In the nomenclature of the nuclear industry,
it’s called an early site permit, or ESP. It’s an apt
acronym: You have to be clairvoyant to figure out what’s
going to happen if the feds grant such a permit for a new reactor
in Clinton, 60 miles north of Springfield. But opponents of the pending permit say that
the future looks bright. The cause of their quiet celebration? A Sept.
22 announcement by NuStart Energy, a consortium of nuclear-power
companies that says it will seek permits to build new reactors in
Alabama and Mississippi. That, claim anti-nuke activists, means
that Exelon, which organized NuStart, is focusing its energies
elsewhere. “Apparently we have been heard,”
says Sandra Lindberg, founder of No New Nukes. But it’s too
soon to declare victory and start building windmills. “ ‘Cautiously optimistic’ is
a good way to describe it,” says Brendan Hoffman, campaign
coordinator for Public Citizen, based in Washington, D.C. Exelon calls such sentiments misplaced.
“There’s no change in the probability —
it’s exactly the same as it was a year ago,” says Craig
Nesbit, an Exelon spokesman. “We’ve said from the
beginning that our intent in naming the Clinton site for an early
site permit is so we could go through and understand the early
siting process. We have no plans to build a plant there.”
Of course, any company that would go through
the time and expense of applying for a permit just so it could
understand the permit process would soon go out of business. Nesbit acknowledges that the company’s
plans may change. “If Exelon chooses to, this is where we would
expect to build,” he says. “We don’t know what the
future holds.” Exelon is one of eight energy companies in
NuStart, which says it wants permits to build at least two nuclear
plants, a task so expensive that industry experts doubt that it can
be undertaken by one company alone. At the same time, Exelon on its
own is seeking an ESP for Clinton. The company says that it
won’t build anything in Illinois until the consortium’s
plants are built with the use of new technology still under
development that Exelon hopes will serve as blueprints for more
plants. That could take a decade or even longer. Exelon will have plenty of time if the feds
grant an ESP, which identifies a site as environmentally sound and
gives a permit-holder the go-ahead to apply for construction
permits. An ESP is valid for two decades and may be renewed for
another 20 years, which would give the Clinton site a
shelf life of 40 years. The upshot is, anti-nuclear activists old
enough to remember the near-disaster at Three Mile Island or the days
when Jane Fonda didn’t need a facelift to play a television
journalist in The China Syndrome may well be dead of natural causes before a new reactor
at Clinton is operational. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that
Exelon is getting while the getting is good. The company is the
first in the nation to apply for an ESP, a permit type created back
in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush was in office. With a Bush
once again in the White House, the feds are smiling on atomic
energy in the form of multimillion-dollar grants to kick-start a
moribund nuclear-power industry. In the case of Clinton, Exelon has
received a $6.3 million grant, nearly half the cost of preparing
its ESP application. Nesbit says that the Clinton project
“doesn’t really rotate on the [federal] money,”
although he acknowledges that “it certainly makes it easier
to do.” Anti-nuclear activists say that spending millions of
tax dollars on a project that may never get off the drawing board
is just plain silly. “We think it’s ridiculous that
taxpayers are paying for this in the first place,” Hoffman
says, “and then, if they’re not even going to use it,
that’s just a tremendous waste.”
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 5, 2005.
