PPI Report Endorses Broader Role for Nuclear Energy

Earlier today, the Progressive Policy Institute issued a new report entitled, A Progressive Energy Platform, one that includes an endorsement of an expansion of nuclear generating capacity. Click here for the Executive Summary and here for the full text.

The following is from the text of the report:

Nuclear power holds great potential to be an integral part of a diversified energy portfolio for America. It produces no greenhouse gas emissions, so it can help clean up the air and combat climate change. And new plant designs promise to produce power more safely and economically than first-generation facilities.

For example, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has certified three new designs that would use significantly fewer pumps, pipes, valves, and cables than firstgeneration facilities. That will reduce the plants'’ complexity, making them easier to inspect and maintain. From a safety perspective, the new plants rely on natural forces such as gravity, natural circulation,and condensation, assuring safe shutdown even in the event of an accident.

In addition to these three new approved designs, at least four other designs may soon win NRC approval. Among these is the promising modular, "“pebble bed"” reactor design. As the name suggests, these smaller plants would use hundreds of thousands of uranium pebbles rather than large cores to generate power. As researchers at MIT recently concluded, these pebbles burn more completely than their traditional counterparts and are thus less of a weapons proliferation concern, simply because there is much less viable material left at the end of the process.

It will take time to bring these nextgeneration facilities online. Progressives should support efforts to expedite the process.

The energy bill of 2005 included a few worthy measures on that front, including federal investments, loan guarantees, and tax credits that promise to trim $200 million to $300 million off the costs of new reactors, allowing them to generate power more cost-effectively than gas- and coalfired power plants.

We've said it before, we'll say it again: Nuclear energy -- it's not a left/right question anymore.

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