For a number of years, the United States government has chosen not to have an energy policy. Because of the scarcity of energy, we now are paying a high price. Today, average citizens are learning the difficult lesson that energy plays a much more significant role in their lives than they ever realized, and conditions will get worse before they improve. Between now and 2050, worldwide demand for electricity will double. Although new developments have been made in renewable power, the bulk of this need will be met with either coal-fired or nuclear-reactor power plants. Unfortunately, power plants take years to build; with nuclear types taking the longest.

As the cost of oil skyrockets, worldwide demand increases and supplies decrease. All forms of energy production are increasing as well; the cost to mine and ship coal has doubled in the past year. At the same time, the percentage of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to increase, while public awareness of the effects of global warming changes the way we think about natural resources. Electricity is the form of energy we most depend upon and this dependence will only increase with time. In the world of tomorrow, electricity will charge electric cars batteries, produce hydrogen cheaply for fuel cell-powered vehicles, and possibly heat buildings in order to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels.

The question is where will all this power come from? At best, the electricity generated from wind, solar, and hydroelectric will supply 20% of our need—possibly even less 50 years from now, which leaves coal and nuclear fuels as the primary source for energy. The big problem with coal-fired generators, however, is the release of radiation, airborne mercury, and carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. As a clean source of energy nuclear fission reactors will generate the needed power for the next 50 years. After that, it's hoped that fusion reactors (which combine small atoms to make bigger ones instead of breaking heavy atoms apart into smaller ones) will solve the energy needs.

Mark Peters, deputy to the associate laboratory director at Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Ill., says the public has three concerns about nuclear reactors: they must be safe from extreme forces of nature, such as tornadoes and earthquakes, and man, as well as secure from terrorist attacks; they must not leak radiation; and highly radioactive spent fuels must be recycled, not stored.

The greatest cost of producing electricity from nuclear power plants is the initial cost of construction. The goal is to build better plants with longer life expectancies on a shorter construction cycle. David Matthews, director of the division of new reactor licensing at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Washington, D.C., says that before the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in 1979, it took, on average, a little more than five years to build a new nuclear power plant following issuance of a construction permit by the NRC. After the accident, the process took more than 11 years, making the it prohibitively expensive. The NRC is reducing the permitting time by precertifying standardized power plant designs submitted by reactor manufacturers such as AREVA, General Electric, Mitsubishi, and Westinghouse. These certified designs then can be built at locations around the country, while owners apply for a combined construction and operating license (COL). This process is expected to lead to a reduction in construction time, in contrast to the lengthy delays experienced during the post-TMI period, because the design is expected to be essentially complete before the start of construction. The design life for reactors built in the 1970s and 1980s was 40 years. However, most of these plants have performed well and have been recertified for an additional 20 years. The current thought is that most will win certification for an additional 20 years after that, making the cost of producing electricity very reasonable. New reactor facilities may start with certifications of 40 years but with a design life of 60. Given the advancements in concrete technology, it should be possible to specify 100-year and longer service lives; this is also done with structural concrete bridges today. It means that the extended service life of a reactor will depend more on improvements to the steel vessels that contain the nuclear reaction.

Currently the United States has 104 operating nuclear power plants, generating 20% of our electricity (90% of Chicago's power is from nuclear power plants). However, 80% of France's power is from its 59 nuclear power plants. The French company AREVA, Bethesda, Md., now leads the world in nuclear power plant construction.

How it all started

On Dec. 2, 1942, a group of 50 scientists led by Enrico Fermi gathered in an old squash court under the football stadium at the University of Chicago to witness the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. After CP-1 (Chicago Pile #1) as the project was called, the U.S. government, under the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers, organized the “Manhattan Project” to develop the first bomb.

In 1946, the Department of Energy (DOE) chartered Argonne National Laboratory to be a primary energy research center, administrated by the University of Chicago. Argonne, being a direct descendant of the Manhattan Project, would focus on all forms of energy research. The primary goal at the beginning was to develop a nuclear reactor for the production of electricity, which was achieved in 1951 with the construction of a research reactor at its Idaho facility—the world's first nuclear reactor power plant. In 1954, Russia became the first country to actually connect a nuclear power plant to an electrical grid. From that time forward, countries all over the world have built nuclear power plants.

After the TMI accident construction of new power plants stopped in the United States due to complicated regulation, increased financial risk to owners, market forces, and negative public sentiment. The 1986 Chernobyl plant meltdown in the Ukraine slowed down, but did not stop, construction for the rest of the world.

By the time of the Chernobyl accident, attitudes about nuclear power in the United States were mostly negative. The four fundamental fears included: nuclear power was too dangerous for man to experiment with, there would be more plant meltdowns and people would be exposed to radiation, there was no safe place to store nuclear wastes, and fuel from power plants could find their way into the wrong hands to make bombs.