NEW: The Case for Public Nuclear Power
NEW: The Case for Public Nuclear Power
New from me: The New Deal public power utility that keeps on trucking, TVA, is facing an atomic dilemma: how to pay for kicking the tires of nuclear industrial capacity as it decarbonizes its grid?
The Nation just published my latest article: “The Case for Public Nuclear Power.” It’s about the Tennessee Valley Authority’s new nuclear program and the desperate need to follow labor unions’ example and champion public funding for it. It’s a mixture of on-the-ground impressions, history, power system analysis, interviews with representatives from TVA, labor unions, and environmental groups, original reporting (like why the TVA is eligible for IRA tax incentives), and a political call to arms. And it’s the culmination of a few years of study and of building relationships within unions there. Please read and share the article!
Below are some photos I took during my visit to Watts Bar Nuclear beyond the two that The Nation used in the final article, followed by a recap of the thread on X that I posted summarizing and excerpting the article yesterday.
This summer I visited TVA's Watts Bar Nuclear plant. There I saw an unbelievably lush green landscape; deer frolicking on the premises; surprisingly clean industrial facilities; a shitload of pipes; and a key slogan out front: "Built for the People of the United States of America."
But this isn't a travel story; it's a reminder of the importance of this 90-year-old New Deal public good. TVA wants to drive forward new nuclear to decarbonize itself & serve national interest. But without government help, it will have to turn to the private sector. Here's labor’s perspective on that possibility:
“I’ll be honest with you,” said Brent Hall, the 10th District vice president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, about the latter option. “I think that will be the beginning of the end of public power.”
TVA announced their new nuclear program in 2022, aimed at building a new kind of small modular reactor (SMR), the GE-Hitachi BWRX-300, in collaboration with Ontario's public power utility and others.
I talked to TVA's chief nuclear officer about that project and more.
The benefits of these smaller reactors, Rausch explained, is that “they bring in a lot more diversity in the way our grid is operated.” Unlike a conventional “gigawatt-scale” reactor that needs transmission system expansions to accommodate it, the SMR could fit more easily within the TVA’s existing system. The SMR can also be operated more flexibly: Taking it offline for maintenance and refueling can be done more nimbly, and its power output can ramp up and down, for example, to balance against sunrise and sunset.
A few companies in the private sector are also developing SMRs, like Bill Gates's TerraPower. But Rausch, TVA's chief nuclear officer, makes a good case for TVA's unique capacity to take this on.
Asked what makes the TVA uniquely suited among American companies looking to develop new nuclear power, Rausch told me that it “bring[s] a wealth of best practices and lessons learned in megaprojects like nuclear plants,” for example, myriad technical matters around permitting, site design, and nuclear safety regulations. Crucially, it also has institutional memory of the mistakes of the past TVA nuclear program.
Put in those terms, it’s a wonder why tapping America’s homegrown nuclear operators and megaproject experts—the ones not beholden to shareholders concerned with stock prices and dividends—hasn’t been at the forefront of the resurgence of industrial policy.
But I learned something else straight from the horse's mouth: TVA building another AP1000 plant, just like the one recently (finally!) finished in Georgia, is absolutely on the table. They even already have four perfectly good sites from the stalled 1970s nuclear program!
One tremendous advantage the TVA has if it does decide to invest in a large reactor: four perfectly good sites, each one frozen in amber since the original nuclear program stalled out. Rausch highlighted the TVA’s 1,200-acre Bellefonte site in particular. It has the water supply, suitable topography, carefully considered seismic conditions, transmission connection, and even cooling towers already in place. “That piece of property becomes more and more valuable as we analyze the demand growth.”
For this article I did something that the left, or really anyone, ever does when it comes to reporting on the Tennessee Valley Authority: I talked to leaders of the labor unions that represent thousands of TVA employees. They are, without a doubt, TVA's political stewards.
When it comes to a potential large nuclear project, labor unions representing thousands of TVA employees are fully on board. “For us as the union, knowing the need for new demand and the rate at which it’s growing, we see a large nuclear plant as being a viable option for TVA today,” explained Curtis Sharpe, an IBEW international representative working with Hall and a longtime TVA electrical worker himself. They represent about 2,300 full-time TVA employees. “That doesn’t mean taking SMRs out of the picture.” SMRs, he said, “should be the future of nuclear.”
Why not both? That sentiment is echoed by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which represents some 2,500 white-collar professionals at TVA. Arguing that it “makes sense that TVA would lead the way on SMRs,” the union’s international president Matt Biggs told me they “fully support TVA moving forward on SMRs and large nuclear alike.” After all, “nuclear is critical in our efforts to meet net zero emissions.”
Along those lines, something I'm reporting here that has never been public knowledge is that the *reason* TVA can now use clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act, after decades of being ineligible for renewables incentives, is because of labor union lobbying.
Another key element of the unions’ stewardship is to lobby Congress—something that the TVA, as a federal entity, is prohibited from doing. The most significant legislative result in recent years is the TVA’s eligibility for clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act, a monumental reversal of precedent. “We took it to the White House that TVA deserves those tax credits just like anybody else,” Hall explained. “They shouldn’t be exempted just because they’re part of the government.” Biggs confirmed that IFPTE, too, lobbied Congress for TVA’s eligibility.
Most people and politicians who'd otherwise be very interested in defending public goods like TVA instead get all of their understanding of the authority from well-funded environmental nonprofit groups. But I don't think they deserve sole voice anymore.
Labor’s advocacy for the TVA contrasts with the other major political constituency, environmental nonprofits who regularly train their crosshairs on the public power authority. The common narrative from the likes of Sierra Club is that the TVA is investing in gas plants instead of solar farms out of a fossil-fuel agenda, not as the satisfaction of any technical or economic constraints. … These environmental groups fail to acknowledge that the TVA is one of the cleanest grid operators in the country; it just arrives at that outcome primarily with nuclear, not solar, power. And with more nuclear power, it could rely less on natural gas, for example, to undergird the integration of more renewables.
Stephen Smith, the longtime executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, told me his organization is “not currently supporting TVA building nuclear plants”—nor did it support Watts Bar Nuclear, which actively contributed to TVA’s decarbonization—and “are not in favor of willy-nilly raising the debt limit.” Senior attorney Amanda Garcia of the Southern Environmental Law Center told me they “do not oppose research into unproven technologies like TVA’s proposed small modular reactors” but would only support federal funding with requirements on curbing new gas investments. (The BWRX-300 is based on the proven technology of boiling water reactors that the TVA has operated for decades; it even uses the same fuel.) The Center for Biological Diversity declined to comment for this story.
The TVA absolutely needs supplementary funding to pursue new nuclear -- both "big" and "small." Will it be federal appropriations like in the old days? Or a Big Tech customer offering a private source of funds in a new kind of special arrangement? It's now up to us.
However the TVA manages to secure funding for a new nuclear plant, and no matter whether it’s a small modular reactor or a modern large nuclear plant, it would be a tremendous achievement for clean energy and for public power. But without political support for government funding of TVA’s nuclear program right now—the kind that labor unions demand and environmental lawyers ignore—that project will be the result of private interests muscling their way into public power.
If and when that plant is built, let’s make sure the entrance reads “Built for the People of the United States of America” without needing an addition: “and Google.”
Please read the article on The Nation’s website: “The Case for Public Nuclear Power.”