Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ home state of Vermont is helping to drive up carbon emissions by forcing its only nuclear plant to shut down, Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander said Wednesday.
The Tennessee Republican, chairman of the Appropriations Committee’s energy and water panel, held a hearing Wednesday to examine the need for maintaining the nation’s aging nuclear fleet of 99 reactors.
He pointed out that nine reactors at seven plants are scheduled to shut down by 2025. Alexander said that would “result in a 2 percent increase in total carbon emissions from the U.S. electricity sector.”
The plants are being closed for economic reasons, including market distortions created by wind energy subsidies. Nuclear power, which emit no greenhouse gas emissions, accounts for 60 percent of the nation’s low-carbon energy considered crucial for reducing emissions blamed for causing the Earth’s temperature to rise.
As a prime example of the problems the U.S. faces from the plant closings, Alexander discussed Entergy’s decision to close the Vermont Yankee power plant in Sanders’ state in 2014. “It accounted for 70 percent of the electricity generated in Vermont in 2012,” he said. “In other words, Vermont closed a plant that could have provided 70 percent of its electricity that would be carbon free.” Sanders had been an opponent of extending the plant’s license, and state laws gave Vermont’s legislature the final say on the plant’s fate.
“As a result, Vermont carbon emissions from its electricity sector increased 5 percent between 2014 and ’15 after Vermont Yankee closed,” he said in opening remarks.
The only new reactors being built — four of them — are in the Southeast, Alexander said.
He also poked at California, saying its emissions rose by 24 percent in 2014 after the San Onofre Generating Station closed in 2012. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California is the top Democrat on Alexander’s panel. She said in response that California doesn’t need nuclear to support its state’s electricity needs and can do it using renewables, energy efficiency and a practice known as demand response that shifts electricity use when demand exceeds supply.
Alexander said Japan’s decision to close its nuclear plants caused prices to rise 56 percent after the 2011 disaster at the Daiichi power plant in Fukushima. He added that the country, a global manufacturing giant, has decided to begin restarting those plants to save its economy.
Germany experienced a similar problem in relying on a solar energy program that increased rates and provided unreliable electricity, which forced it to rely on Russia for natural gas, which Alexander called an unreliable partner. Prices rose 60 percent, he said.
“What should the U.S. do? In summary, build more reactors,” Alexander said. “I said one time we should build 100 new reactors. People thought that was just for shock effect. But [a leading think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies] says we may close 25 of our reactors by 2020.”
The federal government’s Energy Information Administration says 20 percent of the country’s coal plants will be closed by 2020, which would require building 40 new nuclear plants, he said. That would reduce carbon emissions by another 14 percent.
Alexander is proposing to work with Feinstein on ways to encourage new reactors to be built by solving the nuclear waste storage problem, a major sticking point after the Obama administration chose to not move forward on the permanent waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Feinstein is not optimistic about the prospects for solving the issue.
Alexander also wants the government to stop “picking winners and losers” and repeal unnecessary wind energy subsidies. He said the wind tax credits distort energy markets so badly that they are forcing nuclear and coal plants to close.
Repealing the wind credit would provide $8 billion to double research on advanced nuclear power plants. He also wants to “push back” excessive regulations that make new reactors impossible to construct.
