Does America Still Have a Nuclear Industry?

The nuclear industry was born in America. But today while it’s booming in the rest of world, it seems to be dying here.

In the halcyon days of the ’60s and ’70s, the three largest builders of reactors were all U.S. companies. Today, there is only GE and it is starting to lag far behind foreign rivals. Since last November, Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear fleet owner, and Dominion, one of the most ambitious utilities in applying for new reactors, both announced they will drop plans to build GE reactors. Around the same time, Entergy, the nation’s second largest fleet owner, said it will “explore alternatives” to building with GE.

This means that GE, which was already running in third place behind Westinghouse, now a Japanese company, and Areva, the French giant, is down to one planned reactor.

How did we fall so far so fast? It’s actually been decades in the making.

During the first nuclear boom, GE and Westinghouse, both American companies, bestrode the field, with Babcock and Wilcox running third. But Three Mile Island spooked Americans about nuclear power and the 1970s decision to abandon fuel reprocessing [LINKhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing] stuck us with the everlasting (and unnecessary) problem of “nuclear waste.”

Other countries did not all follow our lead. Germany, Italy, Great Britain and Sweden initially vowed to abandon their nuclear effort – but all except Germany have thought better of it an rededicated themselves to nuclear. The French never wavered, aggressively building an infrastructure for fuel reprocessing and bumping nuclear up to 75 percent of their electrical generation. Areva, which is 95 percent owned by the French government, has now moved into a commanding position in world technology. Its European Pressurized Reactor is the choice for seven proposed American plants and it is also building a uranium enrichment facility in Idaho Falls and a nuclear parts factor in Newport News.

The Japanese also stuck with nuclear, relying on it for 30 percent of their electricity and continuing reprocessing. Mitsubishi bought Westinghouse in 2006, and it is the choice for 14 new American reactors. Toshiba also has a reactor program and GE is partnered 50-50 with Hitachi. More essential, the Japan Steel Works, or JSW, is the only company in the world now filling commercial orders for the exquisitely machined pressure vessels which house the coolant and reactor core. It’s a bottleneck in the industry–JSW now has a backlog of four years and is expanding–and is immensely profitable. “While the recent world economic crisis has meant that business for some divisions of JSW is very sluggish, the nuclear energy division remains strong,” reported Nuclear News in January. Led by the nuclear division, JSW’s profits reached a record $385 million for FY 2009, 10 percent above 2008. “This trend is continuing,” said the report.

Seeing this opportunity, other countries are gearing up to compete with JSW. Sheffield Forgemasters is preparing to service new construction in Great Britain. Harbin Boiler Works, Dongfang Boiler Group and Shanghai Electric Group, all of China, are preparing to enter the very large forgings market, as is Larsen & Toubro of India. Areva is installing new forging capacity. Meanwhile, in the United States: nothing.

In fact, many nuclear professionals now question whether America still has the intellectual capital to undertake a nuclear revival. “Most nuclear engineers are now over 50,” says one industry veteran. “In another ten years they’re all going to be retired. There are some new graduates coming along but there’s a huge gap in between. It’s not just engineers. If we started building reactors tomorrow, there wouldn’t be enough specialty welders, either.”

When I was at the Idaho National Laboratories in 2006 researching for my book, Terrestrial Energy, the Chinese nuclear delegation came through looking for advice on which technology to buy for its new construction. (They eventually chose the Westinghouse AP 1000.) Those reactors will begin construction in 2009. Meanwhile we are probably five years from putting shovels in the ground for any American projects.

Next time around it’s going to be us seeking advice from the Chinese about nuclear power.

William Tucker has written about environment and energy issues for twenty-five years. His work has appear in Harper’s, The Atlantic, The National Review, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. His most recent book Terrestrial Energy (Bartleby) is about nuclear power.