Energy Department Funds Nuclear Power Research

WASHINGTON, DC, May 25, 2004 (ENS) - A detailed study for the potential construction of a two-unit Advanced Boiling Water Reactor nuclear plant on Bellefonte site near Hollywood, Alabama is in the works. The U.S. Department of Energy announced Monday that it will cooperate on the study with a nuclear industry team led by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal agency.

The study, which will cost a total of $4.25 million over the next 10 months, is intended to help the TVA decide whether to build a new, advanced technology nuclear plant at the site by the middle of the next decade.

The technology is a Generation III nuclear power plant that is based on a design developed by General Electric and was certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1997.

While no plant using this technology has been built in the United States, three Advanced Boiling Water Reactor plants are successfully operating in Japan and three additional units are under construction in Japan and Taiwan.

"We see this study as an important step in industry's consideration of building new nuclear power plants in this country," said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

"Nuclear power is the only large-scale source of domestically produced electricity that does not produce greenhouse gases," Abraham said. "It is, therefore, one of our most important energy sources today and has tremendous potential to support the nation's energy and environmental goals in the future."

The plant could produce more than 2,600 megawatts of electric energy, according to the Energy Department, which will fund half the cost of the study.

TVA has three existing nuclear power plants - combined they produce some 5,700 megawatts.

The project is part of a Bush administration initiative designed to promote renewed growth in nuclear power. No new nuclear plant has been constructed in the United States since the 1970s.

Critics of nuclear power point out that problems of disposal of high-level nuclear waste have not been solved, and they fear that an accident or terrorist stike at a nuclear power plant could contaminate a wide area with deadly radiation.