Lobbying, global warming, economy portend revival of nuclear power in U.S.

JUDY PASTERNAK, SPECIAL TO MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration soon may guarantee up to $18.5 billion in loans to build three or four new nuclear power plants, and Congress is considering whether to add up to $100 billion more to expand nuclear power.
After a campaign in which companies and labor unions spent more than $600 million on lobbying and nearly $63 million on campaign contributions over the past decade, government appears ready to act.
Nuclear power generates about 20 percent of America's electricity, although no new plant has been authorized since the 1979 incident at Three Mile Island, when small amounts of radiation were released.
Three nagging issues have stymied nuclear expansion ever since -- the currently estimated $5 billion to $8 billion cost of a large nuclear plant, the politically unresolved issues around nuclear waste disposal and lingering public concerns about safety.
But emerging concerns about climate change have raised more alarm in recent years. And as the nation struggles to rebound from a deep recession, building new nuclear reactors could create thousands of jobs.
The industry, capitalizing on both developments, argues nuclear power must be part of efforts to curb climate change and has built bridges to labor unions while also aggressively lobbying Congress.
Traditional foes of nuclear power -- environmentalists, labor unions and many Democrats -- increasingly agree. "This is nuclear's year," said House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., an industry champion on Capitol Hill.
Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has pledged that the climate bill being considered by Congress will include help for the nuclear industry. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says he'd provide a much-sought Republican vote for the bill if it includes help for nuclear power.
Some Republicans, who historically have been friendlier to nuclear power, are pushing a plan to build 100 reactors over 20 years.
In the Bush administration, the nuclear industry got more research and development money than coal and other fossil fuels combined, and Congress approved the $18.5 billion in loan guarantees.
More recently, the industry has reached out to Democrats like Clyburn, whose state is among the leading nuclear power producers. President Obama's home state of Illinois is the biggest, and he and some political allies have long relationships with Exelon Corp., the country's biggest nuclear power company.
Lobbying efforts strong
In the first half of 2009, as Congress considered adding nuclear loan guarantees to the economic stimulus package and began work on the climate change bill, companies and unions interested in nuclear energy spent more than $55.8 million on lobbying, an analysis found.
Federal Election Commission records also show the industry's trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute, donated $99,000 to 63 candidates in the first half of 2009, about $60,000 of it to Democrats. As a group, nuclear allies gave $3.5 million to congressional candidates in the same period.
These efforts coincide with growing concern over the role coal-fired power plants have on carbon dioxide emissions and global warming.
"As you look at needs for clean energy and the need to protect the environment, there isn't a solution without nuclear," Jarret Adams, a spokesman for Areva, the French nuclear reactor builder and fuel supplier.
Not all environmental groups buy that. "The nuclear power industry is always going to remain several minutes away from serious accident and disaster," insists Tom Clements, the Southeastern Nuclear Campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth.
The Price-Anderson Act, passed in 1957 and renewed for 20 years in 2005, limits industry liability for a nuclear accident. It requires a private operator to buy the most private insurance possible -- $300 million -- and assesses fees on the industry for a fund to pay out damages above that amount if necessary.
The fund now holds more than $10 billion, but if that isn't enough Congress would decide whether the industry or public money would pay further costs.
Opponents also question why nuclear power needs federal subsidies. "If nuclear power is the right path ..., why can't it pay for itself?" Clements said.
The waste issue remains perhaps the biggest stumbling block. When existing reactors were built, the federal government agreed to eventually build a national repository for the highly radioactive wastes. After decades of debate, however, that promise is unkept, with the Yucca Mountain, Nev., repository in limbo.
The influence game
Besides lobbying and campaign contributions, the industry and its Nuclear Energy Institute have created a network of allies.
Patrick Moore, who played a leading role in Greenpeace in the 1970s, now helps lead the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, known as CASEnergy Coalition. His partner is Christine Todd Whitman, a former New Jersey governor and Environmental Protection Agency administrator. Both have touted nuclear power to Congress and on national television.
Moore, who runs a consulting company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, acknowledged the Nuclear Energy Institute is "my biggest client." Whitman's firm, the Whitman Strategy Group, says on its site that it was hired by CASEnergy, but the coalition's website doesn't mention a financial relationship. Neither does the Nuclear Energy Institute's site, which quotes Whitman and Moore on nuclear's merits.
On the labor front, the Nuclear Energy Institute and 20 unions co-sponsored a "Welcome Back, Congress" bash in a House of Representatives office building last January.
In March, Mark Ayers, president of the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, arranged a meeting between the Nuclear Energy Institute's president and Rep. Henry Waxman, the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, to talk about the climate bill. Afterward, the California Democrat began leading efforts to pass the measure.
"Now, Mr. Waxman has not been somebody who's been particularly open to our agenda ..., and yet he was very much so this time," the institute's chief lobbyist Alex Flint told nuclear executives in May. He credited union help, calling labor allies "bulletproof gear."
Rep. John Dingell, the veteran Michigan Democrat who was Waxman's predecessor as committee chairman and recipient of more than $600,000 since 1999 in nuclear interest campaign contributions, offered an amendment to the climate bill to create a clean energy bank to help finance expansion of low-carbon energy technologies, including nuclear.
The Nuclear Energy Institute had merely hoped Waxman wouldn't squelch Dingell's proposal. Waxman not only let the amendment in, but also voted for it.
A requirement that would benefit the AFL-CIO's construction unions also was put into the climate bill for "prevailing wages" at projects that receive government-backed loans. The Nuclear Energy Institute took a pro-union position for nuclear construction sites and gave the AFL-CIO's Ayers access to utility officials to pitch labor contracts.
In an interview, Ayers said he realized many proposed new nuclear plants would be in the South and in rural areas that are generally not union-friendly. So he offered "a quid pro quo here: I help you, but I want to build these plants."
More help wanted
High on the nuclear utilities' wish list is the more than $100 billion in guarantees for $200 billion worth of construction. The Nuclear Energy Institute contends the guarantees wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime because the recipients would pay fees to cover any defaults.
Nuclear power critics say the loans would divert resources from wind, solar, biomass and geothermal generators that don't have nuclear's safety or waste issues.
The clean energy bank as proposed would "be a big nuclear-coal slush fund," charged Michele Boyd, who lobbies for the anti-nuclear Physicians for Social Responsibility. Carbon capture for coal and nuclear construction are so expensive there would be little left for renewable power, she thinks.
There also are lower-cost options for generating more nuclear electricity. By upgrading its existing reactors, Exelon expects to gain 1,300 to 1,500 megawatts of capacity. That's about $1.5 billion less than a new reactor. No loan guarantees are needed, said Marshall Murphy, an Exelon spokesman.
Rep. Clyburn, however, said he finds the jobs argument convincing and is unimpressed by those who argue the nuclear safety issue.
"Every time I talk to somebody about the dangers, they go back to Three Mile Island," he said. "In fact, Three Mile Island did not fail. ... That process worked. So what's the deal?"
Most of all, Clyburn said, he wonders how the U.S. will generate its future electricity.
There's no telling whether the lobbying will succeed in expanding the loan program. And as yet the Energy Department hasn't given out the Bush-era loan guarantees of $18.5 billion.
However, Energy Secretary Steven Chu has announced talks with four finalists for those guarantees. "That $18.5 billion can only cover three or four, but no more," he told the House energy appropriations subcommittee in June.
He'd be back to ask for more, he added.
-- Judy Pasternak, formerly a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, reported and wrote this article under contract with the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a project of the School of Communication at American University in Washington. Caroline Stetler and Meera Pal of the workshop staff contributed.

-- For more information on American University's investigation of nuclear power lobbying, see http://tinyurl.com/ yeg528o