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Japan crisis may have little effect on U.S. energy policy
How will this event affect public opinion
on nuclear power in the United States?
Most people will have their previous
biases reconfirmed. The one place
where I see a potential shift is in the
group of environmental advocates who
may have been willing in the past to
compromise on nuclear energy as part
of a broader deal on climate change,
just like many of them were willing
to do on offshore drilling. This sort of
event will make them a lot less comfortable doing that.
Ultimately, the way this affects the
future of U.S. nuclear power is through
regulatory uncertainty and the sort
of public opposition that ultimately
drives up the cost of financing, and
thus the cost, of nuclear power. But a
warning I would give anyone trying
to interpret this is that it is extremely
early. If you go back and look at people’s conclusions on the consequences
of last year’s oil spill for the future of
energy policy a couple of days after the
spill, you’ll find that most of them bear
little resemblance to the reality that
unfolded. And it’s worth having a similar level of caution right now.
What about the nuclear
reactors currently applying
for relicensing, or those
located in earthquake-
prone zones?
The particular contours
of public opinion in areas
with nuclear reactors vary
enormously from site to
site. In some places, like in
Westchester, N. Y., people
hate nuclear.... In other
places, they see it as a
source of employment.
It’s important
not to
overstate the
consequences
of a particular
event for
U.S. policy
until you
really wait to
see how all
the details
play out.
How does this compare with last
year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill?
Again, people had their views confirmed. If you were antidrilling, you
looked at it and you saw a horrible
Do you anticipate
increased regulation?
It’s not like U.S. regulators
don’t look at things like earthquake
risk already. I’m sure people will be
taking a careful look over their regulatory schemes and trying to understand
exactly what the vulnerabilities are
that they may not have understood
previously, and if that leads to changes
in how they regulate, then there will be
changes. And regulators are constantly
reassessing their understanding for a
variety of different reasons.
The other thing that will come into
play is there’s been a lot of discussion
about how next-generation reactors
are — the technical term is “passively
cooled” — so that they can still cool
themselves even if they have a complete
How important is nuclear
to U.S. energy policy?
The nuclear component
is hugely consequential
for U.S. negotiations on
energy policy. There is
no question that when it
comes to alternatives to
fossil fuels, those on the
right are far more enthu-
siastic about nuclear
than about anything else.
It’s also true that many
of those on the left have
become more open to
nuclear as part of a pack-
age. And you saw, for
example, the president
in his State of the Union
speech pushing for a clean electricity
standard, rather than a renewable elec-
tricity standard — one of the two key
differences being that it would include
nuclear power under its remit. So cer-
tainly it’s a big piece of energy policy
negotiations. Now, let’s not overplay
this. Energy policy negotiations are
not in great shape, period, so it’s not
like nuclear will be decisive. Right now
nothing big is happening, and this only
makes things somewhat harder. But
over the longer term, I find it very dif-
ficult to see a political compromise on
clean energy — and on clean electricity
in particular — that doesn’t say some-
thing serious for nuclear. s
