First, a bit of background.
Since 1983, Wisconsin law has imposed what amounts to a de facto ban on the construction of new power plants in the state. The law, passed a few years after the Three Mile Island accident, only allows the state Public Service Commission to approve a new plant if a federal facility exists to accept its radioactive waste. After the Obama administration snuffed the ill-fated Yucca Mountain project in 2011, that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. Ending the project to build a nuclear waste repository under a mountain range in Nevada set the federal government back 20 years in opening a waste storage facility of the sort that would allow Wisconsin to approve a third or fourth nuclear plant.
We still have two: Point Beach Nuclear Plant in Two Rivers, Wis., is expected to operate a pair of reactors that border Lake Michigan for decades to come, as is a humbler plant in nearby Kewaunee. Some Wisconsin Republicans have called for lifting the moratorium — including Gov. Scott Walker during his 2010 campaign. The Fukushima disaster of Mach 2011 invoked a new debate in the state Legislature, with Democrats making the case that the Japanese meltdowns, the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, should trump any hopes of reviving the nuclear industry in Wisconsin. Not that it’s dead. We still get roughly 20 percent of our power from Point Beach and the Kewaunee Power Station, which rank second only to the state’s coal plants.
Now, the news.
A letter Walker sent to state agencies in mid-August outlining his budget priorities for the 2011-13 biennium — agencies are to submit their budget requests by Monday — contained these lines, in the context of improving the state’s infrastructure:
“We must diversify our energy supply based on a balance of cost and sound science, ever aware of the environmental impact. We should lift Wisconsin’s nuclear moratorium to encourage this clean energy option, as well as continue to invest in energy transmission to move power from outside Wisconsin across the state.”
Public support for nuclear power has varied widely in the past decade and fell well below 50 percent after Fukushima, according the The New York Times.
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| Point Beach Nuclear Power Plant |
