WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- A new UPI/Zogby International interactive poll found most Americans support more nuclear plants to power the country, but President Bush only mentioned nuclear power once in a State of the Union address that was heavy on energy.
Proponents of increasing nuclear capacity in the United States wanted more but were optimistic for the future.
A prominent nuclear opponent, however, says nuclear power is both dangerous and expensive and will detract from renewable energy.
Of the 6,909 U.S. adults surveyed Jan. 16-18, 61.8 percent either "strongly agree" or "somewhat agree" that new nuclear plants should be built. Another 29.1 percent either "somewhat disagree or strongly disagree" and 9.1 percent were "not sure." The poll, released Tuesday, had a 1.2 percent margin of error.
Of those who agreed new plants should be built, 63.1 percent said they would "support" a plant build in their community, 14.4 would "oppose" a plant in their community and 22.5 percent were not sure.
There are 103 nuclear reactors at 65 nuclear plants feeding about 20 percent of U.S. electricity demand. There has not been a new reactor licensed since 1979 and with U.S. energy demand increasing, nuclear's share will decrease if new plants aren't built. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects about seven new reactor applications in 2007, eight in 2008 and a total of more than 30 in the coming half decade, though stagnant funding could push the review process back an entire year.
"As the U.S. gets back into the building of commercial nuclear power plants, which we think is an inevitability, we want to see that result in more than just new reactors being built," said John Kotek, executive director of the American Council on Global Nuclear Competitiveness. "We want to see that result in the creation of American jobs, American factories."
This has a stronger chance of happening than in recent years, especially with new federal government programs and incentives. And nuclear power is being looked at while the somewhat turbulent oil and natural gas prices reached record highs recently and the threat of climate change has become more widely accepted.
"We thought it was great the president reaffirmed his commitment to nuclear energy as part of meeting the future's energy needs," Kotek said about Bush's address, though the U.S. Senate's most ardent nuclear fan thought it was too weak.
"I think that the important thing is what sort of proposals is the admin putting forward to advance the use of nuclear energy?" Kotek said.
As part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the nuclear industry was given federally backed insurance against regulatory process delays and indemnification from nuclear incident liability, tax credits, and federal loans for the first applications to traverse the NRC's new combined construction and license permitting process.
Nuclear Power 2010 and the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership are also two Bush programs designed to spur the U.S. industry.
"There's a pretty strong suite of programs this administration is carrying forward," Kotek said, "so we've been pretty pleased about that."
But 50 percent of those polled gave Bush's energy policy a "poor" rating and 63.1 percent either "somewhat disagree" or "strongly disagree" it "will meet our needs in the coming decades."
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said in a statement after Bush's address he was "disappointed" by the lack of attention given to nuclear energy.
"I've been telling people for the last couple of years that if they were to take a poll it would show the people are moving rapidly in favor of nuclear power," Domenici said in a follow-up interview with United Press International. He said a growth in nuclear has been stymied by bureaucracy and "enemies and those who are against nuclear power."
Michelle Boyd is one of them. The legislative director for Public Citizen's energy program said nuclear power neither addresses climate change nor dependency on fossil fuels.
"It's pretty hard to call an energy source clean when it makes radioactive waste that's dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years," Boyd said. (While the federal government has been fumbling for decades trying to open a deep geologic repository to store the radioactive byproduct of nuclear power, 40 percent of those polled said it should be sent to an underground location and, of those people, 42.7 percent said they'd "accept" it in their state.)
Boyd cites a 2000 report by the Renewable Energy Policy Project that said nuclear energy received $145.4 billion of the $151 billion in federal subsidies doled out to "electricity-generating technologies (excluding hydropower)" between 1943 and 1999.
Wind, solar and other renewable energy sources can't compete, Boyd said.
"Nuclear power has received an inordinate amount of subsidies that the federal government has put into energy sources," she said. "Nuclear power got off the ground because we were building nuclear bombs...It wasn't like the industry built it from scratch."
"It's not a question of can we do it," Boyd said of increasing the amount of energy demand met by renewable sources, "but a question of can we level the playing field."
The poll found 62.7 percent "somewhat agree" or "strongly agree" nuclear power is safe, though most trust state and local governments (which have little safety oversight) more than the federal government to ensure nuclear plants are safe. The energy industry received the lowest marks.
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