SAN DIEGO -- What was billed as a "status report on nuclear power" quickly turned into a passionate debate Monday as experts painted vastly different pictures of the controversial technology's ability to safely and economically fight global warming.
More than 100 people filled an auditorium at the new CalTrans headquarters building in San Diego to attend an informal hearing convened by the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee.
Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, who chairs the committee, said that, with new nuclear plants regularly the subject of debate in California and the nation as a whole, it made sense to do some homework on the subject.
"It has been 20 years since this body has heard about this issue," Kehoe said.
Since 1976 California has upheld a ban on new plants like the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station about 18 miles north of Oceanside, until the federal government solves the problem of nuclear waste disposal. Plans to store the nation's growing nuclear waste stockpile under Yucca Mountain in Nevada face stiff political opposition.
A series of invited experts, including nuclear operators and industry consultants, economists, anti-nuclear watchdogs and the investment community, testified at Monday's hearing.
Nuclear power plants, which split uranium atoms to heat water, generate steam and spin turbines that make electricity, do not spew greenhouse gases, and that was the message that pro-nuclear power experts drove home.
Dick Rosenblum, chief nuclear officer for Southern California Edison, which operates San Onofre, said the plant's two operating nuclear reactors avoid putting tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
"San Onofre displaces the equivalent of about 900,000 cars in California every year," Rosenblum said.
But the anti-nuclear participants pointed to the highly radioactive waste that such plants do generate. That waste must be stored in deep pools for years before being moved into thick steel canisters and plunged into thick concrete vaults, where the radiation decays slowly over thousands of years.
Carl Zichella, regional staff director for the Sierra Club, noted that any new nuclear plants built in California will take a decade to construct at an estimated cost of $4 billion to $6 billion. He said that thermal solar plants, which use mirrors to focus solar energy, are a better solution because they can be built today.
"By the time enough (nuclear plants) were deployed to replace coal plants, it would be too late to make a difference," Zichella said.
Economic concerns also played a large role in Monday's four-hour hearing. Consultants and industry experts disagreed on whether escalating construction costs will make new nuclear plants, which require massive investment in raw materials like steel and concrete, infeasible.
Jim Harding, an economist and consultant, noted that few companies can produce the large components necessary to build a modern nuclear plant.
"You've got a serious risk of monopoly pricing all the way along," Harding said.
But Joe Turnage, senior vice president for Constellation Energy, which is building several new nuclear plants in other nations, said he has run the numbers for California and found that, with government-backed loans, a nuclear plant in the Golden State could be a sound investment.
"We would seriously consider investing in a project like that," he said.
Gregor Gable
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