Restarting Duane Arnold would be a risky mistake

Olivia Cohen’s Oct. 25 article in The Gazette, reporting on NexEra’s interest in restarting the Duane Arnold nuclear plant, requires us to consider the consequences of such an action. Restarting a closed reactor in decommissioning status has never been attempted. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) admits that there are no regulations authorizing the restart of a closed reactor. In order to restart Duane Arnold, NextEra will have to cobble together a daisy chain of existing regulations that is of doubtful legality, as is being attempted at the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan. Nor is there any assurance that the operation could be done safely.

The Duane Arnold plant has been in the decommissioning process for about 4 years. So it is not just a matter of putting fuel back in the reactor and starting it up. Even the Palisades reactor will require an expensive and tricky process to attempt to restart. And no decommissioning activity had been done there. As The Gazette article quotes NextEra CEO John Ketchum, the company would “consider” restarting Duane Arnold only if it “could be done safely and on budget.” And last June Mr. Ketchum said NextEra might consider restarting Duane Arnold if it could be done “in a way that is essentially risk free with plenty of mitigants around the approach.”

So how does the project become risk-free (I assume he means financially)? It becomes risk-free by obtaining billions of dollars from the government, funded by the taxpayers. That is how the restart of the Palisades plant is being financed. On the earnings call referred to in The Gazette article, Mr. Ketchum said that a restarted Duane Arnold plant would be used to provide power to data centers. Do we really want to use billions of dollars of taxpayer money so NextEra can provide power to a private industry? That is just like the federal tax credits funding the carbon dioxide pipelines for the benefit of a private company. If not for the billions in taxpayer dollars, would NextEra even consider restarting Duane Arnold?

Aside from the cost to taxpayers and the risky regulatory process for relicensing the plant, there are serious negative aspects to nuclear power. Contrary to the nuclear industry’s assertions, nuclear power is not clean or renewable. Nuclear reactor fuel is made from uranium, which is mined from the ground, just like oil, gas or coal. No one refers to those energy sources as renewable. The uranium that is mined leaves tailings and uranium processing leaves behind radioactive waste and harmful chemicals. During the operation of the nuclear plant, a radioactive material, tritium, often leaks and pollutes groundwater. But the really dirty aspect of nuclear power is the radioactive waste, primarily spent nuclear fuel.

There is approximately 90,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel in the United States today. And more is being added each day. Restarting Duane Arnold would add even more. And no one knows what to do with it. Efforts to establish a permanent repository have failed. The NRC has licensed two “interim’ storage facilities in New Mexico and Texas. But neither New Mexico nor Texas want it. That dispute is now before the United States Supreme Court. One federal court said the spent fuel will remain dangerous for “time spans seemingly beyond human comprehension.”

With no foreseeable likelihood of having a permanent repository, these “interim” facilities will become de facto permanent repositories without the protections of a permanent repository.

However, there is an alternative, one that is even acknowledged by Mr. Ketchum in the earnings call. In that call he repeatedly touts NextEra’s significant build out of renewable energy and battery storage. He says NextEra’s renewables have saved its customers nearly $16 billion since 2001, and renewables will only get cheaper in the future.

As for nuclear power, Mr. Ketchum said there are only a few nuclear plants that might be recommissioned economically, but even with a 100% success rate, they would meet less than 1% of demand.

The Duane Arnold plant was closed because it was uneconomical in the face of the increase in renewables. Nothing has changed.

Wally Taylor is the Legal Chair of the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club.