Floridians Are Key Piece Of Nuclear Power Puzzle
By Ted Jackovics, Tampa Tribune, Fla.
Feb. 10–ST. PETERSBURG — Nuclear power’s role in Florida’s energy future will depend in part on a rising environmental ethic among consumers, including prospects that carbon emissions from coal-fired plants could be taxed as soon as 2012, the chief executive officer of Progress Energy Florida said Friday.
The company is focused on four trends in developing strategies to meet future energy demands, Jeff Lyash told a group of 50 people at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, most of them faculty and students.
The key trends outlined by Lyash:
–Continued demand for more energy, despite conservation efforts.
–Higher expectations for efficient power supplies, a must in the computer age.
–Rising costs of fuels for power plants, with nuclear power the cheapest.
–A consumer base increasingly willing to consider environmental concerns.
“Nuclear power is a piece of the puzzle,” Lyash said.
Progress Energy Florida announced in December that it selected a Levy County site for a proposed nuclear power plant, but it has not decided to build it. The company, a unit of Raleigh, N.C.-based Progress Energy, operates a nuclear power plant to its south at Crystal River in Citrus County.
Consumers have become more attuned to environmental issues and appear to be more willing to try to understand the effect power plants have on the environment, Lyash said.
That includes becoming more attentive to comparative environmental advantages nuclear power has over coal-fired plants that produce carbon emissions, he said.
“Nuclear waste disposal remains an issue, and it should,” Lyash said. However, he said all of the nuclear waste from U.S. power plants could be stored in a space the size of a football field.
If the United States invested in research as France has done to extract unused energy from nuclear waste, what’s left could be stored on a space the size of a football field’s end zone, he said.
Beyond environmental considerations, Lyash said the question of energy production is affected by comparative costs to produce one megawatt-hour of electric generation. He said it is $75 for a natural-gas-fired plant, compared with $25 for a coal-fired plant and $5 for a nuclear plant. If emissions from coal-fired plants become taxed, the cost advantage to operate nuclear plants would become higher, Lyash said.
Environmentalists and utility executives have in recent months suggested energy policies for putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions to drive new efficiencies and technologies, with Duke Energy Chairman Paul Anderson calling for a tax on carbon in December.
Lyash said Progress Energy would continue to explore alternative energy, including solar power. But he said technological breakthroughs to enhance prospects for alternative energy supplies are likely decades in the future.
Information from The Oakland (Calif.) Tribune was used in this report. Reporter Ted Jackovics can be reached at (813) 259-7817 or tjackovics@tampatrib.com.
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Copyright (c) 2007, Tampa Tribune, Fla.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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