Earlier this month, Jeremy Carl and David Fedor of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, released a book showcasing the dire state of America’s nuclear energy industry. Keeping the Lights on at America’s Nuclear Power Plants highlights the problems facing the beleaguered power source and offers a range of proposals to save America’s nuclear reactors. And while some of their proposals would make meaningful headway toward transforming nuclear power into a viable power source, others would merely make the nuclear energy industry dependent on government largesse and raise costs on consumers in the process.
As I discussed in my previous article, the authors support reforming the federal government’s expensive licensing restrictions which make it harder for newer and cheaper reactors to reach the market. In particular, they call for ending the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s requirement that nuclear developers complete a decade-long application before any approvals are made. In its place, they support shifting the NRC’s licensing process towards a “test-then-license” system in which the commission would grant companies faster step-by-step approval as they wade through the process.
