Reply #41: "Nuclear Renaissance or Nuclear Nightmare?" [View All]

Thought the Nuclear Power Industry was Dead? Guess again. The Bush Administration is Breathing New Life into Commercial Nukes.

By Karl Grossman
Special to CorpWatch
October 23, 2002

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"Nuclear Globalization
Meanwhile, as it prepares for its hoped-for "renaissance," the nuclear industry has globalized:

British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. has purchased Westinghouse (the worlds largest reactor manufacturer) and ABB/Combustion Engineering (itself the product of an earlier merger of the Swedish ABB and the U.S. corporation Combustion Engineering).

Siemens, the largest reactor builder in Germany, and Framatome, with a monopoly on construction of French reactors, announced their intent to merge most aspects of their nuclear businesses.

General Electric (the world's second largest reactor manufacturer after Westinghouse) joined with Mitsubishi to build new atomic plants in Japan.

Minatom, the giant Russian state-owned nuclear entity, is moving to build new nuclear plants in Russia and internationally.
A handful of giant multinational energy corporations are positioning themselves to become "the robber barons of the 2lst Century," says Michael Mariotte, Executive Director of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service/World Information Service on Energy-Amsterdam (NIRS-WISE Amsterdam). Mariotte added that "perhaps no industry is embracing globalization quite so fervently," in a field "where the stakes are highest, where the threats to all life are most at risk."

Paul Gunter, head of the organizations Reactor Watchdog Project, who attended the "Nuclear Renaissance" conference in Washington, said rather than a renaissance, what is involved is "a relapse into the failed nuclear energy policy" of the past."

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"Corporate Welfare
Also making a presentation at the "Nuclear Renaissance" conference was Westinghouse Vice President for New Plants Ernie H. Kennedy who described "the post-TMI phase" for the nuclear industry as a "collapse of new plant orders, cancellation of existing orders" and "sharply increasing O&M costs." But, he said, the nuclear industry in the 1990s had been busy "getting the house in order" and "preparing for the renaissance 2000s." Now, said Mr. Kennedy, there is "slow but sustained improvement in public acceptance" and "improved political support."

Gail H. Marcus, Bush administration appointee as principal deputy director of the U.S. Department of Energy, who is also president of the pro-industry American Nuclear Society, began her presentation by quoting from report of the National Energy Policy Development Group. She said new nuclear power plants would be built under a "cost-shared" arrangement between the federal government and utilities. This will be combined, she said, with the Department of Energys "Early Site Permit" or expedited nuclear plant process on three projects soon to be advanced.

The "cost-shared" and "Early Site Permit" arrangements will be initially used in construction by:

Dominion Energy for new nuclear plant at the current North Anna nuclear plant site in Virginia

Entergy for a new nuclear plant at the Grand Gulf nuclear plant site in Mississippi

Excelon for a new nuclear plant at the Clinton nuclear plant site in Illinois.
Marcus said the new plants were expected to come on line by 2005 and some, or all, of the "advanced" nuclear plant would be deployed by 2010."

--snip-- http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=4528