New Jersey became the sixth state in the past decade and second state this year to completely eliminate moratoriums on new nuclear power plant construction.
On a crisp Wednesday morning at the Hope Creek Power Plant in the state’s southwest corner, Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed legislation that lifts a de facto ban on building new nuclear reactors until the U.S. has a permanent solution to radioactive spent fuel. Democrats, who campaigned last year to build new nuclear power plants in the state, said the ban has served no purpose.
““For too long, outdated laws have prevented us from even considering new nuclear facilities,” Sherrill said as steam billowed from the power plant’s hyperboloid cooling towers behind him. “One law required new projects to demonstrate a disposal method that literally did not exist. It was written in 1970It’s tied to technical requirements that made sense at the time, but don’t make sense now. ”
Located on a creek in the Delaware River south of Wilmington, Delaware, and north of where the waterway widens into the bay, the single-furnace Hope Creek Power Plant sits on an artificial island alongside the two-furnace Salem Nuclear Power Plant. Both stations are owned by giant power companies. PSEG. By combining the two power generation facilities, 40% of electricity in New Jersey 80% of carbon-free electricity.
The Garden State enacted one of the nation’s earliest new nuclear ban laws in 1999. 1970This was at a time when the United States was still building its fleet of nuclear reactors, with no concrete plans to deal with the long-lived radioactive waste that was piling up in glowing blue pools at nuclear power plants across the country. At the time, the state Legislature amended the Coastal Area Facilities Review Act to require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to establish a method for disposing of radioactive waste before new construction permits are issued. Cheryl called the symptoms “It is an outdated standard that cannot be met. ”
in 1980The federal government took possession of all the nuclear waste and designated Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert as the first permanent repository. Construction of the facility has finally begun 2000Under then-President George W. Bush. However, shortly after taking office, President Barack Obama withdrew support from the project, which a bipartisan comptroller’s office later determined was done for political rather than technical reasons. Since then, US efforts to address waste have remained largely paralyzed. The law states that the first destination for nuclear waste must be Yucca Mountain, preventing the government from shifting its focus elsewhere. But few, if any, lawmakers have marshaled political support to voluntarily replace their state with the nation’s largest radioactive grave.
Instead, federal efforts have recently focused on recycling and reprocessing. An emerging industry that began under the Biden administration and accelerated under the Trump administration is forming around the promise of extracting valuable medical isotopes from radioactive waste and turning the materials into new nuclear reactor fuel. Just last week, the Department of Energy concluded a contest for states to submit applications to host nuclear innovation campuses that include fuel enrichment and recycling facilities.
If banning nuclear power makes sense 49 Years ago, when the environmental effects of burning fossil fuels were not yet fully understood, the availability of interim storage containers, many of which are produced at manufacturer Holtec International’s plant in Camden, New Jersey, rendered the state law moot.
“This is a classic example of the ineffective government that I sought to change and implement,” Sherrill said. “The bill would require projects to use safe, state-of-the-art storage methods instead. This method has been used thousands of times in the past. 35 state until the end 40 and for many years 100% safety record. ”
The state Legislature first amended the law last year, opening the door to the development of small modular nuclear reactors. Modular reactors are a type of crude machine that has an artificially capped output per unit. 300 Megawatts to encourage developers to buy in bulk. The bill, which was first introduced and failed in December, was aimed at reversing the moratorium and at least creating a new tax credit for advanced nuclear power generation to help finance the construction of nuclear power plants. 1,100 Megawatts of new capacity. That particular number matches the output from Westinghouse AP1000America’s most advanced nuclear reactor design and the only third-generation model operating domestically.
Samuel Rowland, a researcher at the American Innovation Foundation, a right-wing think tank based in Washington, D.C., who has tracked New Jersey’s nuclear energy bill, said the Hope Creek and Salem sites have room for at least one more large-scale reactor.
