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New nuclear reactors — like the Blue Castle plant proposed near eastern Utah's Green River — face an uphill battle next year because of rising costs and concerns about safety, a trio of nuclear experts warned Wednesday.
"There simply are too many other choices which provide greater certainty at lesser cost and without the enormous long-term unresolved problems and risks facing nuclear power," said Carol Werner, executive director of the bipartisan Environmental and Energy Study Institute.
The debate about what happens next for a widely touted nuclear revival seems likely to persist well into 2012 in the wake of advances and setbacks seen in the nuclear-power industry this year.
Industry supporters point to March's Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan as a lessons-learned tool they can use to improve U.S. plants now and in the future. They also note progress on new reactors in South Carolina and Georgia, as well as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's approval last week of a state-of-the-art design for new reactors and license renewals for 10 reactors.
"While some nuclear-energy critics predicted that Fukushima would signal a pivotal shift away from nuclear energy," said a key trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute, in a year-end summary, "it has not happened."
In Utah, state regulators are set to announce in early 2012 whether to grant Blue Castle access to 53,600 acre-feet of water from the Green River. And, in early 2013, plant proponents plan to submit their initial application to federal regulators.
Aaron Tilton, the former Utah lawmaker behind Blue Castle, did not call back Wednesday with a comment for this story.
While planning for the proposed Utah plant continues, industry critics noted in a teleconference that Fukushima has prompted nations worldwide to reconsider the risks of nuclear reactors.
Mark Cooper, senior fellow for economic analysis at the Vermont Law School's Institute for Energy and the Environment, predicted that safety-related fixes could boost the already-high cost of reactors by another 50 percent.
"Fukushima is magnifying the economic problems that the 'nuclear renaissance' faced," Cooper said, "which are the very problems that have plagued nuclear power throughout its history."