AC- Oil $ Destroy Readiness

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Voth ‘12 (Jeffrey M. Voth is the president of Herren Associates leading a team of consultants advising the federal government on issues of national security, energy and environment, health care and critical information technology infrastructure, George Washing University Homeland Security Policy Institute, “In Defense of Energy – A Call to Action”, http://securitydebrief.com/2012/04/11/in-defense-of-energy-a-call-to-action/, April 11, 2012)
Last month, the Pentagon released its widely anticipated roadmap to transform operational energy security. As published in a World Politics Review briefing, energy security has become a strategic as well as an operational imperative for U.S. national security. As tensions continue to escalate with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, it has become clear that the U.S. military urgently requires new approaches and innovative technologies to improve fuel efficiency, increase endurance, enhance operational flexibility and support a forward presence for allied forces while reducing the vulnerability inherent in a long supply-line tether. Assured access to reliable and sustainable supplies of energy is central to the military’s ability to meet operational requirements globally, whether keeping the seas safe of pirates operating off the coast of Africa, providing humanitarian assistance in the wake of natural disasters in the Pacific or supporting counterterrorism missions in the Middle East. From both a strategic and an operational perspective, the call to action is clear. Rapid employment of energy-efficient technologies and smarter systems will be required to transform the military’s energy-security posture while meeting the increasing electric-power demands required for enhanced combat capability. As recently outlined by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, “Without improving our energy security, we are not merely standing still as a military or as a nation, we are falling behind.”

Independently- fuel cost wrecks the DOD’s budget - spills over

Freed ‘12 (Josh Freed, Vice President for Clean Energy, Third Way, “Improving capability, protecting 'budget”, http://energy.nationaljournal.com/2012/05/powering-our-military-whats-th.php, May 21, 2012)
As Third Way explains in a digest being released this week by our National Security Program, the Pentagon’s efforts to reduce energy demand and find alternative energy sources could keep rising fuel costs from encroaching on the budgets of other important defense programs. And the payoff could be massive. The Air Force has already been able to implement behavioral and technology changes that will reduce its fuel costs by $500 million over the next five years. The Army has invested in better energy distribution systems at several bases in Afghanistan, which will save roughly $100 million each year. And, using less than 10% of its energy improvement funds, the Department has begun testing advanced biofuels for ships and planes. This relatively small investment could eventually provide the services with a cost-effective alternative to the increasingly expensive and volatile oil markets. These actions are critical to the Pentagon’s ability to focus on its defense priorities. As Secretary Panetta recently pointed out, he’s facing a $3 billion budget shortfall caused by “higher-than-expected fuel costs.” The Department’s energy costs could rise even further if action isn’t taken. DOD expects to spend $16 billion on fuel next year. The Energy Information Administration predicts the price of oil will rise 23% by 2016, without a major disruption in oil supplies, like the natural disasters, wars, and political upheaval the oil producing states have seen during the last dozen years. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s planned budget, which will remain flat for the foreseeable future, will require significant adjustment to the Department’s pay-any-price mindset, even if sequestration does not go into effect. Unless energy costs are curbed, they could begin to eat into other budget priorities for DOD. In addition, the Pentagon’s own Defense Science Board acknowledges that using energy more efficiently makes our forces more flexible and resilient in military operations, and can provide them with greater endurance during missions. Also, by reducing energy demand in the field, DOD can minimize the number of fuel convoys that must travel through active combat zones, reducing the chances of attack to avoiding casualties and destruction of material. At our domestic bases, DOD is employing energy conservation, on-site clean energy generation, and smart grid technology to prevent disruptions to vital activities in case the civilian grid is damaged by an attack or natural disaster. The bottom line is, developing methods and technologies to reduce our Armed Forces’ use of fossil fuels and increase the availability of alternative energy makes our military stronger. That’s why the Pentagon has decided to invest in these efforts. End of story.

2AC- AT: Peak Uranium

No impact – SMRs don’t need uranium

Szondy ‘12 (David, writes for charged and iQ magazine, award-winning journalist [“Feature: Small modular nuclear reactors - the future of energy?” February 16th, http://www.gizmag.com/small-modular-nuclear-reactors/20860/)
SMRs can help with proliferation, nuclear waste and fuel supply issues because, while some modular reactors are based on conventional pressurized water reactors and burn enhanced uranium, others use less conventional fuels. Some, for example, can generate power from what is now regarded as "waste", burning depleted uranium and plutonium left over from conventional reactors. Depleted uranium is basically U-238 from which the fissible U-235 has been consumed. It's also much more abundant in nature than U-235, which has the potential of providing the world with energy for thousands of years. Other reactor designs don't even use uranium. Instead, they use thorium. This fuel is also incredibly abundant, is easy to process for use as fuel and has the added bonus of being utterly useless for making weapons, so it can provide power even to areas where security concerns have been raised.

No peak uranium

MIT ‘11 [“The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle”, 2011, http://web.mit.edu/mitei/research/studies/documents/nuclear-fuel-cycle/The_Nuclear_Fuel_Cycle-all.pdf]
We developed a price elasticity model to estimate the future costs of uranium as a function of the cumulative mined uranium. The details of this model are in the appendix. The primary input is the model of uranium reserves as a function of ore grade [14] developed in the late 1970s by Deffeyes. The results of this model are shown in Figure 3.2. For uranium ores of practical interest, the supply increases about 2% for every 1% decrease in average grade mined down to an ore grade of ~1000 ppm. His work extended models previously applied to individual mined deposits (e.g., by Krige for gold) [15] to the worldwide ensemble of deposits of uranium. The region of interest in the figure is on the left-hand side, above about 100 ppm uranium, below which grade the energy expended to extract the uranium will approach a significant fraction of that recoverable by irradiation of fuel in LWRs. The resources of uranium increase significantly if one is willing to mine lower-grade resources. An important factor not accounted for here in prediction of uranium resources is the recovery of uranium as a co-product or by-product of other mining operations. The most important category here is phosphate deposits. A recent CEA assessment [8] projects 22 million MT from this source: by itself enough for 1000 one-GWe reactors for 100 years, subject to the caveat that co-production is fully pursued.Finally, several authors have noted that Deffeyes’ assessment was completed before the rich ore deposits in Canada, at grades in excess of 3% (30,000 ppm) were discovered. This could imply that the projected cost escalation based on his results would, in effect, be postponed for a period. Our model included three other features in addition to uranium supply versus ore grade elasticity: p Learning curve. In all industries there is a learning curve where production costs go down with cumulative experience by the industry. p Economics of scale. There are classical economics of scale associated with mining operations. p Probabilistic assessment. Extrapolation into an ill-defined future is not properly a deterministic undertaking—we can not know the exact answer. Hence, following the lead in a similar effort in 1980 by Starr and Braun of EPRI, a probabilistic approach was adopted [16] in our models. The results of our model are shown in Figure 3.3 where the relative cost of uranium is shown versus the cumulative electricity produced by LWRs of the current type. The unit of electricity is gigawatt-years of electricity generation assuming that 200 metric tons of uranium are required to produce a gigawatt-year of electricity—the amount of uranium used by a typical light water reactor. The horizontal axis shows three values of cumulative electricity production: p G1 = 100 years at today’s rate of uranium consumption and nuclear electric generation rate p G5 = 100 years at 5 times today’s uranium consumption and nuclear electricity generation rate p G10 = 100 years at 10 times today’s uranium consumption and nuclear electricity generation rate. Three lines are shown based on the probabilistic assessment described in the appendix of Chapter 3. The top line is to be interpreted as an 85% probability that the cost relative to the baseline cost will be less than the value on the trace plotted as a function of the cumulative electricity production using today’s LWR once-through fuel cycle. The three lines meet at the far left where the baseline cost of uranium is taken as 100 $/kg, and the baseline total cumulative nuclear electricity production is (somewhat arbitrarily) taken as 10 4 GWe-yr using 2005 as the reference year. The other lines correspond to 50% and 15% probabilities. As one example at 10 GWe-yr cumulative production, there is an 85% probability that uranium will cost less than double 2005 costs (i.e., less than $200/kg), a 50% probability that it will cost less than 30% greater than 2005 costs, and a 15% probability that it will be 20% or lower in cost. As another example, if there were five times as many nuclear plants (G5) and they each operated for 100 years, we would expect (at 50% probability) uranium costs to increase by less than 40%. Because uranium is ~4% of the production cost of electricity, an increase to 6% of the production costs would not have a large impact on nuclear power economics. The two points plotted on Figure 3.3 correspond to 2007 Red Book values for identified (RBI) and identified-plus-undiscovered (RBU) resources at under 130 $/kg: 5.5 and 13.0 million metric tons. These benchmarks support the expectation that uranium production costs should be tolerable for the remainder of the 21st century – long enough to develop and smoothly transition to a more sustainable nuclear energy economy.

No shortage–most qualified ev

NEI ‘12 (Nuclear Energy Institute, “Myths & Facts About Nuclear Energy”, June, http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/reliableandaffordableenergy/factsheet/myths--facts-about-nuclear-energy-january-2012/)
Fact: Readily available uranium resources (5.5 million metric tons) will last at least 100 years at today’s consumption rate, according to the World Nuclear Association and the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. An estimated additional 10.5 million metric tons that remain untapped will expand the available supply to at least 200 years at today’s consumption rate. The agency also determined that further exploration and improvements in extraction technology are likely to at least double this estimate over time. These estimates do not take into account the effect that increased recycling of used nuclear fuel would have on global supplies. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently confirmed that uranium supplies will not limit the expansion of nuclear energy in the U.S. in its 2010 study “The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle.”

Asia solves US and Asian demand

GBI Research ’12 (Global Business Intelligence, “Uranium Mining Market in Asia-Pacific to 2020 - Availability of Large Uranium Reserves to Lay the Foundation for the Industry's Future Development”, http://www.marketresearch.com/GBI-Research-v3759/Uranium-Mining-Asia-Pacific-Availability-7039053/, June 25, 2012)
Uranium mining is set to soar in the future due to rising demand for nuclear power, with Asia’s colossal reserves looking set to meet these needs, according to natural resources expert GBI Research. The new report* suggests that mounting demand for nuclear power generation will boost uranium prices, offering to make Asia-Pacific a tidy sum, but only if they can overcome environmental and professional hazards. According to the Australian Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics and Sciences (ABARES), the spot price of uranium, which hung around the $62 per pound mark in 2011, will reach around $81 a pound by 2016 due to the massive surge in demand. The availability of huge reserves, coupled with rising prices, will drive the Asia-Pacific uranium mining industry. Asia-Pacific is the largest uranium-producing region in the world, boasting an estimated production of 34,041 tons of uranium (tU) during 2011, over half the global production. Kazakhstan contributed just under two-thirds of this, followed by Australia with 25.2%, Uzbekistan with 7.2%, China with 2.6% and India with a 1.1% share. Asia’s uranium mining industry has been helped by the region’s abundant reserves, which, according to the World Nuclear Association (WNA), stood at 3,599,421tU in 2010, accounting for about 57% of total global reserves. New planned projects and the expansion of existing uranium mines will drive up uranium mine production throughout Asia-Pacific, with Australia, India, Kazakhstan and China all being expected to increase regional uranium mine production in the outlook period.

2AC- NRC Licensing

Extend Chandler and Fertel- government action spurs NRC licensing and builds expertise- cross-applications of existing technology solves regulatory hurdles

And its not a question of if licensing but when licensing- requires tech to be able to fill in immediately to prevent a nuclear energy crunch- that’s Licata and Fertel

And the tech is already at the last stage- licensing inevitable

Wald ’13 (Matthew L. Wald, New York Times, “Energy Department to Give $226 Million to Support Nuclear Reactor Design”, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/business/energy-environment/energy-dept-to-give-226-million-to-new-nuclear-reactor-design.html?_r=0, December 12, 2013)
WASHINGTON — The Energy Department will give a small company in Corvallis, Ore., up to $226 million to advance the design of tiny nuclear reactors that would be installed under water, making meltdown far less likely and opening the door to markets around the world where the reactors now on the market are too big for local power grids. The company, NuScale Power, has made substantial progress in developing “an invented-in-America, made-in-America product that will export U.S. safety standards around the world,” Peter B. Lyons, the assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said in an interview. For supplying electricity without global warming gases and for providing the United States with a new export product, the reactor had “immense global and national importance,” he said. The award is the second of two under a $452 million, multiyear program to assist in the development of “small modular reactors,” which would be built in American factories, potentially improving quality and cutting costs, and delivered by truck. The first award, in November 2012, went to Babcock & Wilcox, which formerly sold full-scale reactors. Its small model, called mPower, is a step ahead of NuScale’s because it has a preliminary agreement with a customer, the Tennessee Valley Authority. In seeking a high-tech, high-value export product, the Energy Department is hardly alone. On Tuesday, Sergey V. Kirienko, the director general of Rosatom, the Russian state atomic energy company, told a small group of reporters in Washington that a floating nuclear power plant, which could be moored near a load center, was “entering its finalization stage.” The units will be built in pairs near St. Petersburg, Russia he said, and the first pair are to be installed in Russia in 2016. His company is in preliminary discussions with potential customers around the world, he said. While the two designs chosen by the Energy Department are radically smaller in their size and method of construction, both mPower and NuScale use ordinary water to transfer the heat created in the reactor so that the water can be used to make steam for electricity and help control the flow of neutrons, the subatomic particles that sustain the chain reaction. (So does the Russian floating plant.) In that sense, the department’s choices were technologically conservative, because other designers are working on reactors that would use sodium, graphite and helium for those functions. One advantage of sticking to water, Mr. Lyons said, was that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency that will decide whether to license the reactors, is already familiar with that technology. NuScale’s plans to place its reactors in something resembling a thermos bottle installed at the bottom of a giant pool. If a failure threatens overheating, a vacuum space in the bottle would fill with water and excess heat would be drawn away passively, without pumps or valves, by the huge surface area of the bottle sitting in cool water.

No licensing problems – our ev is from the NRC

Magwood ’11 (William d. Magwood iv, nuclear regulatory commission, July 14, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/chrg-112shrg72251/html/chrg-112shrg72251.htm s. Hrg. 112-216, an examination of the safety and economics of light water small modular reactors hearing before a subcommittee of the committee on appropriations united states senate one hundred twelfth congress first session special hearing, July 14, 2011)
At the same time, one often hears the industry is concerned that the NRC might make decisions that will render these new systems to be uncompetitive. In my opinion, these concerns are not well grounded in an understanding of how the NRC develops regulatory requirements. Using security as a general example, the size of guard forces and the nature of security barriers protecting U.S. nuclear power plants is not determined in accordance with a set formula that might somehow be applied to SMRs. The security strategies of each individual plant are designed by licensees to defend their facilities against threats postulated by NRC. These strategies are tested on a periodic basis using force-on-force exercises, and when issues arise as a result of these exercises, licensees are obligated to make necessary adjustments. I believe this exact same process will work very well with SMRs. Whatever else they are SMRs are power reactors. While the size of SMRs may eventually prove to have financial or implementation benefits the fact that they are small has far less significance from a regulatory standpoint than I think many expect. That said, SMR vendors have proposed design components that, if fully realized, incorporate technologies and approaches that can have significant safety benefits and, therefore, must be considered as risk-informed regulatory decisions are made.

1AR- NRC Licensing

NRC is back on track- no delay

Conca ‘13 (James Conca, Energy Contributor in Forbes, “Nuclear Waste Confidence -- NRC Ruling No Big Deal”, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/08/11/nuclear-waste-confidence-nrc-ruling-no-big-deal/, August 11, 2012)
Dry cask storage behind a security fence. The safest, easiest method for putting spent fuel aside until used, burned as new fuel or eventually disposed of in a deep geologic repository. We are very confident it is safe for 100 years or more. There has been some fist-bumping this week in the anti-nuclear sector over the recent vacating of two NRC rules by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in June; the waste-confidence decision and the storage rule. The judges felt that the agency had failed to conduct an environmental impact statement, or a finding of no significant environmental impact, before ruling that it is safe to store nuclear waste in wet pools and dry casks without a permanent solution in sight. But it was just that the initial NRC rule was too vague, not that this type of storage is unsafe (platts NRC Ruling). In response, the NRC this week voted unanimously to delay final approval of licenses for new nuclear plants, or renewing the licenses of existing facilities, until the agency responds with a more complete ruling and addresses the dilemma of long-term nuclear waste storage across the country. The 24 environmental groups that petitioned NRC to respond to the court are acting like they actually stopped all action on nuclear licensing (Marketwatch NRC Ruling). While no final decisions will be made in issuing licenses, the process for licensing new and existing plants will continue as before, the NRC said, which means the impact to the industry will be minimal. Also, reactors can operate even after their present license expires as long as it is the NRC that is dragging it out. And most reactors have already been relicensed in the last ten years. Only 18 out of 104 reactors are not and primarily because they have to operate beyond 20 years before they can apply. The four new GenIII plants being built at Vogtle (Georgia) and V.C. Summer (South Carolina) are also not affected at all since their licenses have already been issued. Since NRC needed to do this anyway and will get it done before any of the critical licensing deadlines pass, this is no big deal. The nuclear industry has long been resigned to a slow-moving regulatory system. The environmental groups also stated that this action exacerbated an already dying nuclear industry, plagued with runaway costs and competition with far less expensive energy alternatives. Huh? Re-licensing nuclear reactors is the absolute cheapest form of energy, about 2¢/kWhr for 20 years. They are obviously referring to new natural gas plants versus new nuclear GenIII plants which is not impacted by this ruling at all. New nuclear is actually cheaper than new gas in the long run, e.g., 20 years or more, even at present gas prices, but our society doesn’t like to plan for the long-term so it usually gets these things wrong. And why anyone thinks gas plants are environmentally preferable to nuclear is odd from a carbon-emissions standpoint. NRC’s decision also marks the first major action since Dr. Allison Macfarlane was sworn in as chair of the NRC. MacFarlane describes the agency as “…a fantastic place, I’m enjoying it very much”, bearing out the general hope that her tenure will be more congenial and productive than the former Chair Gregory Jaczko, who stepped down amid infighting and controversy. But the elephant in the room on this whole issue is opening a deep geologic nuclear waste repository. As easy and safe as dry cask storage is, even for 100 years, spent fuel was always envisioned to be permanently disposed in such a repository, within 20 to 40 years of leaving the reactor. The original NRC ruling was to address the fact that we are not moving forward on that issue. Of course, the choice of a final repository is not NRC’s to make. Congress has to approve any site chosen by DOE or the yet-to-be-formed quasi-government agency recommended by the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on which Chairwomen MacFarlane served. Transportation of high-activity nuclear waste is easy using this 72B Cask, and we've been doing it for many years. This load of high-activity bomb waste is being shipped to the deep geologic repository near Carlsbad, NM. Source: DOE And confidence is a funny thing. Just look at the Stock Market. The scientific community has been researching deep geologic disposal for 60 years. We are more than confident we can accomplish it, relatively easily and within budget. If we are allowed to do it. We have performed thousands of studies, hundreds of environmental impacts, and have even built one of these deep geologic repositories in the U.S. that has been operating for 13 years without a hitch (Helman – WIPP). The Yucca Mountain Project also conducted a huge number of environmental impact studies regarding the containment of radionuclides underground, protection of nearby communities, impacts to groundwater for 100,000 years, and a host of other studies that show we can do this if society wants it done. We know this problem very well and we know where and how to put this strange material away forever and ever. Scientific confidence is not the issue here. The lack of confidence has always been with the political side. The court faulted NRC for assuming a national repository would be built within the next 60 years, even though that’s the law. Funny that the court is slapping the NRC for something it can’t seem to enforce itself. But there is hope for the future. President Obama formed the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to staunch the wound to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act left by the demise of the Yucca Mountain Project (Helman – BRC), and it was a brilliant dressing. The BRC drafted a number of recommendations addressing nuclear energy and waste issues, but three recommendations, in particular, set the stage for a new strategy to dispose of high-level nuclear waste and to manage spent nuclear fuel in the United States: 1) interim storage for spent nuclear fuel, 2) resumption of the site selection process for a second repository, and 3) a quasi-government entity to execute the program and take control of the Nuclear Waste Fund in order to do so. The first and third are already being acted upon by Congress, led by Senators Bingaman (D-NM), Murkowski (R-AK), Feinstein (D-CA), Landrieu (D-LA) and Alexander (R-TN) who are trying to put the Commission’s recommendations into legislative language. The latest attempt was just this last week, a proposed Nuclear Waste Administration Act, “To establish a new organization to manage nuclear waste, provide a consensual process for siting nuclear waste facilities, ensure adequate funding for managing nuclear waste, and for other purposes.” We will get this right as a Nation, and we will lead the way for the rest of the world. Just let us do it.

So was waste management

Conca ’12 (James Conca, Energy Contributor in Forbes, “Congress Goes Nuclear”, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/04/28/congress-goes-nuclear/#, April 28, 2012)
So much for the notion that Congress can’t do anything right. The thoughtful and smart actions of Senators Murkowski and Landrieu, working with Senators Feinstein, Alexander and Bingaman, produced a bill out of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee last Tuesday, approved Thursday by the full Committee, that took the first step to solving our nation’s nuclear waste problem. I’ve been waiting my entire career for this to happen. In fact, this first step is so significant that I’m having trouble catching my breath! If you remember, the Yucca Mountain Project, the nation’s first selected nuclear disposal site, was recently scrapped for being not workable and the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future was appointed to find another path forward. After reviewing the last 60 years of frustrated science and policy, in February the BRC released a number of very good recommendations addressing nuclear in general, but three specific ones were critical to actually dealing with high-level nuclear waste and managing spent nuclear fuel for the next hundred years. They were: 1) executing interim storage for spent nuclear fuel, 2) resuming the site selection process for a second repository (Yucca being the first, the massive salts being the best), and 3) forming a quasi-government entity, or FedCorp, to execute the program and take control of the Nuclear Waste Fund in order to do so. The first recommendation separates fuel from real waste, allowing storage of still-usable spent nuclear fuel from reactor sites either to be used in future reactors or eventually disposed, without needing to retrieve it from deep in the earth as is presently the Law. The second recommendation allows us to choose the best geology for the permanent disposal of actual high-level waste that has no value since it is the waste from reprocessing old fuel. This real waste needs to be disposed of promptly, not just looked at for another few decades. It has cost billions to manage this waste in places that were always meant to be temporary. The third recommendation controls cost and administration, because, duh, we’re broke. Dry cask storage behind a security fence. The safest, easiest method for putting spent fuel aside until used, burned as new fuel or eventually disposed of in a deep geologic repository. Tuesday’s bill starts the ball rolling by implementing the first recommendation, authorizing “the Secretary of Energy to site, construct, and operate consolidated storage facilities to provide storage as needed for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.” – IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES—112th Cong., 2d Sess. The short version is this bill is consent-based, meaning the Feds can’t just pick a site and force it down a State’s throat, but have to wait for someone to bid for it and requires approval of the Governor, any affected Tribes, and the local representatives of that State. Plus, it authorizes the Nuclear Waste Fund to be used for what it always was intended. And DOE has only 120 days from passage to begin accepting proposals so it won’t languish for years. This bill breaks the nuclear waste logjam. It’s simple, it’s the right thing to do, it will save lots of money, it’s the best thing for the environment, and it’s a win-win, so how did the Senate do this? And so fast! Now it’s up to the House to maintain the do-nothing image of Congress, kill this bill, and let us get back to wasting billions of dollars looking at the problem for 30 more years.

2AC- AT: Cost

No cost problems

Skutnik ‘11 (Steve, Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Tennessee “Are Small Modular Reactors A Nuclear Economics Game-Changer?” June 28th, http://theenergycollective.com/skutnik/60188/excellent-op-ed-small-modular-reactors-and-then-some, June 28, 2011)
SMRs have the potential to change the economics of the game by several means. First, many proposed SMR designs are engineered to be mass-produced and pre-fabricated in factories, rather than built on-site. This could tremendously push down prices while also shortening construction times, thus ameliorating what is currently one of nuclear's biggest weaknesses at the moment. Meanwhile, the "small" in SMRs also may have potentially positive implications for both cost and safety: SMRs can be potentially built into the ground, using the surrounding earth as containment, due to their relatively small size. Given the lower total power and nuclear material within the reactor, it can be said to have a lower overall "radiological footprint," meaning simplified safety planning. Finally, the "right-size" power of SMR capacity may allow them to be sold in a greater number of markets - places both where a new full-sized reactor is too big for the needs of a community (for example, Fort Calhoun, north of Omaha, is the smallest reactor in the U.S. nuclear fleet, clocking in at only 500 MW; compare this to currently proposed new reactor designs, which begin in the neighborhood of 1000-1100 MW). Likewise, the smaller size means that for utilities only looking to incrementally expand capacity, small reactors may prove to be competitive with alternatives such as natural gas turbines. One point which I think nuclear advocates tend to allow themselves to be blindsided to at times is in the fact that above all else, it is economics which will ultimately determine the future of the nation's electricity portfolio. Factors like politics certainly come into play (particularly such issues as energy portfolio mandates, etc.), and likewise factors such as safety can never be understated. Nor should public acceptance ever be ignored, much as it has to the industry's peril in the past. However, those ultimately committing the funds to expand energy sources are the utilities, many of whom answer either directly to shareholders or to ratepayers. In this regard, they have an obligation in either sense to produce power as profitably or affordably as possible. Thus, the decision for utilities will always ultimately come down to economics, something that nuclear advocates cannot simply ignore. I don't necessarily doubt the assertions of fellow advocates such as Rod Adams, who assert that fossil fuels have a strong interest to defend in continuing to sell their products. (Although I will say that I also don't necessarily buy the idea that those who argue natural gas is currently more economical based on short-term factors are necessarily on the fossil fuel dole, either.) But the fact remains - for nuclear to succeed, it must be able to compete, head to head, dollar for dollar. Nuclear energy has tremendous advantages to offer, in that is clean, abundant, and easily the most energy-dense source we have available at our disposal. Yet at the end of the day, decisions over energy investments do not necessarily come down to these factors: they come down to economics, and often (regrettably) economic return over the short-term. This may be where SMRs ultimately change the game for nuclear, then - namely, by bringing the advantages of nuclear to bear in a more economically attractive package.

AT: Makujani

Makujani isn’t talking about floating modular reactors- new design saves cost

Independently- he is wrong

Barton ‘10 (Charles, frmr PhD Candidate in History, MA in Philsophy, worked on the LFTR concept for about 2/3eds of his ORNL career and recognized by nuclear bloggers most of whom have technical training, and has been mentioned by the Wall Street Journal, “Arjun Makhijani and the Modular Small Reactor null-hypothesis” October 2, 2010, http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2010/10/arjun-makhijani-and-modular-small.html)
Arjun Makhijani (with Michele Boyd) has recently published a fact sheet on Small Modular Reactors which in effect advertises itself as the null-hypothesis to the case I an others have been making for some time on the advantages of small reactors. Small Modular ReactorsNo Solution for the Cost, Safety, and Waste Problems of Nuclear Power, Makhijani's title proclaims. But what is the evidence that backs Makhijani's case up. As it turns out Makhijani offers no empirical data to back up his assertion, so as an example of scientific reasoning, Makhijani's fact sheet rates an F.

He’s wrong

Barton ‘10 (Charles Barton, Masters in Philosophy from Memphis University, [ “Arjun Makhijani and the Modular Small Reactor null-hypothesis”, http://robertmayer.wordpress.com/2010/10/31/arjun-makhijani-and-the-modular-small-reactor-null-hypothesis/ October 2, 2010)
Finally, we should consider Makhijani assertions about small reactor costs. First he claims, SMR proponents claim that small size will enable mass manufacture in a factory, enabling considerable savings relative to field construction and assembly that is typical of large reactors. In other words, modular reactors will be cheaper because they will be more like assembly line cars than handmade Lamborghinis. In the case of reactors, however, several offsetting factors will tend to neutralize this advantage and make the costs per kilowatt of small reactors higher than large reactors. Makujani claims in contrast to cars or smart phones or similar widgets, the materials cost per kilowatt of a reactor goes up as the size goes down. This is because the surface area per kilowatt of capacity, which dominates materials cost, goes up as reactor size is decreased. Material costs do effect the cost of other industrial produced products including cars, and manufacturers take several approaches to that problem, including careful redesign of components to eliminate part of the expensive material, or the substitution of low cost materials for high cost materials. Makujani does not believe that this is possible, but for example it is possible to eliminate some of the cement and steel in the massive reactor containment dome by housing the reactor in an underground chamber. Thus high cost concrete and steel are replaced by low cost earth and rock, Reactors with compact cores, require less manufacturing material, and smaller housing facilities. Thus the choice of a compact core nuclear technology might offer considerable savings in materials costs. Thus the small reactor manufacturer may have several options to lower materials costs.¶ Makhijani claims that other costs might be inversely proportional to reactor size, Similarly, the cost per kilowatt of secondary containment, as well as independent systems for control, instrumentation, and emergency management, increases as size decreases. Yet as I have already noted there are things that manufacturers can do about containment costs. Control rooms are not huge parts of overall reactor costs, and there are undoubtedly things which reactor manufacturers could do to lower control room building costs. For example whole control room modules can be factory fabricated and moved to the reactor housing site where they could be house underground or in preexisting recycled structures. Similar solutions could be found for the emergency management housing issues. Finally Makhijani tells us Cost per kilowatt also increases if each reactor has dedicated and independent systems for control, instrumentation, and emergency management. Yet smaller reactors will require fewer sensors, reactor control and emergency management and with the very large number of instruments required by mass produced factory manufactured reactors, the cost of instrument manufacture and indeed whole instrument room manufacture will fall significantly. Small reactors require smaller, less costly control and emergency management systems, and the the cost benefits of serial manufacturing will affect the costs of these systems as well. Finally it should be noted that Makhijani fails to mention the clear cut cost lowering benefits of factory manufactured reactors. For example, Labor costs are significantly lowered in several ways. Factory assembly offers superior labor organization and thus the same tasks take less time in the factory. Secondly workers can live close to factory sites, thus do not require high wages to induce them into the transient lifestyle of construction workers. Thirdly, in a factory in which several reactors are being constructed at any one time, individual workers will require fewer skills. The less skilled workers will command lower wages. Taken together significant labor savings are possible through factory manufacture. Labor is by no means the only source of savings. A further source of savings would come from the serial manufacture of parts. It is well known that as the number of a part built increases, the cost of manufacturing that part falls. Thus serial production tends to lower unit costs. In addition serial production introduces cost lowering learning. As knowledge of a manufacturing process rises, awareness of cost lowering possibilities also increase. This is called the learning curve. It is reasonable to anticipate a learning curve based saving for serial produced small reactors. Thus cost savings will be available to the manufacturers of small factory built reactors. We lack cost the cost date that we need to judge the extent to which small factory manufactured reactors will lower nuclear costs. Arguments for the nuclear cost lowering benefits of economies of scale are not nearly strong as Makhijani believes them to be, while the evidence of a cost lowering effect of serial reactor manufacturer is stronger. Thus Makhijani has chosen to reject the stronger evidence while upholding the case for which the evidence appears to be so weak as to offer no support.¶ We can conclude then, that Arjun Makhijani has not established reasonable grounds in support of his assertion that Small Modular Reactors offer no solution for the cost, safety, and waste problems of nuclear power. Thus to the extent that this assertion can be viewed as a null-hypothesis to the claim that Small Modular Reactors offer an valuable attractive alternative to large conventional power plants, the hypothesis must be still be viewed as unfalsified by the available evidence. Further evidence could still change this picture, but for the moment advocates of small reactors have plausible grounds for their case.

AT: Magwood

Magwood’s a hack

Grim ‘12 (Ryan, Washington bureau chief for The Huffington Post “Bill Magwood, NRC Democrat, Is 'Treacherous, Miserable Liar' And 'First-Class Rat,' Says Harry Reid,” 7/30, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/30/bill-magwood-nrc-_n_1712181.html)
Harry Reid isn't known for hyperbole. The soft-spoken Senate majority leader tends to wield his power behind the scenes, and when he does speak at his weekly press briefing, reporters lean in and bend their ears to make out the words. But if Reid is lied to, all that changes. It may sound dissonant to the public to say that honesty is the mostly highly valued quality in Washington. But while members of Congress may lie to their constituents with regularity, lying to one another is considered an unforgiveable sin. In an interview with The Huffington Post, the Nevada Democrat savaged Bill Magwood, a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, when asked if he thought the Democrat had a chance to become NRC chairman. "You know, when you're in this government, this business of politics, the only thing that you have is your word," said Reid, seated in his Capitol office. "I can be as partisan as I have to be, but I always try to be nice. I try never to say bad things about people. Bill Magwood is one of the" -- Reid paused, deciding which adjective to reach for, before picking them all -- "most unethical, prevaricating" -- he paused again, this time for 10 full seconds -- "incompetent people I've ever dealt with. The man sat in that chair -- right there -- and lied to me. I've never, ever in my life had anyone do that. Never." Magwood didn't respond to a request for comment left with his assistant. Reid is a vociferous opponent of storing nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain. By backing Obama early in his campaign for president, he persuaded the candidate to promise to block the project. A former staffer of Reid's was named chairman, and Reid said he was assured by Pete Rouse, a senior White House official, that Magwood would also oppose Yucca. Instead, according to Reid and confirmed by sources familiar with the internal dynamics of the NRC, Magwood worked against the effort to shut down Yucca. "That man I will never, ever forget what a treacherous, miserable liar he is. I met with him because Pete Rouse asked me to meet with him. I said, 'Is he OK on Yucca Mountain?' Pete said, 'Yeah.' So I went through some detail with him as to how important this was to me. 'Senator, I know this industry like the back of my hand. You don't have to worry about me,' [Magwood said]. And the conversation was much deeper than that." Late in 2011, HuffPost reported that Magwood was working with Republicans and the nuclear industry to oust then-NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko, just as he had done to his boss Terry Lash at the Department of Energy in the 1990s. "What I eventually found was that he had been deceptive and disloyal," Lash said of his then-number two, when told what Reid said. "I'm surprised at the strength of it, but it's certainly consistent with what I've seen." Reid and Lash have company in their critique of Magwood. In the earlier story about Magwood and the industry, multiple people who've worked closely with him questioned his integrity, but none did so on the record like Reid and Lash:

Concludes aff

[their card stops, Magwood continues]

So why is today different from yesterday? The greatest difference is the fact that the technology has evolved significantly over the years. Having learned lessons from the development of Generation III+ technologies and from the failure of previous small reactors, today's SMR vendors clearly believe they have solved the riddle of small reactor economics. They are presenting novel design approaches that could lead to significant improvements in nuclear safety. For example, design concepts that I have seen thus far further advance the use of passive safety systems, applying gravity, natural circulation, and very large inventories of cooling water to reduce reliance on human intervention during an emergency. SMR designs also apply novel technologies such as integral pressure vessels that contain all major system components and use fewer and smaller pipes and pumps, thereby reducing the potential for a serious loss-of-coolant accident. Very importantly, these new SMRs are much smaller than the systems designed in the 1990s; this choice was made to assure that they could be factory-built and shipped largely intact by rail for deployment. The ability to ``manufacture'' a reactor rather than ``constructing'' it onsite could prove to be a major advantage in terms of cost, schedule reliability, and even quality control.

Worked with industry

POGO ‘9 (project on government oversight “ POGO Opposes Nomination of William Magwood to NRC,”, http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/letters/nuclear-security-safety/nss-npp-20090914.html, October 14, 2009)
Mr. Magwood's nomination violates the spirit of President Obama's "Ethics Commitment by Executive Branch Personnel Executive Order" (Ethics Executive Order). Since his retirement from government service in 2005, Mr. Magwood has been actively involved in efforts to advance nuclear industry business opportunities domestically and abroad. He founded Advanced Energy Strategies which provides "expert advice and analysis of U.S. and international energy policy activities; nuclear industry developments and prospects; and supporting business development efforts." Mr. Magwood has also been an investor in and President of Secure Energy North America Corporation, a company that is "working with industry and investors to develop novel approaches to finance new nuclear power stations in the United States." Prior to his government service, Mr. Magwood also managed nuclear policy programs at the Edison Electric Institute, an industry trade association.

2AC- AT: Natural Gas Glut AC

SMR key to help nuclear beat-out natural gas

Lamonica ’12 (Tech Review Writer. 20 years of experience covering technology and business (8/9/12, Martin, A Glut of Natural Gas Leaves Nuclear Power Stalled, www.technologyreview.com/news/428737/a-glut-of-natural-gas-leaves-nuclear-power/)
The nuclear renaissance is in danger of petering out before it has even begun, but not for the reasons most people once thought. Forget safety concerns, or the problem of where to store nuclear waste—the issue is simply cheap, abundant natural gas.¶ General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt caused a stir last month when he told the Financial Times that it's "hard to justify nuclear" in light of low natural gas prices. Since GE sells all manner of power generation equipment, including components for nuclear plants, Immelt's comments hold a lot of weight.¶ Cheap natural gas has become the fuel of choice with electric utilities, making building expensive new nuclear plants an increasingly tough sell. The United States is awash in natural gas largely thanks to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" technology, which allows drillers to extract gas from shale deposits once considered too difficult to reach. In 2008, gas prices were approaching $13 per million BTUs; prices have now dropped to around $3. ¶ When gas prices were climbing, there were about 30 nuclear plant projects in various stages of planning in the United States. Now the Nuclear Energy Institute estimates that, at most, five plants will be built by 2020, and those will only be built thanks to favorable financing terms and the ability to pay for construction from consumers' current utility bills. Two reactors now under construction in Georgia, for example, moved ahead with the aid of an $8.33 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. ¶ What happens after those planned projects is hard to predict. "The question is whether we'll see any new nuclear," says Revis James, the director of generation research and development at the Electric Power Research Institute. "The prospects are not good."¶ Outside the United States, it's a different story. Unconventional sources of natural gas also threaten the expansion of nuclear, although the potential impact is less clear-cut. Around the world, there are 70 plants now under construction, but shale gas also looms as a key factor in planning for the future. Prices for natural gas are already higher in Asia and Europe, and shale gas resources are not as fully developed as they are the United States.¶ Some countries are also blocking the development of new natural gas resources. France, for instance, which has a strong commitment to nuclear, has banned fracking in shale gas exploration because of concerns over the environmental impact.¶ Fast-growing China, meanwhile, needs all the energy sources available and is building nuclear power plants as fast as possible.¶ Even in United States, of course, super cheap natural gas will not last forever. With supply exceeding demand, some drillers are said to be losing money on natural gas, which could push prices back up. Prices will also be pushed upward by utilities, as they come to rely on more natural gas for power generation, says James.¶ Ali Azad, the chief business development officer at energy company Babcock & Wilcox, thinks the answer is making nuclear power smaller, cheaper, and faster. His is one of a handful of companies developing small modular reactors that can be built in three years, rather than 10 or more, for a fraction of the cost of gigawatt-size reactors. Although this technology is not yet commercially proven, the company has a customer in the Tennessee Valley Authority, which expects to have its first unit online in 2021 (see "A Preassembled Nuclear Reactor").¶ "When we arrive, we will have a level cost of energy on the grid, which competes favorably with a brand-new combined-cycle natural gas plants when gas prices are between $6 to $8," said Azad. He sees strong demand in power-hungry China and places such as Saudia Arabia, where power is needed for desalination.¶ Even if natural gas remains cheaper, utilities don't want to find themselves with an overreliance on gas, which has been volatile on price in the past, so nuclear power will still contribute to the energy mix. "[Utilities] still continue [with nuclear] but with a lower level of enthusiasm—it's a hedging strategy," says Hans-Holger Rogner from the Planning and Economics Studies section of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "They don't want to pull all their eggs in one basket because of the new kid on the block called shale gas."

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