Sam Nunn

Academics, government officials and businesspeople gathered to discuss nuclear power’s role in U.S. energy policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology during the 2008 Sam Nunn Policy Forum March 31, as plans progressed for Georgia’s nuclear power provider to expand one of its facilities.

Sue Rosser, dean of Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, told GlobalAtlanta that the biennial forum, sponsored by Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America Corp., provides an opportunity for public and private sector officials to discuss pressing issues facing the country.

Rising carbon emissions levels, depleting fossil fuels, calls for numerous alternative energy options and the necessity of keeping dangerous materials away from terrorists made nuclear energy an obvious focus for event organizers.

“Everybody is understanding that with the shrinking energy resources and the problem with the carbon output the nuclear thing is back,” Ms. Rosser said.  “But it’s a double-edged sword.  How can you have nuclear energy without it being used as a weapon?”

Southern Nuclear Operating Co., a subsidiary of Atlanta-based energy group Southern Co., runs the Alvin W. Vogtle nuclear plant near Waynesboro and the Edwin I. Hatch plant near Baxley.

With the Joseph M. Farley plant near Dothan, Ala., nuclear energy supplies more than 20 percent of the electricity used in Georgia and Alabama, according to the company Web site.

The company filed an application with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission the same day as the forum to add two reactors to the Vogtle facility by 2017, to keep pace with anticipated increasing demand.

The application was accepted and Georgia Power, another Southern Co. subsidiary and one of the owners of the Vogtle facility, signed an agreement April 8 with Monroeville, Pa.-based Westinghouse Electric Co. LLC to build the new reactors.

Alyson Fuqua, external communications coordinator at Southern, told GlobalAtlanta that private operators are held to government standards in security at its nuclear facilities.

“We have one of the toughest regulators out there, and for good reasons,” she said.  “America’s nuclear power plants are its most protected and secured industrial assets.”

Sam Nunn, a former Georgia senator and namesake of both the forum and Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, said that the danger of nuclear materials being stolen from a power plant is less than from a hospital or research facility.

He called the forum an effort to make Americans aware of the nation’s energy situation.

“Energy conservation and education is our No. 1 issue,” Mr. Nunn said.  “People talk about energy independence but they have no idea how long that would take.”

He added that the U.S. has an interest in spreading conservation and education to developing nations such as China and India because of the interconnected global energy market. 

“If the people who are moving into the middle class there use the energy that we do, we may look back at $100 oil as a positive,” Mr. Nunn said, referring to the rising price by barrel.

He also said that though nuclear energy is implemented to a great extent in other countries, especially France, where nuclear power accounts for nearly 80 percent of all energy production, Americans are hesitant to accept it due to incidents such as the nuclear reactor meltdown on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979.

Mr. Nunn was confident that technology has advanced to the point that nuclear energy can be made safely and waste dealt with effectively. Convincing the American public of this fact is the greatest difficulty. 

“It’s not a technology problem, it’s a matter of political will,” he said.

Keynote speaker Tariq Rauf, head of verification and security policy coordination at the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ Vienna, Austria-based regulatory body, brought a video message from Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency’s director general.

Mr. ElBaradei said that the global nuclear situation is more dangerous now than during the Cold War. “The drivers for insecurity today are much more diffused and much more complex,” because of the growth of terrorist groups and their drive to get nuclear weapons, he said.

He advocated setting up a global bank for nuclear assets regulated by the atomic energy agency to centralize control over possibly hazardous materials.  Mr. ElBaradei said that the agency would dole out nuclear material to power plants that meet its operating criteria while lessening the possibility of it falling into the hands of unregulated countries or extremist groups.

Mr. Rauf said that there is increasing talk of a “nuclear renaissance,” as energy needs around the world grow, causing more countries to consider the nuclear option.

He presented some of the agency’s plans for controlling nuclear materials and echoed Mr. ElBaradei’s call for greater international regulation.