Small nuke plant an ‘inconvenient answer’

A proposed nuclear plant one-tenth the size of a usual plant is an inconvenient answer to U.S. energy needs, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said.

The 125-megawatt mPower plant, considered for an Oak Ridge, Tenn., site intended a generation ago as the home of the 1,000-megawatt Clinch River Breeder Reactor, would power 100,000 homes, Alexander said.

Nuclear power is the inconvenient answer to generating electricity without producing gases blamed for climate change, said Alexander, alluding to former U.S. Vice President Al Gore’s 2006 Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, about global warming. Gore is a fellow Tennessean.

Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, told The (Nashville) Tennessean the new plant design does nothing to ease his group’s concerns about rising costs of generating electricity from nuclear fission and what to do with the waste.

He said the problem of long-term storage of radioactive waste remained unsolved.

The plant, whose cost was undisclosed and whose technology lacks government approval, could be operating in 10 years, said Jack Bailey, vice president for nuclear generation development for the federal Tennessee Valley Authority, which owns the Oak Ridge site.

Bailey said the TVA had signed a letter of intent with Babcock & Wilcox Co., which operates or manages 17 U.S. nuclear facilities, to build the plant.

Babcock & Wilcox expects to begin pre-licensing with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in July and submit an application for approval of the design in 2011, Chief Executive Officer Brandon Bethards said.