace, not regulators 

and policymakers, which ultimately decides what sources of energy 

are the most realistic for the future. It is not Congress’s job to pick 

winners and losers, but I worry that many on this panel aim to do 

just that. 

Nuclear power is efficient and cost-effective and, I believe, in 

many places, the right answer for our electricity needs, but it is not 

the right answer for all places. 

Nuclear power is an especially useful solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Mr. Alex Flint, the senior vice president of 

the Nuclear Energy Institute, will testify today that the 439 nuclear power plants worldwide help avoid 2.6 billion tons of CO2

each year. That is more than three times the amount of carbon dioxide produced by all the cars in the United States in 2005. I welcome Mr. Flint’s testimony and look forward to learning more 

about the potential that nuclear power offers the world. 

Nuclear power is such a powerful greenhouse gas-reducing technology that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning U.N. International 

Panel on Climate Change cited nuclear power as one of the key 

technologies for addressing global warming in the future. 

As I stated at our hearing last week, renewable energy has its 

own set of benefits and drawbacks and is not technically feasible 

for all areas of the country. But renewable energy should be an increasing part of our energy future, just like nuclear power, energy 

efficiency and fossil fuels. The world’s energy future needs require 

us to maintain a diverse portfolio of energy technologies. 

While some today will highlight the drawbacks of nuclear power, 

they do so without fully acknowledging the drawbacks of other 

technologies they support. For instance, a recent story in The 

Washington Post reported on the industrial pollution left behind by 

Chinese solar energy panel producers. And the New York Times reported this week that a biodiesel plant in Alabama is producing 

pollution as a byproduct and dumping it into a local river. Kermit 

the frog was right: It is not easy being green. 

As I have said many times, the advancement of technology must 

be a part of any energy security or global warming policy. Nuclear 

power should be a key part of the diverse array of technologies 

needed for the future. Plus, nuclear power’s potential for reducing 

greenhouse gasses can’t be ignored by anyone who thinks this is a 

pressing priority for the world. If we are searching for realistic solutions, nuclear power can’t be ignored but must be approached 

with a healthy skepticism to see whether that is the right thing to 

do at the right time, at the right place. 


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I have to apologize to our witnesses because, at 10 o’clock, I have 

to go to the Science Committee, where Bill Gates is testifying. And 

I do want to tell him that if he wants more high-tech visas, he had 

better get realistic on how to get that through the Congress. 

So I thank the Chairman and yield back the balance of my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. Great. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Cleaver. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Sensenbrenner. 

There can be no doubt, or at least there is no doubt in my mind, 

that our planet is in crisis. And our constant, growing need for energy has inspired this potentially perilous situation. 

However, emerging industries, such as solar and wind energy, 

can aid our country and others in accessing enough energy without 

causing potentially dangerous effects on the environment and public health. 

Nuclear energy currently produces 19 percent of our Nation’s 

electricity from 104 nuclear reactors, one of which is in my home 

State, not very far from my hometown, Kansas City. 

Nuclear power has the ability to produce domestic energy without greenhouse gasses as a byproduct. However, if we can recall 

the disaster of Chernobyl and the reactor accident at Three Mile 

Island, we know all too well that there are potentially harmful 

risks and unintended consequences. 

A large nuclear reactor produces around 25 to 30 tons of spent 

fuel annually. However, the proposed Yucca Mountain waste site, 

about 90 miles from Las Vegas, would only have the capacity to 

hold waste produced through the year 2010. Thus, this would only 

be a temporary solution, but it is a major risk. 

Before we invest in the new production of nuclear power, we 

need to thoroughly examine all of the threats to public safety and 

the environment that it presents. We must remember that the welfare of our communities is our highest priority. We must also consider and make decisions on which energy sources will work best 

for our future. 

I look forward to hearing the views of our witnesses this morning, as we discuss this and other ways that we can deal with this 

source of energy without Federal subsidies at a level that will 

break the bank. 

I would like to thank the panel in advance for your insight and 

for joining us here today. Thank you very kindly. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cleaver follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Great. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from Tennessee, Mrs. 

Blackburn. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for the 

hearing. 

And I want to welcome all of our guests. 

As we know, nuclear power is a vital component to meet future 

energy needs and help America maintain its competitive edge. It is 

the most stable, least expensive and cleanest form of electric power 

generation available today. It is an emissions-free, domestic energy 

source with enough fuel stocks to last for centuries. 

Nuclear energy will also be a key asset to the electric power infrastructure as the public embraces the use of electric vehicles for 

transportation needs and if Congress enacts a greenhouse gas reduction scheme. 

Some critics maintain that nuclear energy is either too costly or 

that it has too poor a track record. In the past, that could have 

been true. But nuclear power plant construction once experienced 

delays and cost overruns due to licensing problems, poor project 

management and economic chaos of the 1970s, but Congress mitigated some of these factors in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and 

the Nuclear Regulatory Commission took steps last year to drastically restructure the licensing process to ensure all major issues 

are settled before a company starts building a nuclear power plant 

and puts those billions of dollars at risk. 

Further, over time and experience, the nuclear industry has vastly reduced past problems by implementing measures to manage 

and to contain risk, to financing and completing capital projects. 

And now, with modular construction, standard designs and integrated engineering and construction schedules, nuclear power 

plants can be built both on time and on target. 

Mr. Chairman, the key to achieving American energy independence is maintaining a diversity of power generation. We cannot rely 

solely on a few favored energy sources. Gas, coal, renewable energy 

and nuclear power all should play a part in the infrastructure. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. That is great. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. 

McNerney. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you. I would like to thank the ranking 

member and the Chairman for holding this timely and important 

hearing. 

My interest today is to get a deeper understanding of the merits 

and the demerits of nuclear energy. I have three main concerns: 

the economics, the safety, and nuclear proliferation. 

Safety, I believe, is an engineering issue, which reflects back on 

the economics. Proliferation is a political and engineering issue. So, 

ultimately, what I want to understand today is the economics, and 

so I am looking forward to your testimony. If you can elevate that 

to where it can be understood, I will very much appreciate your 

hearing today. 

Thank you very much. I yield back the balance of my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. Great. The gentleman’s time has expired. 


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All time for statements by the members has expired, so we will 

turn to recognize our witnesses. 

We are going to begin with Mr. Alex Flint. He is our opening 

speaker. He joins us from the Nuclear Energy Institute where he 

is the senior vice president of government affairs. He is also very 

familiar with these issues from his time as staff director of the 

Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. 

We look forward to your testimony, Mr. Flint. Whenever you are 

ready, please begin. 

STATEMENTS OF MR. ALEX FLINT, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT 

OF GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, NUCLEAR ENERGY INSTITUTE; 

MS. SHARON SQUASSONI, SENIOR ASSOCIATE, NONPROLIFERATION PROGRAM, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT; MR. 

DAVID LOCHBAUM, DIRECTOR, NUCLEAR SAFETY PROJECT, 

UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS; MR. AMORY LOVINS, 

CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF SCIENTIST, ROCKY MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE 

STATEMENT OF ALEX FLINT 

Mr. FLINT. Chairman Markey, Ranking Member Sensenbrenner, 

members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear 

before you today. I have a written statement that I ask be included 

in the record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it will be included in the 

record. 

Mr. FLINT. Mr. Chairman, in preparation for this morning’s hearing, I scanned through your book, ‘‘Nuclear Peril.’’ It has been a 

long time since I read it. I was struck by how very different the 

U.S. nuclear industry is today from when you wrote your book in 

1982. 

It also reinforced for me the years and now decades in which you 

have been concerned about nuclear energy and weapons. It is with 

sincere appreciation of that concern that I thank you for taking the 

time to consider the attributes of nuclear energy, which make it so 

interesting and compelling as we decide how to address the challenge of climate change. 

Because of rapid population and economic growth, EIA forecasts 

global electricity demand to nearly double between 2004 and 2030. 

It is extraordinarily challenging to imagine credible scenarios by 

which the world can double electricity production in the coming 

decades and concurrently reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To do 

so will take the successful implementation of a wide range of solutions, as Professors Pacala and Socolow made clear in their wedge 

analysis. To do so will require the widespread use of renewables, 

conservation, efficiency, carbon sequestration and nuclear energy. 

That conclusion is shared by leaders and governments around 

the world. My written statement includes quotes and references in 

that regard from individuals and groups, including Yvo de Boer, 

the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, the World Energy 

Council, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 

Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, and the Progressive Policy Institute. 

The willingness of individuals and organizations that would not 

otherwise be so inclined to consider and now support the deployVerDate Mar 15 2010 00:13 Nov 13, 2010 Jkt 061529 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A529.XXX A529

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ment of new nuclear power plants is due, in part, to the need to 

identify all credible ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, this reconsideration also is made possible by the extraordinarily safe and efficient operation of the existing nuclear fleet. 

In 2007, the 104 reactors in the U.S. nuclear fleet operated at 92 

percent of capacity. That was accomplished because of high management standards, a focus on reliability and safety, and fewer and 

shorter outages. It enabled nuclear power plants, which are 12 percent of installed U.S. generation capacity, to produce nearly 20 percent of the electricity generated in the United States last year. 

Concurrently, production costs continued to fall last year to 1.68 

cents per kilowatt hour, a record low and the 7th straight year that 

nuclear plants have had the lowest production cost of any major 

source of electricity. 

Nuclear power plants generate over 70 percent of all carbon-free 

electricity in the United States, and prevented 681 million metric 

tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2006. For perspective, the volume of greenhouse gas emissions prevented at the Nation’s 104 nuclear power plants is equivalent to taking 96 percent of all passenger cars off the roads. 

Our nuclear power plants are also extraordinarily safe places to 

work. In 2006, our lost time accident rate was 0.12 accidents per 

200,000 worker hours. That is significantly safer than the 3.5 accidents per 200,000 worker hours in the manufacturing sector. It is 

even safer to work at a nuclear power plant than it is to work at 

a bank. 

At a global level, 439 nuclear power plants produce 16 percent 

of the world’s electricity while avoiding the emission of 2.6 billion 

metric tons of CO2 each year. And a new build renaissance is under 

way. There are 34 nuclear units under construction worldwide, including seven in Russia, six in India and five in China. In the 

United States, we have one, the 5-year, $2.5 billion completion of 

TVA’s Watts Bar 2. 

In the United States, 17 companies or groups of companies are 

preparing license applications for as many as 31 new reactors. Five 

complete or partial applications for COLs were filed with the NRC 

in 2007, and another 11 to 15 are expected this year. As a result, 

the industry expects four to eight new U.S. plants in operation by 

2016 or so, depending on a variety of factors that are provided in 

my written statement. A second wave could be well under construction as the first wave reaches commercial operation. 

Every source of electricity has benefits and challenges. Capital 

costs for new nuclear plants are significant. However, when both 

operating and capital costs are considered, nuclear power will be 

competitive with other new sources of electricity. 

Chairman Markey, you mentioned the Florida Power & Light 

Company petition for determination of need. One of the things in 

that petition was FP&L’s finding that the addition of new nuclear 

capacity is economically superior versus the corresponding addition 

of new gas-fired combined cycle units required to provide the same 

power output. 

At the peak of construction, a nuclear plant will employ 2,300 

skilled workers. Upon completion, approximately 700 workers will 

be required to operate and maintain the plant. Those workers reVerDate Mar 15 2010 00:13 Nov 13, 2010 Jkt 061529 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A529.XXX A529

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ceive excellent benefits and earn pay that is, on average, 40 percent higher than wages earned by workers doing similar work in 

nonnuclear facilities. 

The industry also is working with organized labor to develop 

training and other programs to provide the cadre of highly skilled 

workers that our future requires. NEI supports the application of 

Federal prevailing wage requirements, contained in the DavisBesse Act of 1931, to loan guarantees authorized by title 17 of the 

Energy Policy Act of 2005. 

In addition, NEI is working aggressively to revitalize the United 

States’ nuclear manufacturing infrastructure. The global nuclear 

renaissance will require additional capacity for a range of products, 

from very small components to ultra-heavy steel forgings and castings. 

Even as we work to build the next fleet of advanced reactors for 

electricity production, we also are developing reactors that will provide energy security and environmental benefits well beyond the 

traditional electric sector. One promising next-generation technology is the high-temperature gas reactor. Its unique design is 

well-suited to meet a wide variety of future needs, such as the production of hydrogen, drinking water, industrial process heat, and 

to generate electricity appropriate for the distribution systems in 

developing countries. 

In closing, nuclear energy is the single largest source of non-carbon-emitting generation. It is a proven technology, operated at high 

standards, by an experienced industry that is committed to safety. 

It is the only energy option available today that can provide largescale electricity, 24/7, at a competitive cost, without emitting greenhouse gasses. 

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement. I would be glad to 

take any questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Flint follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Flint, very much. 

Our second witness is Ms. Sharon Squassoni, who has been analyzing arms control and nonproliferation issues for 20 years. She is 

a senior associate in the nonproliferation program at the Carnegie 

Endowment for International Peace. She has also served in the 

Nonproliferation and Political Military Bureaus in the State Department. 

We welcome you. Whenever you are ready, please begin. 

STATEMENT OF SHARON SQUASSONI 

Ms. SQUASSONI. Good morning. Thank you, Chairman Markey 

and Ranking Member Sensenbrenner and other members of the 

committee, for inviting me to provide comments on the topic of nuclear energy expansion and its contribution to mitigating global climate change. 

Chairman Markey, I would like to request permission to submit 

longer testimony for the record, and I will summarize my remarks 

here. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, so ordered. 

Ms. SQUASSONI. Thank you. 

In addition, I would like to present a few graphics on nuclear expansion, which I understand is unorthodox, but, in this case, a picture may be worth a thousand words. 

Recent nuclear enthusiasm stems from several expectations: that 

it can help beat global climate change, meet rapidly increasing demand for electricity, combat rising costs for oil and gas, and provide energy security. The gap between expectations and reality, 

however, is significant. This morning, I will focus on what it will 

really take for nuclear energy to make a difference in terms of global climate change and why this is unlikely to happen. 

As you can see on the first slide, global nuclear reactor capacity 

now stands at 373 gigawatts electric, or about 439 reactors. By 

2030, under what I call a ‘‘realistic growth scenario,’’ which is 

based on U.S. Energy Information Administration figures, that capacity could grow about 20 percent. Yet, since electricity demand 

is expected to almost double in that time, nuclear energy is unlikely to keep its market share, which could drop from the current 

16 percent to 10 percent of worldwide electricity generation. 

In the U.S. alone, according to nuclear industry estimates, a stable market share for nuclear energy would require the U.S. to build 

50 nuclear reactors by 2025. At the same time, the U.S. would also 

be building 261 coal-fired plants, 279 natural-gas-fired plants and 

73 renewables projects. This is based on, I believe, Booz Allen 

Hamilton information. 

States’ plans for nuclear energy, however, may be anything but 

realistic. What you are looking at now are these red dots, which 

are 2030 plans, the announced intentions of States for nuclear energy. 

In my second scenario, what I call the ‘‘wildly optimistic’’ one, the 

total reactor capacity would reach about 700 gigawatts by 2030. 

This is not a projection but, rather, takes at face value what States 

have announced they will do. More than 20 nations have announced intentions to install nuclear capacity that do not now have 


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nuclear power plants. More than half of these are in the Middle 

East. 

The final scenario depicts what an expansion to 1,500 gigawatts 

might look like based roughly on the high-end projections for 2050 

done by MIT in its 2003 study entitled, ‘‘The Future of Nuclear 

Power.’’ I call this the ‘‘climate change scenario.’’ It is a little bit 

more than a Pacala-Socolow wedge, which is defined as the level 

of growth needed to reduce carbon emissions by more than 1 billion 

tons per year by 2050, which equals about 1,070 gigawatts, but it 

is less than the Stern report on climate change estimates that nuclear energy could reduce carbon emissions between 2 billion and 

6 billion tons per year. The Stern numbers were literally off the 

map, so I did not include them here. 

For 1,500 gigawatt capacity, MIT estimated that 54 countries, 

which is an additional 23 compared to today, would have commercial nuclear power programs. This essentially means a fivefold increase in the number of reactors worldwide and an annual build 

rate of 35 reactors per year. 

If we go to the next slide, you can see what this looks like. This 

is 2030 and, again, 2050. These are all new nuclear power states. 

Then, if you go to the next slide, you will see a closer look. The 

darker the color, the firmer the plans are. When I say ‘‘announced 

intentions,’’ some of these plants will never come to fruition. 

These expansion scenarios have implications for both the front 

and back ends of the fuel cycle. As the next graph shows, building 

one nuclear wedge would require tripling uranium enrichment capacity. So that is the first green bar that you see. The orange is 

today’s enrichment capacity, about 50 million separative work 

units. In the first green one, there is the climate change scenario. 

As you see, it gets much larger if you go to the Stern numbers. 

New states could find it economically feasible to develop their 

own enrichment. If we go to the next slide, you will see that is current enrichment capacity. Keep going; these are 2030 plans. Then 

beyond climate change, you see that a lot more states could potentially be enriching. These are also a little bit lower than the MIT 

numbers, which estimated, I guess, that 18 countries would have 

enough reactor capacity to merit enrichment. 

It is unlikely that these expansion rates will be achieved, however. The U.S. has just a fraction of the nuclear infrastructure it 

had decades ago, 2 decades ago, and other countries have not fared 

much better. In the last 20 years, there have been fewer than 10 

new construction starts in any given year. Industrial bottlenecks 

are significant now, particularly in forging reactor-pressure vessels 

and steam generators. 

The sole company with ultra-large forging capacity, Japan Steelworks, has a 2-year waiting list. When it completes its expansion 

in 2010, it will only produce enough forging sets for eight reactors 

per year. The capabilities of alternative suppliers, such as China, 

are unknown. 

Other constraints include labor shortages, not just in engineers 

but also craft and construction labor, and long lead times for components and materials. Financing is another huge topic, worthy of 

a separate hearing. And the cost of inputs has risen significantly 

in recent years. 


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Finally, the proliferation risks of nuclear expansion are not limited just to a three-, four- or fivefold increase in the number of reactors. Some states may move forward anyway, propelled by unrealistic expectations, and could acquire uranium enrichment and 

plutonium separation capabilities. Such national fuel production 

capabilities could introduce even greater uncertainty about proliferation intentions in regions like the Middle East because of the 

latent nuclear weapons capability of such plants. Efforts to address 

both supply and demand for such sensitive capabilities need to be 

redoubled. 

The current policy debate paints nuclear energy clean and green; 

advocates nuclear energy for all, even though some states with nuclear reactors could pose significant safety and proliferation concerns; and suggests that nuclear energy is a path to energy security. 

At the same time, U.S. officials insist that some states forgo developing indigenous nuclear capabilities. This confused message obscures important policy considerations. If nuclear energy—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Could you try to summarize, please? 

Ms. SQUASSONI. Last sentence. 

If nuclear energy can’t really make a difference in terms of global 

climate change, are the huge costs and risks worth it? 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Squassoni follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you so much. 

Our next witness is Mr. David Lochbaum. He is the director of 

the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, 

where he leads the efforts to ensure the safety of nuclear power in 

the United States. Mr. Lochbaum has more than 17 years of experience in commercial nuclear power plant startup, testing, operations, licensing, software development, training, and design engineering. 

We welcome you, sir. Whenever you are ready, please begin. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID LOCHBAUM 

Mr. LOCHBAUM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the 

committee. I appreciate this opportunity to present our views. 

I have submitted a written statement that I request be entered 

into the record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, so ordered. 

Mr. LOCHBAUM. 253 nuclear power reactors have been ordered in 

the United States. 28 percent were cancelled before construction 

even began. Another 20 percent were cancelled after construction 

began. So about half of the reactors ordered never generated a single watt of electricity. 

But what about the other half? 11 percent of the reactors ordered 

shut down prematurely due to unfavorable economics. 14 percent 

of the reactors ordered are operating today but have had to shut 

down for at least a year to restore safety levels. Only 27 percent 

of the reactors ordered are operating today without having experienced a year-plus safety restoration outage. 

The NRC anticipates 33 nuclear reactor applications in the near 

term. Running the calendar forward 55 years could yield the following retrospective: 33 nuclear reactors ordered, nine reactors 

cancelled before construction began, seven reactors cancelled after 

construction began, four reactors shut down due to economics, four 

reactors operating despite 1-or-more-year-plus outages, nine reactors operating without a year-plus outage. 

Does past performance predict the future? Yes, when the underlying causes and behavior patterns are firmly in place, as if set in 

concrete. 

Nearly 30 years ago, during the 97th Congress, the House held 

a hearing on construction problems caused by poor quality control. 

Chairman Udall posed four questions: How did these quality assurance failings occur? Why did the failings go undetected so long by 

the owners and the NRC? What is being done to minimize the likelihood of future failings? How can we be sure that completed plants 

have been constructed in accordance with NRC’s regulations? 

The answer to the first question is mismanagement by plant 

owners, a recurring theme in nuclear power plant problems since 

that hearing. Mismanagement shut down all of TVA’s nuclear 

plants in the 1980s, it shut down eight reactors for over a year in 

the late 1990s, shut down Davis-Besse for over 2 years earlier in 

this decade, and caused the current problems at the Palo Verde 

plant in Arizona. 

The answer to question two is mismanagement by the plant owners, coupled by ineffective oversight by the NRC. The companion 

theme in nuclear plant problems since that hearing has been inefVerDate Mar 15 2010 00:13 Nov 13, 2010 Jkt 061529 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A529.XXX A529

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fective oversight by the NRC. The GAO reported in 1997, quote, 

‘‘NRC is not effectively overseeing the plants that have problems. 

NRC enforcement actions are too late to be effective,’’ end quote. 

Seven years later, almost to the day, GAO updated its conclusion: 

Quote, ‘‘NRC should have but did not identify or prevent the vessel 

head corrosion at Davis-Besse because both its inspections at the 

plant and its assessments of the operator’s performance yielded inaccurate and incomplete information on plant safety conditions,’’ 

end quote. 

The names and the dates change, but the underlying pattern of 

mismanagement, coupled with ineffective NRC oversight, remains 

the same. 

The answer to question three is that quality assurance failings 

during nuclear plant construction were minimized when we 

stopped constructing nuclear power plants. The problem was never 

solved; it just became moot. 

The answer to question four is that no such assurance exists. In 

2000, the NRC reported hundreds of design errors at operating 

plants—prima facie evidence that the completed reactors did not 

meet NRC’s regulations. 70 percent of those design errors dated 

back to original construction that were not detected. 

More recently, there are signs that the nuclear industry cannot 

even renovate its existing plants. Consider the two reactors at 

Quad Cities, licensed in 1972. 29 years later, the NRC approved increasing its power level by 20 percent. Within 3 weeks, the unit 2 

reactor was shut down due to repair leaks caused by vibrations 

from the hot-air steam flows. During restart, vibrations broke a 

drain line off a steam pipe. Weeks later, the reactor had to be shut 

down again when vibrations damaged the steam dryer. The owner 

reported, quote, ‘‘The root cause of the steam dryer failure was determined to be a lack of industry experience and knowledge of flowinduced vibration dryer failures,’’ end quote. 

If the nuclear industry is inexperienced and knowledge-challenged about their old reactors, how can they have sufficient knowledge and experience to tinker with new ones? 

The Energy Bill of 2005 contains billions of dollars of subsidies 

to jumpstart a moribund nuclear industry to help address global 

warming. Nuclear power plant owners are protected when their 

mismanagement causes a reactor under construction to be cancelled, a reactor under construction to take longer and cost more, 

or an operating reactor to melt down. But how are Americans protected from global warming when their mismanagement causes nuclear power plant ‘‘solutions’’ to come up empty? Clearly, Americans 

deserve protection against the nuclear industry defaulting on its 

global warming pledges, especially since so many of our tax dollars 

are subsidizing those pledges. 

The best protection would be a zealously aggressive regulator enforcing safety regulations. The NRC is not that regulator. 

The NRC needs to take three steps toward becoming that regulator: institute safety culture surveys of its workforce every 2 years 

and make the results available; fill senior manager vacancies from 

a pool that includes external candidates; institute a rotation plan 

in which middle-level managers are rotated to other Federal agenVerDate Mar 15 2010 00:13 Nov 13, 2010 Jkt 061529 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A529.XXX A529

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cies and middle managers from those agencies come to work at the 

NRC. 

If the NRC is not reformed, nuclear power will be more of an illusion than a solution to global warming. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lochbaum follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Lochbaum, very much. 

Our final witness is Mr. Amory Lovins, who is chairman and 

chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute and chairman emeritus of Fiberforge, Incorporated. Mr. Lovins has published 29 books 

and hundreds of papers, and advises governments and major firms 

worldwide on advanced energy and resource efficiency. 

We are honored to have you with us here today, Mr. Lovins. 

Whenever you are ready, please begin. 

STATEMENT OF AMORY LOVINS 

Mr. LOVINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and distinguished committee members. I appreciate this opportunity to share with the 

committee some recent analysis of whether we need nuclear power, 

especially to protect the climate. 

And I request that my written submission be included in the 

record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, so ordered. 

Mr. LOVINS. Thank you. 

I will summarize why nuclear power is not needed for any civilian purpose, how and why it is being dramatically outcompeted in 

the global marketplace by no-carbon and low-carbon electrical resources that deliver far more climate solution per dollar far faster, 

and why nuclear expansion would inhibit climate protection, energy security and reliably powering prosperity. Even if nuclear 

power could attract private risk capital, it could not in principle deliver its claimed climate and security benefits, but because it is uneconomic and unnecessary, we need not inquire into its other attributes. 

Far from undergoing a renaissance, nuclear power is conspicuously failing in the marketplace for the same forgotten reason it 

failed previously: It costs too much, and it bears too much financial 

risk to attract private risk capital, despite Federal subsidies now 

approaching or exceeding its total cost. 

What is beating nuclear power at other central thermal plants? 

Micropower—that is, cogeneration plus distributed renewables— 

now produces a sixth of the world’s total electricity, more than nuclear, at least a third of the world’s new electricity, and from a 

sixth to over half of all electricity in a dozen industrial countries. 

The U.S. lags, with about 4 percent. Negawatts, electricity saved 

by using it more efficiently or timely, are about as big worldwide 

as micropower and cost even less. 

In 2006, nuclear power added less capacity than photovoltaics 

added, one-tenth what wind power added, and 30 to 41 times less 

than micropower added. Its output growth was one-sixth of micropower’s. 

Distributed renewables won $56 billion of private risk capital. 

Nuclear, as usual, got zero. Only central planners buy it. China’s 

distributed renewable capacity reached seven times its nuclear capacity and is growing seven times faster. 

Micropower has such huge potential that just the full economic 

use of electric efficiency, zero-carbon waste-heat cogeneration and 

wind power, with no other renewables, could provide roughly 13 to 

15 times nuclear power’s current share of U.S. electric generation 


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without significant land use, reliability or other constraints, at 

much lower cost and with millions of good new jobs. 

Distributed generators are generally more dependable than centralized ones because their many small units will not all fail at 

once and can bypass the grid where nearly all power failures originate. Variable renewable resources—sun and wind—even in large 

amounts, need less backup than we have already bought and built 

to manage the intermittence of big thermal plants, especially nuclear plants, many of which can fail simultaneously, unpredictably 

and for long periods. 

The Nuclear Energy Institute says 78 percent of the new coal 

plants announced in the past couple of years got cancelled. I expect 

announced nuclear projects to do worse because they cost more. 

They have attracted no private risk capital, despite U.S. taxpayer 

subsidies that can now total about $13 billion per new nuclear 

plant, roughly its entire cost, which exceeds the market cap of any 

U.S. utility, save one. 

The smart money, led by Warren Buffet, is now heading for the 

exit, spooked by steeply rising nuclear costs, disappointments in 

the flagship Finnish project, competition by ever-cheaper 

micropower negawatts, and the credit crunch. The U.S. can have 

only about as many new nuclear plants as taxpayers are forced to 

buy. Heroic efforts at near or over 100 percent subsidization will 

continue to elicit the same response as defibrillating a corpse: It 

will jump, but it won’t revive. 

That is good for climate protection, because nuclear power is so 

expensive that it buys roughly one and a half to 11 or more times 

less carbon reduction per dollar than competing no-carbon technologies or even fossil fuel cogeneration in factories and buildings. 

As the graph in my prefiled testimony’s Annex E explains—or as 

the graphs explain, I should say—nuclear plants cost so much more 

than competing climate solutions that spending a dollar on nuclear, 

instead of on efficient end use, worsens global warming more than 

spending the same dollar on new coal power. It is, therefore, time 

to get on with judicious investments that yield the most energy 

services and the most climate protection per dollar and per year. 

The straightest path to American energy security and to a richer, 

fairer, cooler and safer world is to let all ways to save or produce 

energy compete fairly at honest prices, regardless of their type, 

technology, size, location and ownership. That is pretty much the 

opposite of the Federal energy policy we have. 

Thank you, sir. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lovins follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I thank you very much, Mr. Lovins. 

The Chair will now recognize for a round of questions the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Cleaver. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Again, I thank all of you. 

The issue of safety is extremely important in my community. We 

are not far from one of the nuclear facilities, one of the 104, in our 

community. We are clearly aware of the two significant accidents 

that have happened in the nuclear facilities. 

This would go to any of you. If you were giving information to 

the 1.7 million people in our metropolitan area, what would you 

say that you believe would assure them of the safety of such a facility? 

Mr. FLINT. If I can take that question, Congressman, I would tell 

you that the track record of the U.S. nuclear power plants is that 

they are exceptionally safe and that the safety is improving, and 

that the metrics by which the NRC tracks that—and there are a 

variety of metrics, be they from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 

worker injury statistics that were in my statement, or be they the 

NRC’s metrics where they track unplanned shutdowns and other 

issues—are all trending very positively. 

And so those plants are absolutely safe. They are safe from a 

perspective of their physical operations, from the way in which the 

professional staff operates those plants and from the security. In 

every manner, those plants are currently very safe. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Yes, I mean, I listened in your statement, and I 

appreciate the information you provided with regard to the safety, 

you know, that it is as safe as working in a bank. But, you know, 

airplane travel is far, far safer than driving an automobile. The 

issue, though, is that there is a possibility of surviving an automobile accident. Surviving an airplane accident is dramatically 

lower. And so, you know, people are thinking one event at a nuclear facility, a major event, could be just devastating. And so people are afraid all over the country, which is part of the reason. 

Part of the reason, of course, is the cost, the Federal subsidy, 

which is something we would be concerned about. But also, I am 

not sure that there are a lot of electeds around the country who 

are willing to stand up and say to a community, ‘‘We are going to 

build a new facility.’’ I mean, you can say that electeds do not have 

courage or whatever, but the truth of the matter is people are 

afraid. 

Mr. FLINT. Congressman, we deal with that issue frequently. It 

is a question of helping people understand real versus perceived 

risks. 

I will tell you that, currently, some of the greatest support new 

nuclear power plants have for construction in this country comes 

from the elected officials whose districts include those plants and 

whose communities include those plants. Frankly, our polling 

shows that people who live nearby nuclear power plants, who are 

familiar with them, who know people who work at the plants so 

that they have those personal relationships and where they can 

talk to people, their neighbors, actually are some of the strongest 

supporters of nuclear power. 


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So I agree with you, we have a perception problem. When we are 

given the opportunity and we sit down with people over a period 

of time and they grow to trust us and they grow to trust the people 

who work at and who operate those plants, those perceptions 

change over time. 

Mr. CLEAVER. That may happen. But the other issue that we all 

would have to deal with, as it relates to a community, is that the 

waste is primarily unconverted uranium. When you say 

‘‘unconverted uranium’’ in the climate today, there is then going to 

be the discussion about, you know, what if this is somehow used 

or falls in the hands of those who would want to harm people in 

this country? 

And where do we store the waste? What area in the country is 

open and joyful about receiving the waste? 

Mr. FLINT. Congressman, you, having a nuclear power plant near 

your district, are well aware of the political difficulties associated 

with storing used fuel on site. 

Ideally, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which requires the DOE 

to pick up used fuel beginning in 1998, over a decade ago, would 

be operative. Unfortunately, it is not. As a result, we store used 

fuel on site, be it in pools or dry casks. We do it very safely. That 

fuel is handled in a way in which it is protective of the health and 

environment. It is secure. 

Mr. CLEAVER. But we can’t continue to do that at each site. 

Mr. FLINT. Sir, you are absolutely correct. And the Government’s 

failure to move used fuel is extremely frustrating, particularly to 

politicians to whom utilities have made promises that used fuel 

will be moved. 

However, in the absence of DOE meeting its obligations, the utilities are responding very constructively to dealing with the used 

fuel on site, and it is currently stored safely and securely. It is not 

an ideal situation, but I can assure you it is very protective of 

health and safety. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Mr. Flint. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from South Dakota, Ms. 

Herseth Sandlin. 

Or I could ask questions and come back to the gentlelady? 

Great. Thank you. 

The Chair will recognize himself for a round of questions. 

Mr. Lovins, you heard the argument made by Mr. Flint from the 

Nuclear Energy Institute. This is a stark difference of opinion in 

terms of the economics of nuclear in our country. He is contending 

that nuclear is on the rebound, it has had a revival, it is about to 

produce perhaps four to eight completed nuclear power plants by 

the year 2016, and that the prospects beyond that are very rosy, 

indeed. 

How do you analyze the prospects as you have just heard Mr. 

Flint present them to the committee here today? 

Mr. LOVINS. I am very puzzled. The motto in our shop is, ‘‘In God 

we trust; all others bring data,’’ so I look at the numbers. I do not 

see any private investment in new nuclear plants. It has never 

been bid into a competitive market. It has never been bought in 


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what is normally—in the current generation, of what is normally 

considered a free-market transaction anywhere in the world. And 

the competitors that the nuclear industry dismisses as uneconomic, 

impractical and trivial are producing more electricity today than 

nuclear is, growing tens of times faster, and it has tens of times 

nuclear’s market share. 

So I fear the nuclear industry lives in a sort of ‘‘Alice in Wonderland’’ world in which nuclear merits every kind of subsidy and support because it is supposedly indispensable, while it actually has 

only about a 2 percent market share in the world’s new electric capacity, and its competitors—micropower and negawatts—are beating all central plants. 

The CHAIRMAN. Now, again, when you say ‘‘negawatts,’’ what do 

you mean by—you mean N-E-G, negative watts? 

Mr. LOVINS. Correct. 

The CHAIRMAN. What do you mean by that? 

Mr. LOVINS. And ‘‘N’’ for ‘‘Nellie.’’ 

Negawatts are saved electricity, saved through either efficient 

end use or a demand response. And although they are not nearly 

as well measured as megawatts, they do appear to be having about 

the same annual capacity effect in the world, maybe even bigger, 

as micropower has. 

The CHAIRMAN. I want to go over to Mr. Flint and have him respond to what you are saying. I think I hear you saying that there 

is no private-sector investment in nuclear power, that there is no 

market right now for private money to be placed into the nuclear 

power market. Is that correct? 

Mr. LOVINS. Yes, sir, despite Federal subsidies now approaching 

or exceeding new nuclear plants’ U.S. cost. 

Now, I find this really remarkable because, normally, if you lay 

out that lavish a trough, some pigs will arrive. But I do not see 

them arriving, because the private capital market believes, in my 

view, that the reward is not greater than the financial cost of risk. 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me go over to Mr. Flint then. 

How do you respond to what Mr. Lovins just said? He says there 

is no private capital going into nuclear power. 

Mr. FLINT. Well, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to 

address the issue. 

I am confronted with a situation in which many people have proposed that nuclear power receives a variety of different levels of 

subsidies. I have tried on occasion to duplicate the math, and I 

can’t make some of those numbers work. 

And so I went off and I looked at two different sources. And, if 

you like, I can make these available for the record. I have the June 

2006 issue of Science and Technology, which is the publication of 

the National Academies. There is an article in there entitled ‘‘Real 

Numbers: The U.S. Energy Subsidy Scorecard,’’ by Mr. Bezdek and 

Mr. Wendling of the Management Information Services. And they 

compare the subsidization rates of all energy technologies in the 

United States. 

And let me read one of their conclusions: ‘‘Considerable disparity 

exists between the level of incentives received by different energy 

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subsidies, nuclear energy, natural gas and coal may have been 

undersubsidized. And renewable energy, especially solar, may have 

received a disproportionately large share of Federal energy incentives.’’ 

Now, that is sort of an aggregate assessment. There are two 

issues—and Mr. Lochbaum mentioned them in his statement—with 

which I am particularly familiar, so I would like to focus on those 

two things. 

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 reauthorized Price Anderson in 

title 6. In title 17, it had a loan guarantee program for innovative 

technologies. Frequently, Price Anderson and the loan guarantee 

title are considered significant subsidies for the nuclear energy industry. 

So I brought with me CBO’s score of the Conference Report on 

the 2006 Energy Policy Act. CBO, of course, keeps track of how 

much legislation costs. Title 6, which includes Price Anderson reauthorization, is not even on the detail table attached to that score 

because it does not score. 

Title 17, for loan guarantees, does warrant a notation in the score. In particular, CBO estimated that it would score $100 million in outlays, and outlays only, in 2006. From that point on, there 

is a set of zeros that reach out to the end of the chart, because 

CBO estimates that the loan guarantee program’s cost will be fully 

paid by the recipients of the loans. 

So I have to base my analysis on something, and, in this case, 

I base it on CBO’s assessment. I think—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Are there loan guarantees in that bill for solar 

and wind? 

Mr. FLINT. Yes, sir. Title 17 applies to—and I actually have it 

with me, but it will take a minute to dig out—‘‘Innovative Technologies that Reduce or Sequester Greenhouse Gas Emissions,’’ I 

believe is the title. It is not nuclear-specific. So it is any technology 

that meets those requirements. 

I think part of the reason we get into these discussions about the 

subsidization rates for nuclear in particular is because people like 

Mr. Lovins and I can disagree on some of the fundamental issues, 

like what is the score of the loan guarantee title and what is the 

score of Price Anderson. When I turn to independent analyses, I 

run into things like this article and issues in Science and Technology that indicate that nuclear power is subsidized at a rate less 

than other technologies. 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me go back over to you then, Mr. Lovins. You 

have heard this contention. 

Mr. LOVINS. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. Can you provide further analysis? 

Mr. LOVINS. Well, I did not hear an answer to your question, Mr. 

Chairman. What I did hear was some selective quotation. 

I, actually, have also relied on the CBO findings that there is a 

well-above-50-percent default risk on nuclear loan guarantees. My 

understanding is that the $18.5 billion latest nuclear loan guarantee allocation occurs in a committee conference report, not in the 

actual legislative language, so that it evades CBO scoring. 

However, I thought your question was about the absence of private capital investment, and I believe that is correct. This is simply 


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not an attractive option. Again, I would contrast it with just distributed renewables, let alone cogeneration, having received $56 

billion of worldwide private risk capital in 2006 alone. If you add 

cogen, the total would be well over $100 billion, compared to zero 

for nuclear. And that trend continues. 

I was also very puzzled by Mr. Flint’s remarks about nuclear’s 

being competitive with other sources of electricity. The average 

1999 through 2006 wind power price in the United States was 3.5 

U.S. cents per kilowatt hour net of production tax credit, which has 

a levelized value of about .9 cents. This is all in 2006 levelized dollars. 

And even if you firm the wind power and even if you count the 

uptick in price to 4.9 average cents in 2006, because largely of a 

shortage of turbines because of the booming market, it is still hard 

to get much over a nickel a kilowatt hour. That is approximately 

a third of any plausible nuclear busbar cost on the margin. 

Mr. FLINT. Mr. Chairman, may I? 

The CHAIRMAN. Please. 

Mr. FLINT. This is a continuing dialogue, clearly. He cited a CBO 

analysis that showed a 50 percent default rate on a loan guarantee 

program for nuclear power. There was such a CBO analysis. It was 

for a loan guarantee program that was considered in the Energy 

Policy Act of 2003 on the floor of the U.S. Senate. That provision 

did not pass the Senate. It has not become law. The operative document is the CBO analysis of the 2005 energy policy, a conference 

report which is the law. As you can imagine, it frustrates me significantly to have to be able to track every CBO analysis of nuclear-related provisions regardless of whether they became law or 

not. In this case I can tell you that the operative analysis shows 

that the loan guarantee title does not score. 

The CHAIRMAN. And the reason it does not score, why is that, 

Mr. Flint? How can there be a $40 billion loan guarantee program 

and have it not score and yet have the same agency, just a couple 

of years before, project that there would be a 50 percent default 

rate? That doesn’t make any sense. How can you respect an agency 

that projects a 50 percent default rate, says there is $40 billion at 

risk, and then scores for all of the subsequent years the risk to taxpayers as zero? That makes no sense. 

Mr. FLINT. Actually, Mr. Chairman, when you read the two provisions and you realize that CBO was scoring two different proposed laws, it does make a lot of sense. The provisions were written 

very differently. The 2005 provision is written in accordance with 

the Federal Credit Reform Act which requires that the cost of the 

loan guarantees be paid in advance so that any cost that will be 

associated with those loans have to be paid by the project sponsors. 

They will write a check to the Federal Government to cover the 

total cost of the loan guarantee. As a result, because they are being 

paid in advance for the cost of the loans, the loan guarantee program in Title 17 does not score. I mean, I would request that I be 

able to submit this. 

The CHAIRMAN. And we would welcome that for the record. 

[The information follows:] 

* * * * COMMITTEE INSERT * * * * 


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The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Lovins, do you have any comment on this? 

This a very perplexing concept here that all of this taxpayer money 

can be at risk, and yet it is not scored in any way in terms of an 

obligation the taxpayers have assumed. 

Mr. LOVINS. Mr. Chairman, in principle the project sponsors are 

supposed to put up what amounts to an insurance premium 

against default. My understanding is that it is up to the Department of Energy to determine what is an adequate premium, and 

that the industry expects that this Department of Energy will set 

a very low premium because otherwise the conditions would be unacceptable to the industry. I don’t think any fundamental risk conditions have changed except that probably the risk has increased. 

And in a longer paper that I will submit for the record, you will 

find a remarkable history in which the Department of Energy initially proposed relatively responsible rules for its very generous 

loan guarantees under the 2005 act, but then progressively relaxed 

the rules under intense pressure from the nuclear and financial industries so that the loan guarantees are now strippable. They are 

100 percent of 80 percent debt financing. 

The sponsor is supposed to put up what DOE considers, without 

any criteria, to be a significant equity stake. But the sponsors don’t 

seem to be willing to do that, so I assume DOE’s judgment of what 

is a significant equity stake will be appropriately relaxed. And 

DOE even put in language in its final decision saying that it may 

even choose to subordinate Federal debt to private debt. So the financial industry got everything it wanted and yet is still unwilling 

to invest. 

The CHAIRMAN. My time has expired. The Chair recognizes the 

gentlelady from South Dakota, Ms. Herseth Sandlin. 

Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank 

you for having this hearing. I find the discussion very interesting, 

and in some ways similar to an issue that I have worked very hard 

on in the Congress. And that is the issue of biofuels development. 

And I am not comparing nuclear energy to biofuels, but the debate 

here in trying to get the facts right and the ongoing discussion 

about whether or not there is information based on either older 

technologies or information that has been around since the 1970s 

that really has evolved in a way that we have to address this in 

light of new technologies, in light of other new developments and 

in light of priorities that have changed from a policy perspective on 

what is the greater risk that we face, either within the country for 

national security purposes or worldwide as it relates to climate 

change. 

And so I am very interested, as I think the Chairman is, and others will be, to continue—whether we get some of the information 

that is being cited here on both sides of the argument—to try to 

figure out what the facts are today and some of the arguments and 

the reputations of those arguments. 

But I am interested a little bit in terms of this discussion of sort 

of the private capital investment, whether there is an absence of 

it, what the reasons may be for that. And a lot of what we have 

done in the Select Committee is taken testimony in other hearings 

as it relates to the experience of Europe with its cap-and-trade system. 


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And so I would be interested in hearing from any of our witnesses today about what you know of the experience in Europe as 

it relates to nuclear energy development prior to and since they 

adopted a cap-and-trade system, and whether or not that has affected private capital investment and the levels of that investment 

in European countries that are looking at—that either had historically nuclear energy in their portfolio or looking at that as a possibility as it relates to the requirements of their cap-and-trade system. 

Mr. LOVINS. Perhaps I could take that because I am very active 

in Europe. There have been no such nuclear purchases in Europe. 

The one that I expect Mr. Flint would tell you about, although he 

might find other aspects of it embarrassing, is the Finish project 

which was bought by the Finish equivalence of TVA. That is, it is 

a nonprofit customer-based consortium. It has long-term power 

purchase contracts passed through to customers. And it got a lot 

of very well below-free-market financing from German and French 

parastatals, which appears to many of us to be illegal, but the 

Commission hasn’t yet said so. The plant after 28 months of construction was 24 months behind schedule and roughly $2 billion 

over budget, which was not what was supposed to be demonstrated. 

So this has spooked a lot of folks who were thinking otherwise. 

Now, the British Government has lately reversed its previous 

white paper and proposed to build replacements for its aging and 

retiring nuclear reactors and believes this can be done in the private market without subsidy. No other country has achieved that, 

so many of us will be interested to see how it can be pulled off. The 

main method of doing it so far appears to be that the government, 

like the French Government, has announced a willingness to intervene in carbon markets to raise carbon prices high enough for nuclear to compete. I don’t think this will work, however, because 

higher carbon prices will equally advantage efficiency renewables 

and largely advantage co-gen as well. In other words, the competitors will do about as well as nuclear will out of higher carbon 

prices. 

The other British intervention proposed is basically to continue 

policies that discriminate against things like wind power of which 

they have an immense resource. They don’t call it that. They say 

they are favoring wind power, but that has not so far been the 

practical effect. 

I think the most interesting case to watch will be France. They 

get 78 percent of their electricity from nuclear and it is widely considered the world leader in that regard. What is not often said is 

the program was so costly that it required costly taxpayer bailouts 

of both the largely state-owned national utility and the nuclear 

construction firm. So France today is using about a tenth less fossil 

fuel than in 1973, which isn’t a big difference. It has a large and 

sometimes unsellable nuclear surplus. And to try to sell the surplus it has intensively promoted electric heating, which a quarter 

of French houses have but it is very expensive. And they are having to restart some inefficient old oil-fired plants to cope with the 

winter peak load that their electric heating promotion created, so 

it has made quite a mess of the electricity system. 


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And having been engaged in the policy discussions in France 

from the beginning when the Cabinet was split down the middle, 

I can tell you that France is very rich in renewable energy, is starting to figure that out and, as in most of Europe, there is serious 

policy discussion going on that is shifting very rapidly toward renewables. You will find this in the latest European Union climate 

policy which is very strong on efficiency and renewables and not on 

nuclear. 

Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Mr. Flint. 

Mr. FLINT. Congresswoman, if I might, before you arrived I told 

the Chairman that I was struck by the changes in the nuclear industry since 1982 when he wrote a book about nuclear power and 

nuclear weapons, and I think some of those changes are important 

to keep in mind. Clearly, there have been nuclear power plants 

that have had a multitude of problems with cost overruns and design changes and many of them eventually not being completed 

and operating. 

We have learned a great deal from that experience. And the way 

in which we hope to build nuclear power plants in the United 

States now is dramatically different than we did prior to that time. 

From 1960 through the 1970s and the early 1980s the U.S. nuclear 

industry rapidly advanced in this country. We scaled up the size 

of reactors from several hundred megawatts to over a thousand 

megawatts. Designs were evolving, plants went under construction 

without completed designs, we had problems with engineering and 

construction contracts, we built them in an era in which interest 

rates went to 18 percent as the economy slowed in the late 1970s 

and many utilities decided they didn’t need the electricity, so they 

stretched out the plants of their own design. Or their own business 

needs caused them to stretch out the plants, the capital costs went 

up. We had a variety of issues that we have learned from. 

Now as we look around the world and we see 34 nuclear reactors 

under construction, we do have problems with cost and schedule in 

Finland, but we have learned a great deal from reactors under construction in China and Japan. The new EPR that is under construction in France is not having the same issues that we had with 

plants under construction in Finland. We hope to bring to the 

United States some of the best regulatory financial as well as design characteristics of plants being built around the world. 

We have a different licensing process in the United States, this 

one-step licensing process. We have modularized construction techniques that we intend to use. My expectation is that you are going 

to see nuclear power plants built here much more cautiously on the 

one hand by the utilities doing their analysis in advance, and on 

the other hand incorporating best-in-class capabilities from reactors 

around the world. This may be one place where it is an advantage 

that the United States is not the world leader. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady’s time has expired, but we will go 

to another round as well if you would like. 

The Chair will recognize himself again. Again, I want to go back 

to this $40 billion loan guarantee program and it not being scored. 

And it is my understanding that the reason that CBO didn’t score 

it is that it was put into report language rather than into the actual appropriations language itself. And by circumventing that 


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analysis, it is able to create a false impression that it doesn’t really 

cost any money or put the American taxpayer at risk if there is a 

default. And I think that very devious technique is something that 

gives a misimpression to the American people about the risk in the 

same way that subprime loans, in the way in which they were 

scored, gave a very grave misimpression to the American public as 

to the amount of risk that was being run. 

Mr. Flint. 

Mr. FLINT. Mr. Chairman, let me make sure I am very precise 

about what I say. The 2005 Energy Policy Act, which includes the 

authority for Title 17 loan guarantees, did not score. And that is 

the CBO document that I was referring to. You are now referring 

to the 2008 Energy and Water appropriations bill. That bill includes two provisions. It includes bill language authorizing the loan 

guarantee program to go forward. In fact, that language has no cap 

on the volume of loans that may be issued. That language does not 

score comparable to the 2005 Energy Policy Act, because it uses the 

authorities in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. An unlimited loan volume does not score. 

The CHAIRMAN. But again, Mr. Flint, that is ridiculous. 

Mr. FLINT. Mr. Chairman—— 

The CHAIRMAN. No, that is an absurd conclusion. That is the 

same thing that the banking regulators were doing in not properly 

weighing the risk of subprime loans. And the more you had, of 

course, and the more diversified the risk was, the lower the risk 

was to the American consumer; when in fact, it was only increasing 

it by breaking it up into these little sub-bits. So, again, this is just 

phony accounting. 

In looking at the whole history of nuclear power, Mr. Lochbaum 

went through the history of cancellations. We have got this Florida 

case where Florida Power & Light has two nuclear reactors that 

are now going to cost up to $24 billion. And, again, all of this is 

part of an illusion that is sought to be created by the nuclear industry and abetted by those at CBO, I guess, or the crafty legislators who are able to avoid having it counted as any potential risk 

for the American taxpayer. 

But the reality is that looking at the past, looking at what is 

happening in Finland right now, looking at what is happening to 

Florida Power & Light, which is seeing an explosion in the risk to 

its ratepayers, and, if it qualifies for loan guarantees, there is a 

real mess on the hands of the American taxpayer. 

Mr. Lovins, let me go back to you. 

Mr. LOVINS. It seems to me the fundamental point here is not 

whether CBO was prevented from scoring by the way the legislation was enacted, but why should a mature industry that claims to 

be robustly competitive require loan guarantees or any other subsidies. And of course we have competing experts here. I happen to 

think since my institute did the first real scoring of Federal energy 

subsidies back in the 1980s that Doug Koplow has emerged as the 

most careful independent student of this subject, and I think his 

numbers are careful and transparent. And I would prefer them to 

the ones Mr. Flint cited. 

But it seems to me however big the subsidies are, they shouldn’t 

be needed. And I find it very telling that the leading financial 


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houses make quite clear they are not willing to assume the risks 

that they wish to impose on the public, and neither are the utilities. It is also clear that in the roughly half of the United States 

where investors bear their own risks and have no rate barriers to 

impose them on because those States have restructured their electric systems, nuclear plants are especially unlikely to be built. But 

what we are going to see, I think, in places that do have the traditional rate-of-return regulation is considerable sticker shock. 

If you take a nuclear capital cost pretty near the low end of 

Moody’s range, that would correspond to a busbar levelized cost of 

about $0.16 a kilowatt hour in year 2007 dollars. But that means 

the first-year revenue requirements is about a $0.26 a kilowatt 

hour rate and that rate shock I think will reverberate considerably. 

The CHAIRMAN. Well, if the taxpayer has to pick up the tab, of 

course it will. 

Mr. Flint, in your testimony you said you expect between four 

and eight new reactors to be in operation in the U.S. by 2016, with 

the possibility of a second wave of additional reactors, as long as 

the first wave is on schedule and on budget. 

Last week the EIA projected that by 2030 the United States 

would add 16.4 gigawatts of new nuclear generation capacity, 

which translates into roughly 15 or 16 new reactors. But according 

to Ms. Squassoni’s testimony, the nuclear industry would have to 

build 50 new nuclear reactors in the United States by the year 

2025 just to maintain its current share of the U.S. electricity market. 

Do you agree with EIA’s projection that even with the current financial incentives in place, the nuclear industry is going to dramatically lose, not gain, in its share of the U.S. electricity market 

in the next couple of decades? 

Mr. FLINT. Mr. Chairman, my statement has a number of issues 

that are going to consider whether or not the second wave of new 

nuclear power plants gets built. And I am trying to turn to that 

section right now. They have to do with a variety of issues that 

utilities will face. What is the cost of competing technologies, what 

are the costs associated with carbon, what is the economic growth, 

what are the electricity demands in their region of the country, 

what are the costs of nuclear built power plants as they get built? 

There are many variables thereafter that significantly influence 

what happens with that second wave. We are quite confident of 

this initial estimate of four to eight plants in the 2016 time frame. 

The issues beyond 2015, for me to make a particularly accurate 

prediction, there are simply too many business—— 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate that, but I think it is important for 

us because we are talking about climate change. That is our objective here. Are you confident that the 42 to 46 reactors needed to 

maintain the share of the market which the nuclear industry has 

today, can be built in the United States by 2025? 

Mr. FLINT. Maybe I can answer the question more broadly. We 

are well aware of the challenges that are presented by the wedge 

analysis and whether or not nuclear can respond globally and build 

the number of plants necessary. Back-of-the-envelope calculations, 

you are talking 200 gigawatts of new electric generation in a decade in order to support the rates of growth that you see in the 


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Socolow analysis. That did occur in the 1980s. We saw that sort of 

growth worldwide. Now, today we do not have the manufacturing 

infrastructure, we do not have enough skilled labor to be able to 

do that. The market has contracted in the following decade. 

The CHAIRMAN. So is it fair to say, then, that the nuclear power 

industry, given the financial uncertainties, is not going to be able 

to grow in a manner that would be needed for it to accomplish the 

sort of expanded vision by Socolow? 

Mr. FLINT. No, sir. 

The CHAIRMAN. No matter how much U.S. Federal Government 

subsidies are there for the industry? 

Mr. FLINT. No, sir, it wouldn’t. What you could say is the marketplace has responded by contracting capability in that regard. 

The CHAIRMAN. No, what I am saying to you is—and I just need 

you to deal with the numbers—you need 42 to 46 new nuclear 

power plants by 2025 to maintain your current share of the electricity market. You are projecting 4 to 8 by 2016. Are you saying 

that somewhere between 40 and 45 new nuclear power plants are 

going to be built from 2016 to 2025; is that what you are saying? 

Mr. FLINT. Mr. Chairman, there are a number of variables that 

will affect how—— 

The CHAIRMAN. I understand that. We know that we are going 

to have approximately 365,000 megawatts of wind by then, over 

100,000 megawatts of wind in the United States by 2016. We are 

here talking about between four and eight nuclear power plants by 

2016. So as we are making our plans here to solve the global 

warming problem, we want to hear from you that you are confident 

and your industry is confident that it can build 45 nuclear power 

plants by the year 2025. 

Mr. FLINT. Mr. Chairman, there are analyses done by very reputable organizations such as the Electric Power Research Institute 

that predict construction in excess of that much nuclear capacity 

in the United States. The EPRI PRISM analysis predicts 64 

gigawatts of new power by 2036. We are in the process of—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Again, even by 2036 that would only keep you 

at where you are today, at 19 percent in terms of a total percentage 

of the marketplace. Is there any reason to believe that you are 

going to actually see an increase, an increase in the percentage of 

electricity that is generated by nuclear power by 2016, by 2025, by 

2035? 

Mr. FLINT. If you let me give you a complete sentence as an answer. 

The CHAIRMAN. Okay, please. 

Mr. FLINT. We are doing a very—as we call it, a cold-blooded 

analysis so that we are neither overly optimistic nor overly pessimistic about exactly what rates of new nuclear industry can support. We are in the process of developing new manufacturing capability, of building training centers for the skilled workforce. We are 

working with State legislators on a—— 

The CHAIRMAN. That is not an answer. We can see where wind 

is going, we can see where solar is going. We have blinders on 

when it comes to the nuclear industry, even with these massive 

multibillion-dollar subsidies. So that is the real problem that we 

have right now, Mr. Flint. We are trying to predict a future looking 


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at the reality of the marketplace, which is a renewable and a 

negawatt, an efficiency marketplace. And you want us to basically 

continue to go back to the American taxpayer to get loan guarantees for an industry that the industry itself can’t garner investment 

from the private sector. 

Let me just stop there for a second. I want to give the gentlelady 

from South Dakota another round. 

Ms. HERSETH SANDLIN. Well, I appreciate that. I know we’ve got 

a pending vote, so I will just reserve my right to submit questions 

in writing for the panelists to pursue some of what both Mr. Flint 

and Mr. Lovins were responding to in my previous questions as it 

relates to the ability to meet some of these projections; what the 

renewables are, but what the projected demands are, to be able to 

determine whether or not as we develop the renewables either 

here, as some of the European countries are developing their renewables further and the tax incentives and government policies 

that go along to facilitating that, just whether or not that is going 

to be sufficient to meet all the projections and demands. 

So I appreciate the opportunity for another round, but I think I 

will reserve the right to submit them in writing. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlelady. And the Chair will recognize himself once again. 

Again, I have to go back, Mr. Flint, to your testimony where you 

say that the potential contribution nuclear power can make to reducing projected greenhouse gas emissions in the electricity sector 

in coming decades is ‘‘extraordinary.’’ That is the word you use. 

Mr. FLINT. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. And yet you then turn and say that you are 

doing a cold-blooded analysis of whether or not that is possible. So 

there is kind of a public representation that the opportunities are 

extraordinary, but when you are asked a specific question about a 

quantity of electricity that the industry is willing to represent that 

it will build, we don’t hear that number. All we hear is between 

four and eight, which is a pretty wide variation between now and 

2016. And beyond that we don’t hear any specific numbers. 

Whereas the renewable electricity industry, the energy efficiency 

sector, can give us quantifiable amounts of electricity produced or 

saved that we can rely upon going forward in our fight against climate change. And that is the dilemma that we have with the nuclear industry right now. 

Mr. FLINT. Mr. Chairman, I can understand your frustration. But 

recognize that we are trying to ensure that we meet the expectations that are established. I will give you some specifics. I have 17 

utility companies that have announced plans to build 31 new nuclear reactors. That is significant. Those companies are spending 

real money in pursuit of those license applications. 

To give you a back-of-the-envelope estimate, a license application 

process at the NRC costs about $100 million. Recall the nuclear industry, we pay not only our own costs of submitting a license application, we also pay 90 percent of NRC’s annual budget. We pay 

them. And the NRC budget for 2009 is a little over $1 billion. So 

utility companies are now spending very real money in the development of these nuclear reactors. 


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I can’t tell you exactly what year certain reactors will come on 

line. Largely it is dependent upon whether electricity growth in 

certain regions is at 7 percent or 4 percent or whether it goes to 

0 percent. But I can tell you that independent analyses, like the 

EPRI analysis, anticipate 64 gigawatts of new generation by 2036. 

That is an extraordinary contribution to greenhouse gas emission 

avoidance. 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me go to you, Ms. Squassoni. At this point 

many people think that there is a small probability that the Yucca 

Mountain site to store all the nuclear waste in the United States 

will never be opened. Have you looked at the question of how many 

Yucca Mountains we would need to store the waste that all of these 

new hypothetical reactors will generate? 

Ms. SQUASSONI. Thank you. Yes, I have, although people more 

expert than I say it is a little misleading to use that as a figure, 

because the limits for Yucca have been legislated at 75 metric tons 

and there is a big debate about whether it could hold more. In part, 

the calculation of the kinds of spent fuel that will be generated depends on what you think that future nuclear fuel cycle will look 

like: Is it just lightwater reactors or are you going to reprocess? 

Will we have fast breeder reactors? 

And so I will rely on some other people’s data—if I can see this 

here. A scenario of 700 gigawatts would require, according to the 

NRDC, 14 Yuccas. That is at the 70,000-metric ton limit. If you go 

to a one nuclear wedge, you would require one Yucca every 3.5 

years or 20 Yuccas. And if you go to the MIT 2050 scenario, you 

would require about 30 Yucca Mountains. 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you this, Ms. Squassoni. Do you 

think that the nuclear industry can ramp-up the way it did in the 

1970s and 1980s? Is that possible in this new era as Mr. Flint talks 

about a nuclear renaissance? Can we expect to see dozens of new 

nuclear power plants come on line over a 20-year period? 

Ms. SQUASSONI. Well, I think there are a lot of factors, as Alex 

Flint has mentioned. I think you have to keep in mind that in the 

1970s and 1980s, the period of greatest growth, we had a large nuclear infrastructure. We don’t have that anymore, particularly in— 

I forget the figures—just in terms of the supporting industries. 

For example in the 1980s, the U.S. had 400 nuclear suppliers 

and 900 holders of N-stamp certificates. That is, nuclear qualified. 

Now we only have 80 suppliers and 200 N-stamp holders, so we 

have a much much smaller percentage. 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask, in your testimony you cite some of 

the industry bottlenecks that pose a challenge to the nuclear industry, such as the fact that there is only one company in the world 

that can make the specialized metal forgings needed to build new 

reactors. That company has a 2-year long wait list, and, even when 

it scales up, will still only be able to produce material sufficient for 

eight reactors a year. 

But you also cite the MIT nuclear study which says that for nuclear energy to play its projected climate role that there would 

have to be a fivefold increase in the number of reactors worldwide 

and an annual build rate of 35 per year. How can this and other 

projections for a significant expansion of nuclear energy be recVerDate Mar 15 2010 00:13 Nov 13, 2010 Jkt 061529 PO 00000 Frm 00088 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A529.XXX A529

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onciled? What would it take, for example, to bring the global specialized metal forging capacity up to 35 reactors per year? 

Ms. SQUASSONI. I think there is a gap between the expectations 

and what can be accomplished in the next 10 years. Obviously, 

countries can develop specialized forging capabilities over time. I 

would say that the information provided to me by Japan Steel 

Works—I asked, Well, why does everyone come to you? And they 

said, Well, because we have 30 years of experience, including Russian companies and entities. 

The CHAIRMAN. So what would it take to just double the capacity, Ms. Squassoni? 

Ms. SQUASSONI. Well, you have to keep in mind that JSW I think 

provides about 30—or not 100 percent of the forgings. It depends 

on what reactors will be built. But it is significantly greater 

than—— 

The CHAIRMAN. In order to not even do 35 power plants per year, 

let us just say 17 power plants per year across the world, what 

would it take to double that capacity? What kind of investment is 

necessary in order to provide the materials? 

Ms. SQUASSONI. I would have to get back to you on that. 

The CHAIRMAN. If you would do that for the record, I would very 

much appreciate it. 

[The information follows:] 

* * * * COMMITTEE INSERT * * * * 

The CHAIRMAN. Let me go over to you, then, Mr. Lochbaum. You 

haven’t had a chance to comment on what you have been hearing. 

Can you take any one of these points and comment upon it? 

Mr. LOCHBAUM. I joined the nuclear industry in 1979 after the 

Three Mile accident, so I have an alibi for that. But that was during the expansion, the great expansion of nuclear power in the 

United States. And looking back on that, we ramped-up too quickly. For example, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission didn’t have 

enough staff to do the reviews of the reactors in the pipeline. They 

had interns, summer interns that were reviewing the safety applications that resulted in problems like the Connecticut Yankee final 

safety analysis report having the Millstone final safety analysis report incorporated, without catching the fact that it was a totally 

different reactor. 

I worked at Grand Gulf. I recall your comments around the time 

of Grand Gulf’s licensing, calling it Grand Goof. I worked at Grand 

Gulf. We messed that up very badly. The original license for Grand 

Gulf was for another plant. We didn’t catch that. We submitted it 

to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and they didn’t catch it. So 

the problems with ramping-up haven’t been dealt with. 

I noticed your comments in September of last year about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s plans to meet the 24-month review 

time for new reactors. The NRC plans to do that by farming out 

the work to private industry. That is totally unacceptable. That 

shows that the NRC is focused on schedule. Not on quality. It 

hasn’t learned a lesson of the past. It seems like it is destined to 

repeat that mistake rather than avoid it. So I don’t see any optimism at all for believing that the future will be any different than 

the past, except for the fact that we have fewer excuses for repeating that mistake, since we know about them now. 


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The CHAIRMAN. My time has expired. The Chair recognizes the 

gentleman from New York State, Mr. Hall. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry, due to the vote 

to adjourn, I was unable to hear your oral testimony, but I did have 

a chance to review it. And let me just state, first of all, as one who 

represents the 19th District in New York where we currently have 

the second and third units at Indian Point awaiting relicensing 

proceedings with the NRC at a time that they are leaking strontium and tritium from the spent-fuel cooling ponds into the groundwater and into the Hudson River, and when there have been a series of unscheduled outages caused by anything from an exploding 

transformer to river debris washing up into the water intake and 

clogging it, and the folks in Rockland County who do emergency 

management finding out about that transformer fire in particular 

by seeing a puff of smoke across the river, rather than by getting 

a call as the procedure is supposed to be. There are many people 

in my district who are nervous in particular about this plant. 

So to me there are a couple of issues. One regarding whether we 

should be investing our short precious resources in nuclear as opposed to renewables, which I think, given the same massive—and 

depending on whose numbers you look at, it is easily over $100 billion from the birth of the industry, some would say $145 billion, 

$150 billion and all kinds of subsidies—and insurance by the taxpayer. The only industry to my knowledge that has been unable to 

get insurance against a catastrophic accident, and therefore the 

utilities required that the government provide taxpayer-backed insurance. And the average taxpayer didn’t even know this. 

So there is a question overall in terms of whether nuclear power, 

commercial nuclear power can stand on its own two feet if it had 

to compete on a level playing field against various other sources. 

But then there arises the question of whether one should relicense a plant in the area that probably shouldn’t have been built 

in the first place. And certainly I don’t think a utility today would 

apply to build a new nuclear plant in Westchester County, in an 

area where 8 percent of the population lives within a 15-mile radius of the plant. You look at where applications are going. They 

are generally going for more remote locations, for good reason. 

We also know that Mohammed Atta flew over the New York area 

several times on commercial flights, checking out targets. And one 

of his notes that was found in his possessions after 9/11 included 

a comment about a nuclear plant that was presumed to have been 

Indian Point that he flew over as a potential target. 

At any rate I would just like to ask all of you, I guess one question to start with, and I may be out of time by then, thanks to my 

talking so much, but I asked our first panel last year when the 

Chairman called a security panel with Jim Woolsey, our former 

CIA chief, and Steven Haas from the Council on Foreign Relations, 

and Admiral McGinn and folks who were involved in the security 

end of this. 

If we ramp-up the kind of increase in nuclear power across the 

world—and I know that there are companies. In fact, this President has authorized sales of, for instance to India, of nuclear technology and materials and even waived, if I remember correctly, certain provisions of the Nonproliferation Treaty to be able to do so. 


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What I asked that panel a year ago I ask you again: When we 

are increasing the transit by ship and by rail and by truck of many 

thousands of shipments all over the world, including in this country, of enriched fuel on its way to a plant and of spent fuel on its 

way to a repository, whether such a repository actually exists for 

a long-term basis or if it is a temporary one, are we not making 

eventually the explosion of a dirty bomb virtually a certainty? 

Feel free to go first. 

Mr. FLINT. Congressman, it is important to recognize there have 

been 24,000 international shipments, or around the world they are 

having 24,000 shipments of nuclear material to date. Those shipments are handled safely and securely and will continue to be done 

in such a manner. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you. 

Ms. SQUASSONI. I think both Reuters and Nucleonics Week have 

reported recently that States are getting jittery about these kinds 

of transfers, mostly even in just the fresh fuel. I think if you see 

the kind of expansion for the global climate change levels, you are 

talking about a lot of nuclear material in transit, much more than 

we have seen now. And so I think that does—I don’t know if it 

makes it a certainty, but I think it does increase the risk. Thank 

you. 

Mr. LOVINS. I don’t think one needs to imagine airplane crash 

scenarios, which I wrote about in a Pentagon study in 1981, to be 

concerned about particularly nearsighted nuclear plants with their 

gigacurie inventories being a terrorist target. Most of the existing 

plants can be caused to melt down by interventions that would 

take readily available devices that can generally be operated from 

outside the site boundary and would cause the safety systems to 

fail. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you. My time has expired. And I just wanted 

to comment, if I may, Mr. Chairman, that the 20-some-thousand 

shipments of nuclear material around the world, I presume a good 

number of them were before the rise of Islamic terror, terrorists 

and groups that we have seen in the last several years. And I also 

assume that that number would have to be drastically increased in 

order to reach the level of total nuclear output worldwide that is 

being considered. 

So with that, I thank the Chairman and yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman, and the Chair will recognize himself for another round of questions. 

Let me go back to you again Mr. Lovins, then I can go back to 

Mr. Flint. And I want to focus on this Florida Power & Light decision to build two reactors that could cost upwards of $24 billion. 

Why would Florida Power & Light, Mr. Lovins, want to build two 

reactors that couldn’t possibly generate any more than perhaps 

2,500 megawatts and be willing to run the risk of having it cost 

them $24 billion? What is in the mind of Florida Power & Light 

or any utility that moves in that direction? 

Mr. LOVINS. Having worked in the utility industry for several 

decades, I must say that what must be in their minds is a rare 

phenomenon and typically does not survive encounters with the 

capital market. 


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The longer paper I will submit for the record is replete with 

statements by the bond rating agencies and others in the industry, 

and indeed by utility executives very knowledgeable in this field, 

that they would not contemplate such an investment or they think 

it is unlikely or imprudent. So I must presume that whoever made 

that statement must not know very much about cost-effective alternatives. 

I think we are likely to have 100 gigawatts of wind power installed in this country before we have our first gigawatt of new nuclear, if ever. 

It was interesting thinking about the four to eight plants Mr. 

Flint mentioned when the NRC expects 33 applications. Now, perhaps there is a difference between a plant and a unit, but it sounds 

kind of like the funnel that Mr. Lochbaum talked about, going from 

announcements to actualities. 

The Nuclear Energy Institute has noted the cancellation already 

of about three-quarters of the announced coal plants. I expect 

somewhere between that and all of the nuclear announcements will 

lead to nothing. And the global nuclear industry projects that in 

the 5 years 2006 through 2010, it is going to build about 17 

gigawatts of capacity of which, by the way, most all or more than 

all is expected to be offset by retirements meanwhile, which we 

haven’t discussed here. But basically the bulk of the fleet is old. 

The average age is 24 years. And it will gradually go away. 

Now, compare 17 gigawatts over 5 years with the current construction rate just of Micro-Power let alone negawatts. Micro-Power 

today is adding 17 gigawatts about every 15 weeks. 

The CHAIRMAN. Why don’t you redefine for the audience what 

Micro-Power is? 

Mr. LOVINS. Micro-Power is cogeneration plus renewables minus 

big hydro. Well, Micro-Power is adding 17 gigawatts about every 15 

weeks. In other words, times faster than the nuclear industry has 

projected. Gross additions, not net of retirements. I don’t know 

what part of that number anyone who takes the market seriously 

doesn’t understand. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Let me go back to you again, Mr. 

Flint. It seems like an astounding amount of money, $24 billion for 

two reactors, given the fact that, as Mr. Lovins says, there is likely 

to be 100,000 megawatts of wind by 2016 across the country. So 

Florida Power & Light, it is known as a company that believes in 

wind power, solar power, other renewables in other parts of the 

country. But here it is willing to risk ratepayer, and I guess taxpayer, dollars up to the tune of $24 billion. It just doesn’t seem economical. It seems to be completely out of sync with what is going 

on in the whole rest of the national and international marketplace. 

Mr. FLINT. Well, Mr. Chairman, the reality is it is not out of 

sync, you are absolutely right. Florida Power & Light I believe is 

the largest wind utility in the United States, very familiar with the 

economics of wind going forward. But let me read you a little bit 

more from their determination of need petition. It said that the 

company, quote, has conducted an extensive review of information 

currently available within the industry on the expected cost of new 

generation nuclear units. 


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Quote, the addition of new nuclear capacity is economically superior versus the corresponding addition of new gas-fired combined 

cycle units required to provide the same power output, yielding 

large direct economic benefits to customers. Based on all the information available today it is clearly desirable to take the steps and 

make the expenditures necessary to retain the option of new nuclear capacity coming on line in 2018, end quote. 

Mr. Chairman, the reality is that we are seeing significant increases in the cost of all types of baseload generation. What we say 

is that nuclear power will be competitive. We have costs that are 

rising as concrete and steel and labor costs rise, but those are the 

same pressures that coal and gas-fired plants are being subject to. 

The cost of natural gas is going up and one can only speculate as 

to the future of coal in whatever the regulatory environment will 

be. 

The CHAIRMAN. Go back to Mr. Lovins. You just heard the Florida Power & Light justification for two nuclear power plants costing $24 billion. What is your comment? 

Mr. LOVINS. Or more precisely, for retaining the option value, 

which is very different from actually ordering a plant and putting 

cash on the barrel head to pay for it. 

I would differ in several respects with Mr. Flint’s remarks. The 

Cambridge Energy Research Associates construction industry—or 

excuse me, construction cost index for U.S. power plants in the 3 

years ending third quarter 2007 for North America showed a 2.31 

times year 2000 cost for all main types of power plants, but 1.79 

times for non-nuclear types; that is, nuclear suffering uniquely 

rapid cost escalation. This shows up very clearly not just in the nuclear numbers from the Keystone study last June, which were so 

devastating that the industry, and specifically NEI, misrepresents 

the results or ignores them, but also in actual comparisons. 

And I think Mr. Flint is incorrect to say that the right comparison—or to imply the right comparison is with other baseload central thermal plants, coal or gas. Those are not the real competitors. 

It is all central plants that are getting absolutely walloped in the 

marketplace by Micro-Power and negawatts. And the very competitors that the nuclear industry refuses to accept as important are 

eating its lunch. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Let me go to you, Ms. Squassoni. And let us talk about the nuclear power plants that are being proposed for Egypt, for other 

countries around the world that could pose nonproliferation threats 

to our country and to the rest of the world. 

Give us a little bit of detail as you are looking at what is now 

projected in terms of plutonium, uranium, nuclear materials, 

spreading to country after country, especially in the Middle East. 

Ms. SQUASSONI. I think you have to start with the context that 

over 27 countries have announced intentions to install nuclear capacity. And because they don’t have nuclear power plants now, 

they lack the infrastructure, not just—I mean regulatory, legal—— 

The CHAIRMAN. So which countries frighten you the most from 

a nonproliferation perspective Ms. Squassoni? 

Ms. SQUASSONI. Yemen. 

The CHAIRMAN. Keep going. 


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Ms. SQUASSONI. I have to get out my map here. I think part of 

the proliferation concern, it is not just—you know, nonproliferation 

advocates tend to be painted as non-nuclear. It is not a question 

of non-nuclear. But when you have what nuclear power plants will 

do in these countries, it will give them expertise, it will give them 

a scientific and technological basis. And in the current state of the 

nonproliferation regime where we have been completely unsuccessful in discouraging other countries from developing enrichment or 

reprocessing plants, these countries will then have a further excuse, if you will, for developing the entire fuel cycle. 

Now, is that cost effective? No. But that doesn’t happen to be 

stopping Iran, for one. 

The CHAIRMAN. So the risk we run, obviously, is that if nuclear 

becomes this global solution and they are constructed in Yemen, in 

Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in other countries—— 

Ms. SQUASSONI. United Arab Emirates. I mean I don’t want to 

paint the—it is not that these individual countries in the Middle 

East themselves might pose a problem, but they are certainly looking at their options as the probability that Iran can’t be discouraged from its nuclear program. They are certainly looking at their 

options and thinking, well, we will develop our own nuclear infrastructure to keep our options open. 

The CHAIRMAN. And that is the problem that I think I hear out 

of this testimony today. That Mr. Flint is not willing to project that 

by 2025 the nuclear industry can meet a production level that is 

perhaps upwards of 45 new nuclear power plants and keep it at the 

same level in the United States of its percentage of electricity generation as it has today. And to meet the problem globally we have 

to watch nuclear power plants be built in countries that don’t have 

regulatory systems or security systems in place that would give 

people confidence that the price we are paying in increased climate 

protection is not completely counteracted by a collapse of our nuclear global nonproliferation regime. And that is a real price that 

I think the whole world has to understand. 

Let me turn and recognize again the gentleman from New York, 

Mr. Hall. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you Mr. Chairman. I just have a couple of 

quick questions before I have to go vote. 

Mr. Flint, I just wanted to refer to a comment that Admiral 

McGinn made in his testimony before this committee that the experience of the Navy with naval reactors has been very, very positive, 

unquote. And this is often brought up as a point that safety can 

be achieved to a much higher degree. And I think that as we all 

know, the Navy is not a for-profit business. They have sailors down 

in the submarine close to the reactor, and it is in their interest, 

and they spare no expense and cut no corners. 

And if it were decided by—I mean, this is a societal decision I 

think we are talking about. We need to as a country decide what 

mix of different sources of power we are going to use. But in order 

to gain the degree of confidence of safety that would generate broad 

public support, do you personally or do you think the industry 

would take kindly to the idea of being nationalized as opposed to 

being a for-profit bunch of utilities that operate in different plants? 


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Mr. FLINT. Congressman, if I may, I would like to answer that 

in part and take part of that as a question for the record. First, 

the U.S. utility industry is not interested in being nationalized. The 

reason I would like to take part of that as a question for the record 

is that Admiral Skip Bowman who previously ran the nuclear reactor program is now the president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy 

Institute and he might like the opportunity to address that question directly, particularly the issues associated with naval reactors 

and its application to the civilian sector. 

And so if I may take that part as a question for the record, I 

would be delighted to get back to you. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you. 

[The information follows:] 

* * * * COMMITTEE INSERT * * * * 

Mr. HALL. And just one more for you, Mr. Flint. A couple of 

times in your testimony you reference clean—the benefits of clean 

energy from nuclear power. I am just curious why you would describe as clean a technology which produces cancer-producing radioactive isotopes that remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. 

When we look back at King Tut 7,000 years ago, or whenever 

that was, it is pretty hard to imagine that we will actually be able 

to isolate the longer-lived radioactive products of the fission process 

for the length of time that they need to be isolated and protect people that need to be shielded from them. 

I mean there have been books written about this that speculate 

about a nuclear priesthood that will design some kind of symbolism 

or language that can be read by future civilizations and might 

come across our repository so that they know not to go in there and 

get too close to it. 

I mean, that is the level of—now, also we don’t have a control 

planet, by the way. The fact that I have in my own family and 

friends half a dozen people who are either just recently deceased 

of cancer or fighting off some kind of cancer. Who happen to live 

in the immediate area of Indian Point, for instance, is something 

that we will never know if there is a connection because there is 

also PCBs and pesticides and all these other things in this one environment, this whole Earth that we have. 

There is no control planet, and then a planet that we can see 

what the effects would be. But I contend that it is not clean and 

it is actually fraudulent advertising to say that it is. Your response? 

Mr. FLINT. Congressman, the issue of what to say with somebody 

who lives near a power plant and gets cancer is always very difficult when you are sitting directly with somebody, as you do with 

your constituents from time to time. In different settings, though, 

it is appropriate to recall that 40 percent of the population will get 

cancer during its lifetime from other causes, okay. The issue really 

is, does nuclear power result in any incremental increase in cancer? 

And let us look at radiation for just a moment. Currently we anticipate that a new disposal standard for Yucca Mountain will be 

issued that will contemplate a million-year disposal requirement 

for Yucca Mountain. We estimate that DOE will come up with 

models that will show at what rate radionuclides from Yucca 


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Mountain might migrate through the environment and be released 

out to the environment and might get close enough to the surface 

to be brought up in plants and water and other things like that. 

Mr. HALL. Excuse me, my time has expired, so I just wanted to 

ask you—I gather that all these great lengths that you are going 

to to try to keep it isolated would imply that in fact the waste is 

not clean? 

Mr. FLINT. Congressman, I would imply that the doses of radiation that people receive from the civilian nuclear industry in this 

country are minuscule compared to background and other sources 

of radiation. The net benefit is the issue at hand. So, for example, 

when somebody goes in for an MRI and receives a fair amount of 

radiation, the amount of radiation they receive from a nuclear 

power plant is inconsequential in comparison, and the benefits of 

the clean electricity generated from that nuclear power plant are 

tremendous. 

The CHAIRMAN. I hate to say this, the gentleman’s time has expired. We have a very important roll call on the House floor. We 

have been constantly interrupted. I missed one or two, so I could 

keep the hearing going. I am going to ask each one of you to give 

us 30 seconds, what you want us to remember about the nuclear 

power industry as we are going forward. Begin with you, Mr. Flint. 

Mr. FLINT. Mr. Chairman, climate change is one of the great 

challenges facing this country. I see no scenario by which we can 

possibly achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions while we 

meet the electricity demands of our country, estimated to grow at 

30 percent between now and 2030, without a significant increase 

in the amount of nuclear power that we have. The industry is preparing to respond to that, and we will be able to respond to that 

challenge. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Ms. Squassoni. 

Ms. SQUASSONI. Thank you. The kinds of nuclear expansion that 

would be needed to affect global climate change are huge and unrealistic and incredibly costly, and moreover they carry with them 

proliferation risk that I don’t think the United States and the 

international community yet have begun to really combat. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Lochbaum. 

Mr. LOCHBAUM. We have 104 nuclear power reactors in the 

United States today. We may build some in the future, we may not. 

We don’t know. But we are going to have nuclear power in our future for a few decades. The best protection the American public has 

against that risk is an effective nuclear regulator. We don’t have 

that today. We need that as soon as we can get it. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Lovins. 

Mr. LOVINS. Nuclear power is continuing to drive an incurable 

attack of market forces just by heroic efforts to revive it with subsidies. But even though it is being massively outcompeted by larger, faster, cheaper options, Micro-Power negawatts, it has claimed 

to produce climate benefits. That claim is simply false. Because nuclear is so expensive that if the same money were spent instead on 

Micro-Power negawatts, we would get 11⁄2 to 11 times more carbon 

saving per dollar, and we would get it sooner. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Lovins. 


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We thank each of you. I think this was a very important panel 

for us to have. There are still questions I think that the Members 

of the committee who could not attend would like to pose to you 

in writing. We would appreciate written responses in a timely fashion. 

With that and the thanks of the committee, this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:05 a.m., the committee was adjourned.] 


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