Rod Adams Takes On NIRS' Scorecard on the Nuclear Industry's Recent Failures

Last week, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) issued a myopic press release dismissing the recent successes of the nuclear industry based only on how many states overturned their ban on building new nuclear plants. From Rod:

According to NIRS, there have been six attempts in 2009 by the nuclear industry to overturn existing state laws that effectively ban projects to build new nuclear power plants or the collection of construction work in progress payments (CWIP) before beginning to operate plants in rate regulated states. NIRS has claimed that each of these attempts has failed. The six states listed on the NIRS score card are Kentucky, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Hawaii.

Funny enough, Rod found this fact about one of the states that NIRS counted:

I learned something by listening to the conference call and the question and answer session on streaming audio that people who read the press release will not learn - Wisconsin has not even had their legislative session in 2009, so its vote has not yet been taken and certainly should not be counted in the loss column yet.

I guess NIRS' math is different than everybody else's. So is the nuclear industry having a bad year? Here's Rod's tally:

Here is the list so far - I would love to hear from you if I neglected any confirmed victories. (Unlike NIRS, I know that there are still many contests in progress and that this is going to be a long season with some highs and some lows.)

• Areva and Northrop-Grumman broke ground on a 330,000 square foot nuclear components factory in Newport News, VA


• The NRC issued Southern Company an Early Site Permit and Limited Work Authorization for a two unit nuclear plant project at Vogtle


• Westinghouse opened new training centers for nuclear professionals


• Southern Legislative Conference of The Council of State Governments, representing 16 states, unanimously adopted a proposal urging Congress and the administration to support an increase in the Title XVII Loan Guarantee Program by $25 billion and to create a Clean Energy Deployment Administration that includes nuclear energy as an eligible technology


• B&W announces the mPower^TM modular nuclear plant that can be manufactured in their existing N-stamp holding US production facilities.


• Florida approves Progress Energy's Site Certification Application (SCA) for a two reactor project in Levy County.

I would also like to add that both the Environmental Protection Agency (pdf) and the Energy Information Administration analyzed the impacts of the Waxman-Markey bill on climate change that passed the House earlier this year and found that nuclear energy will increase substantially in decades to come to help reduce CO2 emissions. Be sure to stop by Rod's post, Mr. Dave Kraft who was quoted in NIRS' press release joined the comments and has definitely added fuel to the debate.