Gov. Martin O?Malley announced Tuesday that he would hold an energy summit July 25 to discuss “key steps to establish a plan for affordable, reliable, clean energy,” and he said “expanded nuclear production is an option,” if only in the distant future.
The emphasis of the meeting for community leaders, experts, officials and business executives in three weeks would be on “how do we reduce per-capita consumption right now,” O?Malley said. It was the second day in a row that the governor focused on energy conservation; on Monday, he rolled out a plan to reduce state energy use 15 percent by 2015.
O?Malley said the summit would also focus on Maryland?s congested electric transmission lines and producing clean sources of power generation, with an emphasis on the most attainable and achievable goals.
As long as the state “can fulfill our security obligations,” a new nuclear plant is an option, but “these things take a long time to build, and there?s no time like the present to start talking about these kinds of things,” O?Malley said.
He thought there has been “a shift” in public sentiment about the acceptability of nuclear power.
Malcolm Woolf, the head of the Maryland Energy Administration sworn in Tuesday, said a nuclear plant is more than a decade away.
Environmentalist disagreed with O?Malley?s assessment.
“Nuclear power is very expensive,” said Cindy Schwartz of the League of Conservation Voters. “There are a lot more efficient ways to produce power that is low-carbon or zero-carbon.
“I don?t think it?s true to say that sentiment has shifted on security and disposal of nuclear waste,” she said.
Constellation Energy has proposed building a third nuclear reactor at its Calvert Cliffs site, which would cost more than $3 billion. The Maryland Public Interest Research Group issued a March report titled “The High Cost of Nuclear Power: Why Maryland Can?t Afford a New Reactor.”
Research group policy advocate Johanna Neumann summarized its findings: “Nuclear power is extremely expensive, threatens public health and safety, and damages the environment.
“The nuclear industry has really been using global warming as marketing tool,” Neumann said. If the money needed for a new nuclear plant were invested in energy efficiency, the same amount of power could be saved that a new reactor would generate, she added.
“Maryland would become a national leader if Maryland aggressively pursued those targets” of 15 percent by 2015, Neumann said.
