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Part 1 of 2 Parts
     While the debate rages over whether or not nuclear power should be part of the future energy mix for the U.S., the nuclear lobby is spending millions of dollars trying to convince policy makers, investors and the public that nuclear power is needed for climate change and should be propped up with tax payer money if it is not economically viable.
     The uranium market is highly volatile. The price of uranium has been on a roller coaster for years following the depression of the global nuclear industry by the terrible nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan in March of 2011. This event caused Japan to close all of its nuclear reactors. They are just in the process of restarting some of them. Germany decided to stop using nuclear power and is shutting down its existing reactors. The U.S. nuclear industry is struggling with rising costs of construction and operation. Some of the global suppliers of uranium have reduced the output of their uranium mining industries in the hopes that the price of uranium will rebound.
     On August 19th of this year, the Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear industry trade group, sent a letter to the White House national security advisor John Bolton and economic advisor Larry Kudlow. In the letter they called on the Trump administration to use “direct payments to either a U.S. utility or domestic uranium producer for sale of U.S.-origin uranium to a utility.”
     These purchases would be authorized by the Defense Production Act. This Act was passed during the Korean War. Its purpose is to ensure that U.S. industries have access to the materials they need in order to produce weapons and supplies needed for national defense. The Act permits the president to allocate the uranium and other supplies that are required to power and arm nuclear submarines, nuclear aircraft carriers and warheads for missiles and bombers.
    Some experts say that this Ace cannot be used to justify the allocation of uranium supply to domestic suppliers. Sharon Squassoni is a professor on nuclear policy at George Washington University. She told an interviewer that “Frankly, we have already taken care of our naval fuel needs for the next 60 years. We are awash in enriched uranium for weapons.”
     The uranium and nuclear industries recently appealed to the Commerce Department to place tariffs on imported uranium. The President rejected their request in July of this year. Instead of tariffs, the President empaneled a working group that included Bolton and Kudlow as well as six cabinet secretaries to propose options for supporting the declining nuclear power industry in the U.S. The nuclear industry in the U.S. is struggling to compete with cheap oil and natural gas as well as renewable energy sources whose cost is steadily declining.
     The Trump administration has entertained other options for the use of federal money to prop up the nuclear power industry. Rick Perry is the Secretary of Energy. Twice, he developed plans that would bail out the coal and nuclear industries. These plans depended on making regional electricity suppliers buy power at above market rates from coal and nuclear plants even where cheaper energy is available.
Please read Part 2 next