The oil spill currently threatening the Gulf Coast – not to mention the future of offshore drilling – is a reminder that no technology is without risk or cost when it comes to producing energy.

In the past few months we’ve had a serious explosion at a natural gas plant and a coal mining tragedy that both cost lives.  Just last year geothermal projects in Switzerland and northern California were canceled when it was recognized that drilling and forcing water deep into the earth’s core was causing earthquakes.  And in my home state of Tennessee, a coal ash impoundment failed and spilled 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash.  Now we face one of our worst nightmares – an offshore spill that could devastate hundreds of miles of coastline.

Are renewable sources of energy – like wind and solar – immune from safety or environmental problems?  Not at all.  We must remind ourselves that all energy production has direct and indirect costs and benefits.  The electricity from wind turbines costs more than electricity from coal plants, but wind turbines don’t pollute the air.  Wind power costs more than nuclear power per unit of electricity, but we don’t have to deal with the question of waste disposal.  However, windmills only work when the wind blows and they take up a lot more space than other forms of electricity generation.  As an example, we would need 2,200 windmills on 270 square miles to produce the same amount of electricity that one nuclear plant could on one square mile.  Windmills can have other environmental costs, too.  The American Bird Conservancy estimates that our current crop of 25,000 windmills kills upward of 275,000 birds a year.     These are sacrifices that even some environmental groups are unwilling to make.   

Now, if there’s any lesson we can take from the Gulf oil spill, it should be that while there are always costs and risks, there are lessons to be learned to limit risk and avoid future catastrophic accidents.  The nuclear industry in particular has an unparalleled safety record that we can learn from.

Three Mile Island was our worst nuclear accident, shattering public support for the technology and setting up roadblocks to new construction that we still haven’t entirely overcome.  However, after Three Mile Island, the nuclear industry completely revamped itself.  As one utility executive put it, “We are all hostages to each other.”  Every utility company knew one more accident would bring down the entire industry.  In fact, one of the most important lessons from the recovery of the nuclear industry has been that safety and efficiency go hand-in-hand and that a safe reactor will also be a much more profitable reactor. 

          What have been the major elements of this progress? 

First, commercial nuclear power is governed by a single agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.  All matters of safety are ultimately referred to the NRC.  With offshore oil, there appear to be several competing agencies that have overlapping and sometimes conflicting jurisdiction.  Would it be worth trying to centralize the oversight of offshore oil into one regulatory body?  It’s a suggestion worth exploring and apparently one that the president and Dept. of the Interior Secretary Salazar have taken to heart.

Second, there is the matter of accountability.  INPO – the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations – is an entirely industry-funded operation with the sole mission to maintain safe operation in the nuclear industry.  In addition, the nuclear industry’s self-funded Price Anderson liability insurance makes more than $10 billion available in privately funded coverage for any nuclear accident, by far the most extensive insurance coverage in any industry.  And notice it doesn’t cost the federal government a dime.  Every reactor in the country is on the hook for $100 million in damages that might occur in an accident at another reactor.  Does that mean reactor operators keep an eye on each other?  You bet it does.

The offshore oil industry has an insurance program of sorts but it doesn’t seem to bite as deeply.  Each drilling company pays an 8-cents-per-barrel tax to the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which now contains $1.6 billion.  Before any of this money can be tapped a company responsible for an oil spill must pay all the public and private response costs of the incident and to return the environmental resources back to their pre-spill condition.    

All this makes a company responsible for its own oil spills, but it doesn’t make other companies directly responsible as well, which is the imperative that drives the nuclear industry.  This kind of accountability exists in our Navy as well.  Only last week, NRC Commissioner William C. Ostendorff testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that four of his 11 nuclear reactor training classmates had been disciplined for infractions that had taken place under their command.  There is no question of who is in charge of a nuclear submarine – it’s the captain – and there should be no question of who is in charge of safety aboard offshore oil drilling platforms as well.

Finally, the nuclear industry has discovered that safety equals efficiency and therefore can equal profitability.  At the time of Three Mile Island, nuclear reactors were up and running barely 50 percent of the time.  The rest of the time they were closed down for unanticipated outages and safety problems.  Between 1976 and 1996, there were nearly 50 year-long shutdowns of reactors for safety problems. 

Since the industry began paying attention to the smallest details, it has gradually improved its on-line capacity to 90 percent of the time.  There has been only one year-long shutdown in the industry since 1996.  That’s probably the biggest reason why reactors in this country are making so much money – and why the nuclear industry is so eager to build more of them.

No form of energy generation will ever be completely risk-free.  What we can do is continue to practice the utmost caution and give operating companies the greatest incentive for anticipating safety problems as well.  In that respect, nuclear power has set a fine example for the rest of the country.  It is now our responsibility to work together to clean up the Gulf spill and find ways to learn from the situation and apply lessons of the past – perhaps from nuclear power – so that we can prevent this kind of accident from happening again.