NC bill aims to remove barriers to nuclear energy

A North Carolina bill updating language in statutes from "renewable energy" to "clean energy" passed a key committee Tuesday, paving the way for nuclear and fusion development in the state.

Republican Senator Paul Newton, who spoke on behalf of Senate Bill 678 before the Senate Rules Committee, called the barriers to nuclear "archaic."

“[The bill] also recognizes that fusion energy may be a contributor to our success in the future, and that we are wide open in North Carolina to welcoming fusion technology here in our state,” Newton said.

In addition to the language change, the bill would lift some requirements of construction applicants for nuclear facilities and expands the factors that the Utilities Commission must consider including power quality, resource availability, capacity, and costs of maintenance and decommissioning. This gives weight to the advantages of nuclear and highlights some of the weaknesses of solar energy, as panels must be decommissioned and replaced after about 30 years. The bill also includes "dispatchability" as a consideration. Dispatchable generation refers to sources of electricity that power grid operators can program on demand according to market needs, such as the ability to adjust output of a plant.

André Béliveau, the Strategic Projects and Government Affairs Manager at the John Locke Foundation, spoke in favor of the bill at Tuesday's session. "Any endeavor seeking to lower carbon must have nuclear in the mix," Béliveau said. "States that are leading in clean energy are embracing nuclear. It's safe, reliable, and the land use is much smaller than wind and solar to adequately power the grid."

David Rogers, southeast regional director of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, says there are too many risks with reliance on nuclear energy. "There's just a huge problem with the waste that as a country and as a society, we haven't figured out how to solve," he said.

The radioactive waste that nuclear power plants create can remain dangerous to human health for thousands of years. Currently, nuclear waste is stored on site as a temporary solution, but it's still unclear how utilities plan to permanently and safely dispose of that waste in the United States.

"The lowest-cost resources today are things like solar, wind, and battery storage," said Rogers. "We should be investing in resources that are already mature and can be deployed quickly to lower emissions quickly."

Other organizations including The Environmental Working Group, 350 Triangle, and North Carolina Alliance to Protect Our People and the Places We Live have taken a stance against nuclear energy development, calling it a costly and unproven technology that could fail to achieve emissions cuts by the 2050 deadline.

The cost, timeline, and feasibility of development are also concerns.

New reactors at the Vogtle nuclear power plant near Augusta, Georgia is now six years behind schedule. The total cost of the project at Vogtle will cost more than $30 billion, nearly twice as much as the original budget. When complete, those units will be the first entirely new U.S. reactors in decades.

"That's one of the biggest concerns around nuclear: who's going to foot the bill?," Rogers asked.