How will energy plans affect state, Wolf Creek?

When it comes to nuclear power, Tony Blaufuss, Garnett, has mellowed over the years.

Blaufuss, one of the strongest critics of the proposed Wolf Creek nuclear plant in neighboring Coffey County during the 1970s and 1980s, has come to terms with it.

He said that many of his fears about Wolf Creek were proven wrong and that it has had a good safety record over the years.

“Personally, I don’t think it’s as bad as having new coal plants,” Blaufuss said.

Blaufuss was a member of a prominent group of opponents, some of whom ended up in the Allen County Jail in Iola because of their protests. Blaufuss wasn’t among them, but some opponents, including his brother, laid on railroad tracks in front of a train bringing some of the largest parts of the reactor to the plant site.

Blaufuss had to go to Iola to bail them out of jail.

These days, he said he wouldn’t make an objection if the owners of Wolf Creek decided to add another nuclear reactor.

And that’s what many state legislators want.

Both the Kansas Senate and House overwhelmingly changed the law on how utilities charge customers to make it easier to recover the cost of building a new nuclear power plant. The bill was sent to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

Supporters say the bill is needed if utilities are going to seriously consider nuclear power. Opponents said it will mean higher bills for utility customers.

It also creates an 11-member advisory committee appointed by House and Senate leaders and gives the Kansas Corporation Commission oversight over any nuclear proposal.

On the federal level, the Bush Administration pushed through an energy package in 2005 that included billion-dollar subsidies for the nuclear energy industry, government loan guarantees for new reactors, tax credits for the first new reactors, and a limitation on utility liability for nuclear accidents.

The new subsidies and incentives have generated some buzz among the nuclear industry and utilities have applied for 30 permits for new nuclear power plants.

Supporters note that many countries, especially France and Japan, get most of their electricity from nuclear plants.

Wolf Creek is the only nuclear power plant in Kansas.

Although it has one nuclear reactor, Wolf Creek was designed for two, Jenny Hageman, a Wolf Creek spokeswoman, said.

If it were built, the second unit would be east of the present unit, she said.

Whether the the state and federal incentives are enough to result in a Wolf Creek 2 is another question.

Although supporters of nuclear note that the nuclear fuel is much cheaper than natural gas or coal, and that nuclear power costs very little to generate, any utility would have to spend billions to build a new plant.

Financial analysts have noted that Wolf Creek’s originator, Kansas Gas & Electric, faced severe financial strains paying for the plant and was eventually forced to merge with Kansas Power & Light. The combined company is called Westar.

Westar sold shares of Wolf Creek to other utilities and the plant is now owned by Westar and Kansas City Power & Light, which have 47 percent each; and the Kansas Electric Power Cooperative, which has 6 percent.

 Bob Eye, Topeka attorney who carried on a court battle against Wolf Creek, said a second unit won’t ever be built.

“Wall Street won’t invest in nuclear plants,” Eye said. “... It’s a matter of money, ultimately.”  

Potential investors have been spooked by the staggering upfront costs and the time it takes to build new plants, the growing shortage of uranium, the consequences of a nuclear accident, disposal of nuclear waste, and the fact that nuclear power plants are highly desirable targets for terrorists, he said.

Eye sat through one Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting in which officials glowingly discussed the number of new applications as a result of the new federal incentives.

But at the end of the meeting, they ruefully admitted that not one of the applications had attracted any investment money, he said.

“The nuclear industry is one of the most highly subsidized in the American economy,” he said. “Without the subsidies, they would turn off all their plants. They can’t survive without the subsidies.”

If the same subsidies were given to encourage solar and wind power, the U.S. would get a much more cleaner power in a far shorter time period, he said.

Wolf Creek is one of the top nuclear plants and has set performance and production records, Matt Tidwell, spokesman for Kansas City Power & Light, said.

But nothing has been announced concerning a second Wolf Creek unit, he said.

That may change if rules regarding nuclear power are changed, he said.

But because of the huge financial and regulatory burdens that come with building new nuclear plants, it takes a long time to build new plants, he said.

“I’d say the lead time is 10 to 15 years from concept to brick and mortar,” Tidwell said. “... We have demand issues right now.”

Instead, KCP&L has concentrated on other options instead of building new coal or nuclear power plants, Tidwell said.

The company has aggressively encouraged customers to adopt energy conservation measures to try to cut demand during high-peak electrical demand, he said.

The utility built a 100-megawatt wind farm near Dodge City and has promised to quadruple the amount of electricity it receives from wind power by 2012, Tidwell said.

Nuclear’s biggest problem — and it remains a serious and perhaps insoluble problem — is disposing of the highly contaminated spent fuel rods and other nuclear waste, Blaufuss said.

Because much of the waste is so radioactive and remains hazardous for so long, it would have to be stored, protected and monitored for thousands of years.

“You’d to find a way to bury stuff underground safely,” Blaufuss said. “I’m not sure they can get rid of it.”

Although many lawmakers and government officials are eager to embrace nuclear power and offer the industry financial and tax incentives, they aren’t so anxious to accept the highly-radioactive fuel rods and other waste byproducts.

Nearly all nuclear reactors, including Wolf Creek, keep their spent fuel rods in pools of water protecting their reactor cores. In the next few years, some of the older plants will run out of space to store spent rods.

A multi-state compact including Kansas broke down over where to store low-level nuclear waste.

And Nevada, site of the proposed Yucca Mountain federal nuclear waste repository 80 miles southwest of Las Vegas, has fought ferociously to keep nuclear waste out of the state.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader and who is from Nevada, has used his position to sidetrack the Yucca Mountain project.

He has even publicly said “Yucca Mountain is dead. It will never happen.”

“If people think Nevada will ever accept spent fuel rods, they don’t understand Nevada politics,” Eye said.