Oct 24 - International Herald Tribune

After three decades without starting a single new plant, the American nuclear power industry is getting ready to build again.

The U.S. nuclear industry's announcement several years ago that it would resume plant construction was met with deep skepticism. Not since 1973 had anybody in the United States ordered a nuclear plant that actually got built, and the obstacles to a new generation of plants seemed daunting.

But now, 21 companies are seeking permission to build 34 new power plants across the United States, from New York to Texas. Factories are springing up in Indiana and Louisiana to build reactor parts.

The trend echoes what is under way in Britain and parts of Eastern Europe, where concerns about climate change are beginning to outweigh those about the risks of nuclear accidents. Unlike most sources of power, nuclear plants do not emit the gases that cause global warming, once they have been built.

Other countries, like France, Japan and China, have been building nuclear plants for a long time.

On Thursday, the French company Areva, the world's largest builder of nuclear reactors, and the U.S. company Northrop Grumman announced an investment of more than $360 million in a Northrop shipyard in Newport News, Virginia, to build major components for seven proposed U.S. reactors.

Also in the United States, workers are clearing a site in Georgia to install reactors. Starting in January, millions of electricity customers in Florida will be billed several extra dollars a month to fund four new reactors.

The change of fortunes for the nuclear industry in the United States has come so fast that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington has had to hire hundreds of new engineers to handle the sudden increase in applications.

It is still unclear how many of the 34 proposed plants will actually start operating one day, and how many billions of dollars they might cost. It is uncertain if financing can be found in today's troubled credit markets, and how the overall cost might compare with those of other power sources. But experts who follow the power industry increasingly think that it is likely that at least some of the plants will produce nuclear energy one day.

"The climate for introducing new plants is probably the best it's been since the industry started canceling plants" 30 years ago, said Brian Balogh, a history professor at the University of Virginia. The public is increasingly concerned about global warming and also can point to an international record of safe and reliable nuclear plants.

In the United States, new orders for reactors essentially ended in October 1973. That is the month that an Arab oil embargo started, heralding an age of economic problems that drove up construction costs and suppressed demand for power. More than 100 nuclear reactors, some in advanced stages of construction, were canceled, and tens of billions of dollars were squandered.

Support for nuclear power dwindled further after the accident in 1979 at the Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, reactor and after the Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine in 1986.

Indeed, nuclear energy has met with a series of roadblocks in Europe. Austrians voted in a 1972 referendum to scrap the country's single nuclear plant, just before it was scheduled to open. Italy finished shutting down its two remaining nuclear plants, of four, after the explosion in Chernobyl. Germany and Belgium have enacted laws to phase out locally-generated nuclear power.

But nuclear power never went away, in Europe or in the United States, where there are now 103 operating commercial reactors that generate almost 20 percent of the country's electric power.

With mounting concern over the past few years about global warming and fuel supplies, support for new nuclear reactors is growing, including in the U.S. Congress.

Investment for U.S. nuclear efforts is starting to flow. "We have a long-term vision," Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of Areva, said in an interview in Washington on Thursday. The American market, she said, is the world's largest, and "we think that this market is so important itself, and has the capacity to be competitive in exports."

Areva is also planning to build nuclear plants in Britain and China and hopes to sell nuclear energy in the Gulf.

China currently operates eleven nuclear plants, but based on its electricity needs and its desire to increase the share of nuclear energy, it will need 20 or more new nuclear plants by 2020. Even Middle Eastern countries that have large oil reserves have expressed interest in nuclear reactors.

To help spur a similar revival, the U.S. Congress provided $18.5 billion in loan guarantees in a 2005 energy law, in addition to operating subsidies similar to those available for solar and wind power and insurance against regulatory delays.

The new reactors have confronted little effective political opposition so far. While few advocates of environmental change are avid supporters of nuclear power, a handful acknowledge that it could play a role in countering global warming.

"There is no question that some of the passion of the anti- nuclear movement has drained away," said Balogh, the author of a 1990 book on opposition to nuclear power.

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

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