Nobody in the United States has started building a nuclear power plant in more than three decades. Mayo A. Shattuck III could be the first. As the chief executive of Constellation Energy, a utility holding company in Baltimore that already operates five nuclear reactors, Mr. Shattuck is convinced that nuclear power is on the verge of a renaissance, ready to provide reliable electricity at a competitive price. He has already taken the first steps toward achieving that, moving recently to order critical parts for a new reactor.

But Constellation’s neighboring utility, the PPL Corporation, takes a different view. Even though PPL has successfully operated two reactors since 1983, its chairman, William F. Hecht, said that he had no plans for new nuclear plants.

When nuclear reactors were first commercialized almost half a century ago, every self-respecting electric utility wanted one. They were encouraged by a government that saw nuclear energy as a peaceful, redemptive byproduct of the deadly power unleashed at Hiroshima. The federal official for promoting nuclear energy, Lewis L. Strauss, said it would produce electricity “too cheap to meter.”

It has never given consumers anything like that. But with the industry now consolidated so that most reactors are in the hands of a comparatively few operators, utility executives are sharply divided over whether nuclear power offers an attractive choice as they seek to satisfy a growing demand for electricity.

For them, the question comes down not so much to safety and environmental impact but to whether the potential reward is worth the financial risk. And those who already operate several reactors are prone to want more. The debate within the utility industry over reviving nuclear power has taken on added importance, though, because unlike plants that burn coal and other fossil fuels, reactors do not produce gases that contribute to global warming.

And once again, Washington is encouraging utilities to push ahead. The summer of 2005’s energy bill offered a generous production tax credit, insurance against regulatory delays and loan guarantees. Earlier legislation gave the industry money to help plan new plants. And they continue to benefit from a ceiling on liability damages in case of an accident.

Despite nuclear power’s promise as a clean energy source that could hold down emissions of global warming gases, most environmentalists are skeptical of the latest claims by its advocates. They say that utilities, at best, will move ahead with a handful of plants that will receive lavish incentives from the government. But the risks of nuclear power are still so high, they argue, that no utility will be willing to put its own money into building a plant unless the federal government heavily subsidizes it.

“What dismays me about the present situation is the extent to which the Congress and the administration, and now an occasional state legislature, have rushed to anoint it as the solution to climate change,” said Peter A. Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and former chairman of the public service commissions of both Maine and New York. If nuclear plants cannot compete without subsidies, he said, they should not be built. Today, nuclear power supplies just under 20 percent of the electricity used in the United States. Its share has been slipping lately as new plants running on other fuels have come online.

With the price of natural gas increasing, coal has emerged once again as the most popular way to generate electricity, a trend that — if it continues — is expected to lead to a significant rise in emissions of carbon dioxide. The utility sector emits about a third of the carbon dioxide produced in this country, nearly all of that from coal. Adding dozens more nuclear reactors to that mix could reverse the rise in carbon dioxide from the electricity-generating system, but its advance would also run up against certain limits.

Nuclear plants cannot replace all of the fossil fuel used in power generation because current nuclear designs do not easily alter the power output. Plants running on natural gas and coal, by contrast, can adjust their output over the course of a day to match demand. For a long time, the underlying confidence of utilities in nuclear technology was moot because the economics would not support a new reactor; all those ordered after 1973 were canceled.

But now, because of high prices for natural gas and uncertainty about how emissions from coal plants will be regulated in the future, the nuclear industry is moving from near death to the prospect that perhaps a handful of plants will be ordered in the next few years. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission counts 27 potential reactors under consideration; 103 are now operable. For all the momentum behind the push, however, there is still a high degree of skepticism within the utility industry.
(By MATTHEW L. WALD, New York Times 22/08/2006)