Nuclear Lobby Downplays Safety Concerns on 'Poster Child' Reactor

Feb. 19, 2010 — -- The head of the lead lobbying group for the nuclear power industry today downplayed regulators' safety concerns about the designs of two nuclear reactors expected to be the first built in the United States in some 30 years.

Nuclear Energy Institute CEO and president Marvin Fertel said "we have tremendous confidence" that two new reactors planned for the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Burke, Ga., "will be basically our poster child for how to do it right."

Fertel, who spoke at an NEI analyst briefing in New York this morning, said concerns raised by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the reactors last year were being resolved and called them "technical" and not significant. The planned reactors, he said, will be in operation between 2016 and 2017.

President Obama announced Monday that the Vogtle plant would receive $8.33 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy -- the first nuclear power plant to receive the guarantees under a DOE program enacted in 2005.

The plant is home to two existing reactors and some construction has already begun on the site to make way for the new units. The guarantees, conditioned on construction approval from the NRC, will help keep electricity rates lower for customers of Southern Company, which owns the Vogtle plant, Southern CEO David Ratcliffe told reporters today.

"People think, 'Well you're giving it to people who don't need the money.' The fact of the matter is our customers need lower costs and that's the benefit that this loan guaranty provides," Ratcliffe said.

The federal loan guarantees mean financing for the reactors will be at a lower cost, saving millions of dollars that would otherwise be paid out to service debt on the project.

The nuclear industry has promoted the two reactors as leading the way in reviving the country's development of new nuclear power plants -- efforts beset over the years by financial challenges, public blowback in the Wake of the Three Mile Island meltdown and regulatory hurdles. The NRC, which has final say over whether new plants get built, hasn't approved construction on a new reactor since 1978.