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1. Improving the Efficiency of NRC Power Reactor Licensing: The 1957 Mandatory Hearing Reconsidered

Author:
Matt Bowen, Rama T. Ponangi, and Stephen Burns
Publication Date:
11-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), Columbia University
Abstract:
Nuclear energy can play a vital role in helping the US—and the globe—meet mid-century climate goals. But any such role for nuclear depends on overcoming the significant if underappreciated challenges posed by the current nuclear licensing process in the US. Put simply, getting a new nuclear project licensed is time-consuming and expensive. This report, part of ongoing research on nuclear energy at the Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University SIPA focuses on a singular element of the licensing process that has drawn particular scrutiny for the resources it demands: the so-called mandatory hearing. Dating to a 1957 amendment to the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) of 1954, the mandatory hearing was put in place during the early period of nuclear reactor regulation as a way of forcing the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to be more transparent with the public about projects under consideration for development. It was intended to provide an open forum in which the details of reactor project applications were aired publicly and debated. But today, well over half a century since the 1957 amendment to the AEA, there are several compelling reasons to reconsider the mandatory hearing requirement.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Regulation, and Nuclear Energy
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

2. Nuclear Waste Policy Actions for the 117th Congress and Biden Administration

Author:
Matt Bowen
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), Columbia University
Abstract:
In the 117th Congress, the United States Senate is evenly divided, 50-50, between the two major political parties, and the margin for control of the US House is small. One nonpartisan—and overdue—policy issue that Congress and the executive branch could focus on is the US nuclear waste management program. The US is currently paying billions to utilities to house spent nuclear fuel (SNF) at operating and shutdown facilities, and high-level waste (HLW) remains at former nuclear weapons complex sites around the country. Add to this the potential for greater future reliance on nuclear power in a decarbonizing economy, and the need to finally get a handle on managing radioactive waste is clear. An earlier report from the Center on Global Energy Policy on the US nuclear waste management program examined larger structural changes that the federal government could pursue to help the program make progress, such as fixing the funding mechanism and updating regulatory standards.[1] This commentary discusses the US program as it stands in the 117th Congress and proposes a series of comparatively smaller actions that could be considered and perhaps pursued on a bipartisan basis in the next few years.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Governance, Leadership, and Nuclear Waste
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

3. Comparing Government Financing of Reactor Exports: Considerations for US Policy Makers

Author:
Matt Bowen and Alec Apostoaei
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), Columbia University
Abstract:
Decarbonizing the world’s energy supply by 2050 will require financing low-carbon energy projects at a cost of upwards of trillions of dollars. Nuclear energy is one of the few dispatchable low-carbon energy resources, and studies by the International Energy Agency have estimated a possible doubling of nuclear power as part of scenarios for achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury. Large, capital-intensive projects such as nuclear power plants can be challenging for some countries to finance, however. As a result, countries wishing to build nuclear reactors look for attractive financing from supplier nations in the form of loans and equity. This report, part of wider work on nuclear energy at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, compares the financing terms offered between 2000 and 2021 by the world’s major exporters of nuclear power plants: Russia, France, the Republic of Korea (ROK), China, and the United States. Russia dominated this period, with 11 reactors connected to power grids in six countries, in part due to the attractive state-backed financing offers it made. At the beginning of 2022, Russia had 13 of its reactors under construction in other countries, more than all other countries’ reactor exports combined. The US government has been actively developing advanced reactor technologies, partly with the intention of exporting them to other countries to help them address their energy and environmental goals. However, for numerous reasons, the US government has not financed a new US reactor export in decades, even though the US Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and the new International Development Financing Corporation (DFC) are capable of supporting exports of this scale. Given the recent absence of US financing, this report analyzes the earlier activities of EXIM related to nuclear energy and their relevance for potentially reviving such financing efforts in the near or medium term. A key factor shaping reactor vendor competitions is a nuclear arrangement by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in which France, the ROK, and the United States are members but China and Russia are not. This arrangement places limitations on OECD members regarding key loan terms for their reactor exports, including minimum interest rates and loan repayment terms, that can put them at a disadvantage compared to state-owned vendors from Russia and China. The arrangement does not restrict equity investments in reactor exports, posing an additional disadvantage for private vendors in the United States as they compete with larger, state-owned vendors in France and the ROK. As other countries develop their civil nuclear energy programs or begin new ones, the US government will need to decide whether it will assist in financing US reactor exports. The federal government has a variety of potential rationales for doing so, including creating jobs, assisting other countries in overcoming their energy and environmental challenges, and limiting Chinese and Russian influence. On the other hand, financing from EXIM or the DFC will come with financial risk, as some individual projects may not have successful outcomes.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Carbon Emissions, Decarbonization, and Nuclear Energy
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

4. To Bring Emissions-Slashing Technologies to Market, the United States Needs Targeted Demand-Pull Innovation Policies

Author:
Varun Sivaram, Matt Bowen, Noah Kaufman, and Doug Rand
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), Columbia University
Abstract:
President-elect Joe Biden has called climate change one of the four most important crises facing the country and pledged ambitious climate action.[1] At the heart of his strategy to slash US and global emissions is a focus on developing new and improved technologies to make clean energy transitions more affordable. During the campaign, Biden pledged a “historic investment in clean energy innovation.”[2] Indeed, boosting funding for energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) is widely popular among both Republicans and Democrats and represents a rare legislative opportunity for advancing climate policy under a razor-thin Democratic majority in Congress.[3] In December 2020, Congress passed the most sweeping energy legislation in a decade, attached to the $900 billion COVID-19 stimulus package, and authorized boosting clean energy RD&D funding.[4] Yet such investments alone may not be sufficient to successfully commercialize critical clean energy technologies. Today’s energy industry presents daunting barriers that impede the swift adoption of newer, cleaner technologies. As a result, the private sector underinvests in scaling up promising technologies and building out clean energy infrastructure.[5] Therefore, in addition to funding energy RD&D (“technology-push” policies), government policies should bolster market demand for clean energy to encourage private investors and firms to scale up and commercialize new technologies (“demand-pull” policies). Still, there are steep political obstacles in the way of many ambitious demand-pull policies. For example, President-elect Biden has called for economywide measures such as a clean electricity standard and $400 billion of public procurement of clean products such as electric vehicles.[6] These policies would create large markets for mass deployment of clean energy and speed a clean energy transition. But enacting them requires substantial new regulations and appropriations from Congress, a challenging feat even given the new Democratic control of both chambers of Congress. Fortunately, there is a set of targeted demand-pull measures that the Biden administration can immediately use—with existing statutory authority and without requiring massive new appropriations—to create early markets for promising clean energy technologies. These measures, which we call “demand-pull innovation policies,” fill a niche between RD&D investments that create new technology options and policies that support the large-scale deployment of clean energy. Demand-pull innovation policies focus narrowly on creating and shaping early markets for emerging technologies. For example, targeted government procurement, prize competitions, or milestone payments can provide early markets for clean energy technologies that have been developed with the aid of public RD&D funding. The government can also coordinate private procurement or otherwise catalyze private market adoption through certification and standard-setting processes. Such demand-pull innovation policies have extremely high leverage and have transformed limited public investment into flourishing private commercial markets across the space, medical, and energy fields.[7] Coherently pursuing demand-pull innovation policies will require coordination across the federal government. To this end, the incoming Biden administration should consider creating a new government office, the Energy Technology Markets Office (ETMO), to spearhead the scale-up and commercialization of promising clean energy technologies. The ETMO could be housed within the Department of Energy (DOE) to take advantage of the DOE’s deep expertise in energy technologies and markets. Indeed, in the recently passed Energy Act of 2020 (Division Z of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021), Congress directed the DOE to build its capabilities to pursue demand-pull innovation policies.[8] In the same legislation, Congress also authorized the DOE’s Office of Technology Transitions, which could alternatively lead the demand-pull innovation agenda. Regardless of whether the administration creates a new office or augments an existing one, in order to maximize their potential impact, demand-pull innovation policies should not be the domain of only the DOE. Rather, the DOE should collaborate with a range of federal agencies—many of which, such as the Department of Defense, have sizable resources to invest in emerging technology procurement—to enact policies and pursue public-private partnerships to build market demand for the innovations critical to decarbonization. In concert with new RD&D investments in clean energy innovation, demand-pull innovation policies could be a powerful tool to speed the adoption of new technologies and cultivate advanced energy industries that can manufacture and export US innovations.
Topic:
Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, Science and Technology, Green Technology, and Carbon Emissions
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

5. Forging a Path Forward on US Nuclear Waste Management: Options for Policy Makers

Author:
Matt Bowen
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), Columbia University
Abstract:
Nuclear power is considered in many countries a critical facet to maintaining reliable access to electricity during a global transition to low-carbon energy sources. One challenge to its potential in the United States, however, is the current standstill regarding a disposal pathway for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) from commercial reactors. This impasse has a negative bearing on nuclear energy’s ability to supply more zero-carbon electricity and may cost US taxpayers tens of billions of dollars in government liability for failing to meet contractual obligations to take possession of the waste from utilities. Despite the scientific community assessing that commercial SNF and other high-level radioactive waste (HLW), such as from defense activities, can be safely isolated in deep underground repositories, US efforts to license and operate one have flatlined. The original plan for siting at least two repositories for such waste was abandoned first by DOE and then by Congress. Yucca Mountain in Nevada was designated in law as the nation’s sole potential disposal site by Congress in 1987, fomenting the state’s opposition to the project. As a result of that opposition, Congress has not funded the project since 2010. Still, progress has been made over the last few decades in nuclear waste disposal programs in countries such as Finland, Sweden, and Canada. And the United States has seen the successful opening and operation of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico to dispose of generally less radioactive but long-lived transuranic nuclear waste from defense activities. Such programs offer insights for how the United States can try to resolve the challenges with commercial nuclear waste disposal and potentially alleviate one obstacle to wider adoption of nuclear energy to decarbonize the US economy. This report, part of wider work on nuclear energy at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, explains how the United States reached its current stalemate over nuclear waste disposal. It then examines productive approaches in other countries and a few domestic ones that could guide US policy makers through options for improving the prospects of SNF and HLW disposal going forward
Topic:
Energy Policy, Nuclear Power, and Nuclear Waste
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

6. Stronger International Safeguards as a Condition of Supply to Nuclear Energy Programs: Coming to Consensus in the Nuclear Suppliers Group

Author:
Matt Bowen
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), Columbia University
Abstract:
Nations that are party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons but are not allowed nuclear weapons under the treaty (“non-nuclear-weapon states”) must have international safeguards applied to civil nuclear energy facilities if they pursue such programs. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) applies these safeguards and conducts inspections on nuclear energy programs, and determined in the 1990s that it needed additional capabilities to verify states were not engaging in secret (i.e., undeclared) nuclear activities. Subsequently, the IAEA developed a set of stronger safeguards measures, known as the Model Additional Protocol (“Additional Protocol”), which was approved in 1997. Today, most nations have an Additional Protocol in force, but a few dozen do not. The nations that do not may pose a concern if they pursue nuclear energy as a means of addressing energy and environmental challenges, such as decarbonization to meet climate goals. The greater reporting requirements and inspection measures in the Additional Protocol give the international community assurance that a nation’s declarations about its civil nuclear program are both correct and complete. The enhanced inspections in turn provide greater deterrence against states pursuing illicit nuclear activities. The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)—which comprises 48 governments, including those representing the major reactor vendor countries—maintains guidelines governing the export of nuclear materials, equipment, and technology. The NSG has been considering modifying those guidelines for many years to support more universal adoption of the Additional Protocol. But adoption has been hard to come by, in part because of potential disruptions to existing supply relationships given that not all countries participating in the NSG have Additional Protocols in force and some client states of countries participating in the NSG also do not have these upgraded inspections in place. There may be room for consensus building among NSG states, however, since most support requiring an Additional Protocol as a condition of supply to further the nonproliferation regime. The remaining governments may agree if measures are proffered to address challenges that have blocked acceptance to date. This commentary discusses a history of related policy developments in the NSG, examines some of the group’s roadblocks to consensus, and suggests options for making progress on adding stronger international safeguards as a condition of supply to nuclear energy programs.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Energy Policy, International Cooperation, and Nuclear Energy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. Strengthening Nuclear Energy Cooperation between the United States and Its Allies

Author:
Matt Bowen
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), Columbia University
Abstract:
Nuclear energy cooperation between the United States and its allies has been important for over a half century. Bilateral cooperation agreements with key countries date back to the 1950s, and the United States played a principal role in the development of several allied nuclear energy programs. Today, the international nuclear energy marketplace has changed, and the supply chain is globalized—the US program, for example, depends on working with allies for major safety-related components. However, limitations imposed by legacy US statutes and other obstacles are hampering greater collaboration in areas that would enhance the country’s nuclear program today. Developing advanced reactors to produce dispatchable zero-carbon electricity and heat as part of global efforts to address climate change would be aided by greater cooperation and utilization of resources and financing across countries. Deeper cooperation with like-minded allies would also allow the United States to better compete against other supplier countries that have different commercial and geopolitical objectives. If the challenges facing the US nuclear program are not overcome, the country risks further ceding its role as a leading nuclear technology exporter to China and Russia. Already China and Russia are growing their domestic nuclear energy programs and offering attractive financing to prospective customers of this technology around the world. These nuclear competitors may place differing priorities on areas such as nonproliferation, and therefore maintaining a US role in the nuclear supplier regime is connected with national security considerations. This paper, part of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s nuclear power program, examines part of what may be required for the United States to regain momentum in the nuclear power industry after an erosion of domestic capabilities stemming from a long hiatus in new reactor orders. The paper discusses the historical importance of nuclear cooperation between the United States and allies, some of the challenges that the US and some allied nuclear energy programs are facing, and how cooperation could be reinvigorated to the benefit of the United States and its allies.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Energy Policy, International Cooperation, and Nuclear Energy
Political Geography:
Europe, North America, and United States of America

8. Why the United States Should Remain Engaged on Nuclear Power: Geopolitical and National Security Considerations

Author:
Matt Bowen
Publication Date:
09-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), Columbia University
Abstract:
Nuclear energy has shown much promise and faced considerable challenges since its origins in the mid-20th century. While the United States drove the early charge for safe nuclear power around the globe, its leadership has waned in recent decades. US reactors now under construction—following no orders for such plants in the United States for several decades—have gone well over planned budgets and schedules. And while the United States was once the leading international supplier of reactors, other countries have since stepped forward to fill that role. Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, as part of its wider work on nuclear energy, is examining the impact of potential American disengagement from nuclear power’s development and where opportunities exist to step back in and shape its future. The program also will assess the US nuclear waste management program and efforts to collaborate with other countries on advanced reactor development as well as options for improvement on both fronts. This effort includes a two-part commentary on some of the benefits the United States might derive from increasing its engagement on nuclear power. The first in the series explored the important role nuclear energy can play in lowering air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst potential outcomes of climate change. The second part of the series, this piece, examines the geopolitical and national security implications of the United States and its traditional allies effectively ceding the international nuclear energy marketplace to the Chinese and Russians. The nuclear program’s ultimate goal is to inform readers—policy makers, industry leaders, academics, and others—with objective, research-based analysis. It will strive in the months and years ahead to contribute constructively to a necessary dialogue on the future of nuclear power.
Topic:
Security, Energy Policy, National Security, and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America