Tournament: GSU  | Round: 1 | Opponent:  | Judge: 

Plan

The United States federal government should remove requirements for multi-step, multi-agency licensing and remove the moratorium on licenses for small modular reactors.

1AC Prolif

Contention One: Prolif

Global nuclear renaissance makes proliferation and weaponization likely without nuclear leadership

Hamre and Sowcroft 2012 (John Hamre, President and CEO, Center for Strategic and International Studies. Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft (Ret.), Former National Security Advisor, CSIS Counselor and Trustee.)

(4/11/2012 “Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Global Security Forum 2012 Scenario 2030: Is the U.S. Nuclear Industry Dying?” http://csis.org/event/global-security-forum-2012-scenario-2030-us-nuclear-industry-dying)

MR. HAMRE: Well, Brent, the only place where the wind blows 100 percent of the time is Washington. So I mean, this is the only place you could substitute – (laughter) – nuclear for wind power.

But let me take you – also, you’re wearing your national security hat – you know, but –

Going back to Eisenhower, he was trying to find a framework where we would manage the danger of nuclear power but we would still allow its promise for the world. And what – but now we’re in this period where, look, America is going to shrink. I mean – just by very conservative forecast, 20 years from now we’ll probably be down to 50 or 60 plants in America, and the rest of the world is going to build probably 200. So there’ll be about 600 plants in the world, 10 percent of them anyways. And if you go out another 20 years, it’s probably going to be 2 percent in the U.S. How does America shape the security environment if this trend continues? How do you think about that, as a former national security advisor?

GEN. SCOWCROFT: Well, I think about that a lot. And I didn’t even go to the national security aspects of it, which I think are dominant in a way. We’re going to have a nuclear world. We’re not doing anything. But Saudi Arabia, the homeland of petroleum, is building nuclear plants.

MR. HAMRE: Nineteen.

GEN. SCOWCROFT: Most of the world is building nuclear plants now – rapidly. We’re not. The national security aspect of nuclear weapons – of nuclear energy is also extremely important.

And is there a way that we can spread nuclear power for its benefits and control the resulting capability to go to nuclear weapons, which is a world we’re trying to avoid right now. And that’s a difficult question, especially if we are not in the nuclear power business; then we lose all of our ability to control the development of nuclear energy around the world in a way which provides the benefits of nuclear energy without the detriment of weaponization.

MR. HAMRE: You know, if by 2050 we’re down to two nuclear power plants, it’s going to be hard to tell China with 150 how they ought to behave with nuclear power.

The plan addresses prolif in two ways

First, strong nuclear industry:

The US nuclear industry is in decline – reviving it is key to set the global standard for nuclear expansion and restore nonproliferation credibility

Wallace and Williams 12 (Michael Wallace comes to CSIS from Constellation Energy, where he served as vice chairman and COO. During his nine years at Constellation Energy, he led many company business activities, including the formation and operation of two joint ventures with EDF related to nuclear energy. Prior to joining Constellation Energy, he was cofounder and managing director of Barrington Energy Partners, LLC, a strategic consulting firm specializing in energy industry transactions and advisory services. Sarah J. Williams is program coordinator and research associate in the U.S. Nuclear Energy Project at CSIS. Prior to joining CSIS, she was a Herbert Scoville Jr. peace fellow and program coordinator at the Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).)

(4/17/12 “Nuclear Energy in America: Preventing its Early Demise” http://csis.org/files/publication/120417_gf_wallace_williams.pdf)

Meanwhile, China, India, Russia, and other countries are looking to significantly expand their nuclear energy commitments. By 2016, China could have 50 nuclear power plants in operation, compared with only 14 in 2011. India could add 8 new plants and Russia 10 in the same time frame. These trends are expected to accelerate out to 2030, by which time China, India, and Russia could account for nearly 40 percent of global nuclear generating capacity.

Meanwhile, several smaller nations, mostly in Asia and the Middle East, are planning to get into the nuclear energy business for the first time. In all, as many as 15 new nations could have this technology within the next two decades. Meanwhile, America’s share of global nuclear generation is expected to shrink, from about 25 percent today to about 14 percent in 2030, and—if current trends continue—to less than 10 percent by mid-century.

With the center of gravity for global nuclear investment shifting to a new set of players, the United States and the international community face a difficult set of challenges: stemming the spread of nuclear weapons-usable materials and know-how; preventing further catastrophic nuclear accidents; providing for safe, long-term nuclear waste management; and protecting U.S. energy security and economic competitiveness. In this context, federal action to reverse the American nuclear industry’s impending decline is a national security imperative. The United States cannot afford to become irrelevant in a new nuclear age.

Our nation’s commercial nuclear industry, its military nuclear capabilities, and its strong regulatory institutions can be seen as three legs of a stool. All three legs are needed to support America’s future prosperity and security and to shape an international environment that is conducive to our long-term interests.

Three specific aspects of U.S. leadership are particularly important.

First, managing the national and global security risks associated with the spread of nuclear technology to countries that don’t necessarily share the same perspective on issues of nonproliferation and nuclear security or may lack the resources to implement effective safeguards in this area. An approach that relies on influence and involvement through a viable domestic industry is likely to be more effective and less expensive than trying to contain these risks militarily.

Second, setting global norms and standards for safety, security, operations, and emergency response. As the world learned with past nuclear accidents and more recently with Fukushima, a major accident anywhere can have lasting repercussions everywhere. As with nonproliferation and security, America’s ability to exert leadership and influence in this area is directly linked to the strength of our domestic industry and our active involvement in the global nuclear enterprise. A strong domestic civilian industry and regulatory structure have immediate national security significance in that they help support the nuclear capabilities of the U.S. Navy, national laboratories, weapons complex, and research institutions.

Third, in the past, the U.S. government could exert influence by striking export agreements with countries whose regulatory and legal frameworks reflected and were consistent with our own nonproliferation standards and commitments. At the same time, our nation set the global standard for effective, independent safety regulation (in the form of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission), led international efforts to reduce proliferation risks (through the 1970 NPT Treaty and other initiatives), and provided a model for industry self-regulation.

The results were not perfect, but America’s institutional support for global nonproliferation goals and the regulatory behaviors it modeled clearly helped shape the way nuclear technology was adopted and used elsewhere around the world. This influence seems certain to wane if the United States is no longer a major supplier or user of nuclear technology. With existing nonproliferation and safety and security regimes looking increasingly inadequate in this rapidly changing global nuclear landscape, American leadership and leverage is more important and more central to our national security interests than ever.

To maintain its leadership role in the development, design, and operation of a growing global nuclear energy infrastructure, the next administration, whether Democrat or Republican, must recognize the invaluable role played by the commercial U.S. nuclear industry and take action to prevent its early demise.

Second, spread of SMRs:

SMRs eliminate the incentive for countries to develop nuclear enrichment knowledge and capacity.

Ioannis Kessides, Chief Economist for the Development Research Group @ World Bank, and Vladimir Kuznetsov, Consultant for the World Bank, July 2012 (“Small Modular Reactors for Enhancing Energy Security in Developing Countries.” http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/4/8/1806/htm)

One of the key concerns regarding nuclear deployment in developing countries is that those countries generally have a less mature regulatory regime in place compared to the advanced industrial countries. These considerations place very stringent requirements on power station reliability and safety performance. The need for enhanced levels of safety can be more easily met by SMRs with design options that maximize the use of inherent and passive safety features and incorporate additional layers of “defense in depth” [13]. These safety features can be more easily and effectively implemented in SMRs because of these reactors’ larger surface-to-volume ratio, reduced core power density, lower source term, and less frequent (multi-year) refueling. For example, large surface-to-volume ratios facilitate the passive (with no external source of electrical power or stored energy) removal of decay heat. The extent to which nuclear power will prove an acceptable and enduring option for meeting the future energy requirements worldwide will depend in part upon the ability of the international community to minimize the associated proliferation risks. A major nuclear expansion program, unless is accompanied by adequate technical and institutional safeguards, could increase the risk that weapons-usable fissile materials, facilities, technology, or expertise might be diverted or stolen. The common fear is that such an expansion will make it easier for countries to acquire technology as a precursor to developing nuclear weapons capability or for terrorist groups to obtain nuclear materials. This risk could be further compounded by the likelihood that plutonium-fueled breeder reactors will be widely used to stretch uranium resources under expanded nuclear power deployment. Enhanced capacity and institutional arrangements to prevent proliferation and diversion of nuclear technology to non-peaceful purposes are challenges that will need to be overcome if nuclear energy is to be expanded in developing countries One potential way of mitigating the proliferation risks of expanded nuclear deployment in developing countries might be through the adoption of hub-and-spoke configurations that restrict all sensitive activities (such as isotope separation of uranium or reprocessing of spent fuel) to large, international/regional energy parks that would export fuel, hydrogen, and even small (40–50 megawatts) sealed reactors to client states [30,31]. These reactors would be assembled and fueled at the central nuclear park, sealed (so that individual fuel assemblies could not be removed) and delivered as a unit to the power plant cites of client countries. At the end of their core life (say 15–20 years) the reactors would be returned to the central park unopened. Thus, during the 15–20 years of operation there would be no refueling and consequently the client countries would need no fuel fabrication facilities and management capabilities. To the extent that such modular reactors would operate almost autonomously, the hub-and-spoke architecture could reduce substantially the rationale and opportunities for countries to develop nuclear research laboratories and train technical specialists and scientists whose know-how could later be diverted to weapons activities [32]. It should be noted that providing attractive alternatives to the buildup of indigenous facilities is a good idea. However, trying to restrict knowledge diffusion is arguable futile and non-sustainable.

SMRs make covert efforts at prolif incredibly obvious – ensures international response.

Harold Feiveson, Senior Research Policy Analyst @ Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton, et al. Alexander Glaser, Asst Prof. at Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs @ Princeton, Marvin Miller, Senior Scientist Emeritus @ MIT Center for International Studies, and Lawrence Scheinman, International Policy @ Monterey Institute of International Studies, 2008 (http://www.cissm.umd.edu/papers/files/future_nuclear_power.pdf)

With respect to country proliferation:

• Any country with nuclear power and a nuclear power infrastructure could get fissile material if it wished – within months or a year – barring international action to prevent this. If it had a commercial reactor, it could build a reprocessing plant to separate out plutonium; or it could build a dedicated reactor and reprocessing plant in a somewhat longer period. It could also enrich uranium over time, but as long as the country did not have any enrichment facilities to begin with, such a route would take longer than would a plutonium path. • However, in the scenarios considered, it should be possible to have a safeguards regime such that any diversion of facilities and materials would be quickly detected, giving time for an international response (see the following bullet). In this respect, the once-through fuel cycle, the hub-spoke arrangements with sealed reactors, and possibly certain thorium cycles appear particularly attractive in making immediately visible an attempted diversion and lengthening the time for a diversion to be consummated. • Since technically most countries will be able to get nuclear weapons, enforcement and compliance provisions of any international control regime are crucial. • Compliance will be stronger and more accepted if nuclear power is nondiscriminatory. That is, for example, if countries such as the United States wish to have breeder reactors, it will be hard to argue that other countries should not be allowed these. • Secondly, compliance will be surer and more effective if ventures to produce fissile material for weapons can quickly be seen and monitored by multinational or international authorities and if the acquisition of significant quantities of fissile material by a country, clandestinely or overtly, will take months or longer. For this reason, we believe that all “sensitive” or “dangerous” nuclear facilities should ideally be put under multinational or international control. This includes reprocessing and enrichment plants. It might include also all uranium mining and milling and spent fuel. In time, the fuel could be “owned” by an international authority.

International norms and response solve proliferation – empirics prove.

Reed ’10, [Alexander R. Reed, Master of Arts in Security Studies from Georgetown University, April 14, 2010 “The Role of Denial in Nuclear Nonproliferation,” https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/553565/reedAlexander.pdf?sequence=1]

Incentives for integration with the international community benefitted nonproliferation¶ Incentives for normalization also played significant roles in some of the nonproliferation ¶ successes studied. Libya, South Africa, and Brazil all sought increased integration ¶ within the international community, but had to forgo their nuclear weapons programs ¶ before such integration could occur. South Africa, long isolated due to its policy of¶ apartheid, sought to establish a cooperative relationship with international ¶ community.¶ 137¶ While eliminating apartheid was the biggest step, South Africa also had ¶ to renounce its nuclear weapons. The sanctions and isolation imposed by the ¶ international community against apartheid thus had a significant effect on South Africa’s ¶ nuclear weapons motivations. Brazil similarly wanted to integrate into the international ¶ community. The Brazilian Government initially saw nuclear weapons as a means to ¶ increase its prestige among global powers.¶ 138¶ When the civilian government took ¶ control, however, it saw nuclear weapons as an obstacle to unrestricted membership ¶ and leadership in the international community.¶ 139¶ Brazil chose to renounce its weapons ¶ programs and alleviate international pressure to help accomplish that central goal.

Prolif causes extinction.

Heisbourg ’12, [Francois Heisbourg, Chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, prof at the Geneva Center for Security Policy, July 2012, “How Bad Would the Further Spread of Nuclear Weapons Be?”, http://www.npolicy.org/userfiles/file/oving%20Beyond%20Pretense%20web%20version.pdf#page=182]

Human societies tend to lack the imagination to think through, and to act upon, what have become known as “black swan” events 26 : That which has never occurred (or which has happened very rarely and in a wholly different context) is deemed not to be in the field of reality, and to which must be added eventualities that are denied because their consequences are too awful to contemplate. The extremes of human misconduct (the incredulity in the face of evidence of the Holocaust, the failure to imagine 9/11) bear testimony to this hardwired trait of our species. This would not normally warrant mention as a factor of growing salience if not for the recession into time of the original and only use of nuclear weapons in August 1945. Nonuse of nuclear weapons may soon be taken for granted rather than being an absolute taboo. Recent writing on the reputedly limited effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs 27 may contribute to such a trend, in the name of reducing the legitimacy of nuclear weapons. Recent, and often compelling, historical accounts of the surrender of the Japanese Empire that downplay the role of the atomic bombings in comparison to early research can produce a similar effect, even if that may not have been the intention. 28 However desirable it has been, the end of atmospheric nuclear testing 29 has removed for more than three decades the periodic reminders that such monstrous detonations made as to the uniquely destructive nature of nuclear weapons. There is a real and growing risk that we forget what was obvious to those who first described in 1941 the unique nature of yet-to-be produced nuclear weapons. 30 The risk is no doubt higher in those states for which the history of World War II has little relevance and that have not had the will or the opportunity to wrestle at the time or ex post facto with the moral and strategic implications of the nuclear bombing of Japan in 1945. Unsustainable strains are possibly the single most compelling feature of contemporary proliferation. Examples include tight geographical constraints–with, for instance, New Delhi and Islamabad, located within 300 miles of each other; nuclear multi-polarity against the backdrop of multiple, crisscrossing sources of tension in the Middle East, as opposed to the relative simplicity of the U.S.-Soviet confrontation; the existence of doctrines, such as India’s “cold start,” and force postures, such as Pakistan’s broadening array of battle- field nukes, that rest on the expectation of early use; and the role of non-state actors as aggravating or triggering factors when they are perceived as operating with the connivance of an antagonist state (in the past, the assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo in 1914; and in the future, Hezbollah operatives launching rockets with effect against Israel or Lashkar-e-Taiba commandos doing a “Bombay” redux in India?). Individually or in combination, these factors test crisis management capabilities more severely than anything seen during the Cold War with the partial exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Even the overabundant battlefield nuclear arsenals in Cold War Central Europe, with their iffy weapons’ safety and security arrangements, were less of a challenge: The U.S. and Soviet short-range nuclear weapons so deployed were not putting U.S. and Soviet territory and capitals at risk. It may be argued that these risk factors are known to potential protagonists and that they therefore will be led to avoid the sort of nuclear brinksmanship that characterized U.S. and Soviet behavior during the Cold War in crises such as the Korean War, Berlin, Cuba or the Yom Kippur War. Unfortunately, the multiple nuclear crises between India and Pakistan demonstrate no such prudence, rather the contrary. And were such restraint to feed into nuclear policy and crisis planning, along the lines of apparently greater U.S. and Soviet nuclear caution from the mid-seventies onwards, the fact would remain that initial intent rarely resists the strains of a complex, multiactor confrontation between inherently distrustful antagonists. It is also worth reflecting on the fact that during the 1980s there was real and acute fear in Soviet ruling circles that the West was preparing an out-of-the-blue nuclear strike, a fear which in turn fed into Soviet policies and dispositions. 31 The Cold War was a set of crises and misunderstandings that came within a whisker of a nuclear holocaust. India and Pakistan’s nuclear ¶ standoff is deeply unstable, not least as a result of the interaction with non-state actors. A multipolar nuclear Middle East would make ¶ the Cuban Missile Crisis look easy in comparison.

Proliferation causes nuclear deterrence to fail. Impossible to replicate Cold War stability.

Shultz et al. ’11, George P. Shultz, former secretary of state, William J. Perry, former secretary of defense, Henry A. Kissinger, former secretary of state, and Sam Nunn, former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, 04-07-2011“Deterrence in an Age of Nuclear Deterrence”, http://www.nonukes.nl/media/files/2011-03-07-gang-of-four-tnw.pdf

As long as there has been war, there have been efforts to deter actions a nation considers¶ threatening. Until fairly recently, this meant building a military establishment capable of¶ intimidating the adversary, defeating him or making his victory more costly than the projected¶ gains. This, with conventional weapons, took time. Deterrence and war strategy were identical.¶ The advent of the nuclear weapon introduced entirely new factors. It was possible, for the first¶ time, to inflict at the beginning of a war the maximum casualties. The doctrine of mutual¶ assured destruction represented this reality. Deterrence based on nuclear weapons, therefore,¶ has three elements:

 It is importantly psychological, depending on calculations for which there is no historical¶ experience. It is therefore precarious.

 It is devastating. An unrestrained nuclear exchange between superpowers could destroy¶ civilized life as we know it in days.

 Mutual assured destruction raises enormous inhibitions against employing the weapons.¶ Since the first use of nuclear weapons against Japan, neither of the superpowers, nor any other¶ country, has used nuclear weapons in a war. A gap opened between the psychological element¶ of deterrence and the risks most leaders were willing to incur. U.S. defense leaders made¶ serious efforts to give the president more flexible options for nuclear use short of global¶ annihilation. They never solved the problem, and it was always recognized that Washington¶ and Moscow both held the keys to unpredictable and potentially catastrophic escalations.

As a result, nuclear deterrence was useful in preventing only the most catastrophic scenarios¶ that would have threatened our survival. But even with the deployment of thousands of nuclear¶ weapons on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the Soviet moves into Hungary in 1956 and¶ Czechoslovakia in 1968 were not deterred. Nor were the numerous crises involving Berlin,¶ including the building of the Wall in 1961, or major wars in Korea and Vietnam, or the Soviet¶ invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. In the case of the Soviet Union, nuclear weapons did not¶ prevent collapse or regime change.

Today, the Cold War is almost 20 years behind us, but many leaders and publics cannot¶ conceive of deterrence without a strategy of mutual assured destruction. We have written¶ previously that reliance on this strategy is becoming increasingly hazardous. With the spread of¶ nuclear weapons, technology, materials and know‐how, there is an increasing risk that nuclear¶ weapons will be used.

It is not possible to replicate the high‐risk stability that prevailed between the two nuclear¶ superpowers during the Cold War in such an environment. The growing number of nations¶ with nuclear arms and differing motives, aims and ambitions poses very high and¶ unpredictable risks and increased instability.

From 1945 to 1991, America and the Soviet Union were diligent, professional, but also lucky¶ that nuclear weapons were never used. Does the world want to continue to bet its survival on¶ continued good fortune with a growing number of nuclear nations and adversaries globally?¶ Can we devise and successfully implement with other nations, including other nuclear powers,¶ careful, cooperative concepts to safely dismount the nuclear tiger while strengthening the¶ capacity to assure our security and that of allies and other countries considered essential to our¶ national security?

1AC Economy

Contention Two is the economy

Scenario one is manufacturing

We’re struggling out of a recession now – but manufacturing is slowing

Reuters 12

(6/15/12 Dip in Manufacturing Suggests a Stalled U.S. Economy http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/business/economy/dip-in-manufacturing-could-suggest-stalled-economy.html#h[TiaIau,2])

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Factory output contracted in May for the second time in three months, the Federal Reserve said on Friday, and families took a dimmer view of their economic prospects in early June, signs that the economy’s recovery is on shaky ground.

¶ The new data was the latest in a series of reports portraying a weak economy that have led analysts to cut growth forecasts while raising expectations that the Federal Reserve will offer new stimulus measures.

¶ Until recently, manufacturing had been a buttress for the nation’s economy, helping it resist headwinds from Europe’s snowballing debt crisis.

¶ But in May, factory output shrank 0.4 percent, with plants producing fewer cars and less machinery, Federal Reserve data showed.

¶ “It’s more convincing evidence that the economy is stuck in low gear,” said Joe Manimbo, a market analyst at Travelex Global Business Payments.

¶ Other reports pointed to cooling factory activity in New York State this month, along with a drop in household confidence in the economy.

¶ The fall in confidence poses a serious threat to President Obama’s chances of winning re-election in November. It could also lead consumers to cut back on spending, which would reduce economic growth.

¶ “Consumers are scared,” said Sharon Stark, managing director at Sterne Agee in Birmingham, Ala.

¶ Consumer sentiment fell in early June to a six-month low. A gauge of household confidence in the economy’s future also dropped to its lowest since December.

¶ The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan’s index on consumer sentiment slipped to 74.1, falling short of even the most pessimistic forecast in a Reuters poll.

¶ Economists at Capital Economics reckon the decline in consumer sentiment is consistent with growth in consumer spending slowing to a mere 1 percent annual rate in the second quarter, down from 2.7 percent in the first three months of the year.

¶ The weakening recovery in the United States and a worsening debt crisis in Europe have bolstered expectations of a further easing of monetary policy by the Fed, although economists are divided on whether the central bank will act when it meets on Tuesday and Wednesday.

¶ Hiring by the nation’s employers has slowed for four consecutive months, while retail sales contracted in May and new applications for jobless benefits have risen in five of the last six weeks.

¶ Within the Fed’s report on U.S. industry in May, the softness in the factory sector was widespread.

¶ Output for durable goods dropped 0.5 percent as auto production slid 1.5 percent. Production of nondurables fell 0.2 percent.

¶ Total industrial output, covering factories, mines and utilities, declined 0.1 percent. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected industrial production to rise 0.1 percent.

¶ In a sign the factory sector’s weakness could continue into June, the New York Federal Reserve Bank’s Empire State index fell to 2.3, a 15-point drop from the previous month and the lowest level since November 2011.

¶ That was far below economists’ expectations of 13, although the level still points to some growth.

¶ “That is another indication that the U.S. economy is slowing,” said Justin Hoogendoorn, a fixed-income strategist at BMO Capital Markets in Chicago. “It’s an ugly situation.”

Specifically, strong manufacturing key to prevent a double dip

NYT 12 (Floyd Norris - Floyd Norris is the chief financial correspondent of The New York Times and writes a weekly column for the financial section.Before joining The Times, Mr. Norris had been with Barron's National Business and Financial Weekly since December 1982,)

(1/5/12 “Manufacturing Is Surprising Bright Spot in U.S. Economy” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/business/us-manufacturing-is-a-bright-spot-for-the-economy.html#h[IaeBih,1])

¶ Since employment in the United States hit its recent low, in February 2010, the economy has added 2.4 million jobs through November, of which 302,000 were in manufacturing. With government payrolls shrinking, and financial services jobs also fewer, manufacturing employment has played an important role in keeping the economy growing. It also is helping that construction employment appears to have hit bottom. In the first 11 months of 2011, it is up a small amount.

¶ To be sure, the gains in manufacturing employment and exports have come after sharp declines during the recession and credit crisis. There are still 6 percent fewer manufacturing jobs than there were when President Obama took office at the beginning of 2009, and it seems very unlikely that he will be the first president since Bill Clinton, in his first term, to preside over growing manufacturing employment during a four-year term.

¶ During George W. Bush’s two terms, the number of manufacturing jobs fell by 17 percent in the first four years and by 12 percent in the following four years. The number declined by 1 percent in Mr. Clinton’s second term.

¶ The Institute for Supply Management survey of manufacturers has shown more companies planning to hire than to fire in every month since October 2009. That string of 27 months is the longest such string since 1972, but remains well behind the longest one, 36 months, which ended in December 1966.

¶ Over all, that survey has indicated that a plurality of companies has believed business is getting better for 29 consecutive months, and December’s reading of 53.9 was the strongest since June.

¶ This summer, one widely watched part of the Institute for Supply Management survey showed that a small plurality of companies reported new orders were falling, a fact that helped to stimulate talk of a double-dip recession. But the latest reading, of 57.6, indicates widespread strength in new orders.

¶ In an economy where there is widespread concern over consumer spending, and in which government spending and payrolls are under heavy pressure, manufacturing has become a bright spot. It is not enough to produce a strong rebound, and it remains vulnerable to weakness overseas. But it has helped to keep a weak economic recovery from turning into a new recession.

Strong manufacturing is Key to growth and a stable economy – jobs, innovation, trade deficits, resiliency

Ettlinger and Gordon 11 (Michael Ettlinger is the Vice President for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress. Kate Gordon is the Vice President for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress. )

(April 2011. Center for American Progress “The Importance and Promise of American Manufacturing” http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2011/04/pdf/manufacturing.pdf)

The health and future of manufacturing in the United States matters. For starters, it constitutes 12 percent of the U.S. economy. To put that in perspective, when the United States recently lost less than 4 percent of its gross domestic product, or national income, the result was labeled the “Great Recession.” Twelve percent of the economy matters a lot.

But the manufacturing sector also boasts an outsized importance that is understated by even that 12 percent. One key reason manufacturing is so important is its position as the cornerstone of the success of many other economically important activities. This role has been the subject of a longstanding debate as to whether the United States should hold onto its manufacturing sector or instead become a “postindustrial” society.

This debate started in the 1980s when Japanese goods started flooding the U.S. market. Some economists argued then that America should move beyond competition for manufacturing jobs and settle instead into a new economic growth pattern based on service jobs in knowledge-based industries. These economists argued that just as the United States shifted away from agriculture and into industry, so should it shift from industry into services as the primary source of economic activity for the future.

But this “manufacturing versus services” argument set up a false dichotomy. A strong manufacturing sector does not come at the cost of a strong service sector— to the contrary, each manufacturing job actually supports multiple jobs in other sectors. As economists Stephen Cohen and John Zysman wrote in the late 1980s, the manufacturing sector does not just include the group of employees who work on the factory floor. Instead, the manufacturing sector has “direct linkages” to high-level service jobs throughout the economy: product and process engineering, design, operations and maintenance, transportation, testing, and lab work, as well as sector-specific payroll, accounting, and legal work.

Furthermore, “the more advanced or modern the production process, the longer and more complicated the chains or linkages,” note Cohen and Zysman in their 1988 book Manufacturing Matters: The Myth of the Post-Industrial Economy.1 If anything, the phenomenon Cohen and Zysman observed is even more evident today as manufacturing industries create many indirect jobs for each direct job created. Motor vehicle manufacturing, for example, now creates 8.6 indirect jobs for each direct job. Computer manufacturing creates 5.6 indirect jobs and steel product manufacturing creates 10.3 indirect jobs for each direct job.2

So manufacturing creates jobs, not just in the manufacturing sector but in a host of other occupations and industries. But that doesn’t settle the issue of the importance of having actual, physical manufacturing take place in the United States. The question remains, can manufacturing happen in, say, China, but still create associated high-quality service jobs here at home? The answer is that it is, indeed, important that the actual, physical manufacturing occur here. Made in America matters.

When shop floor manufacturing jobs depart, other jobs go with them—and with those jobs goes the ability to create and innovate. Declines in the U.S. manufacturing sector mean declines in our nation’s overall “industrial commons”—a set of related industries and activities including those in the highly prized knowledge based economy. According to Harvard economist Gary Pisano, when manufacturing moves overseas so does this industrial commons, meaning that we lose not only production prowess but also the process innovation that comes from colocating research and development, design, engineering, and manufacturing.

“In addition to undermining the ability of the United States to manufacture hightech products, the erosion of the industrial commons has seriously damaged the country’s ability to invent new ones,” writes Pisano in a recent Harvard Business Journal online debate.3 With the loss of the commons and the jobs comes a decline in U.S. workforce skills and the ability to invent and innovate that can only come from the hands-on experience of working in an industry.4

The upshot: If we lose our ability to make things, we may well lose our ability to invent them.

There is strong anecdotal evidence that if we cede production on a process invented in the United States then we may lose future iterations of innovation of that process. Solar panels are one example. Invented in New Jersey at Bell Laboratories in 1954, the production of solar photovoltaic panels has largely moved overseas (China is currently the world’s largest producer), and most new innovations in panel production, such as process improvements that make the panels far more powerful by altering their electrical properties, are happening outside of our nation.5

Interestingly, this is less true for nonpanel solar power innovations, such as the holographic solar applications pioneered by small startups in Arizona and New York, possibly because these new innovations are still cutting-edge and not yet in commercial production at any real scale.6 Once these technologies do scale up, however, they too may be produced and improved overseas.

One industry where the spatial relationship between manufacturing and innovation is most clearly shown by empirical data is the optoelectronics industry, which includes products such as lasers and fiber-optic telecommunications. In a recent set of studies, Carnegie Mellon University engineering professor Erica Fuchs examined the impact of offshoring production on technological innovation. Her key finding: When optoelectronics companies offshored production of their original designs to, for instance, Asia, they tended to produce those initial designs cheaply and efficiently. When these firms then began work on new and improved designs, however, they tended to lose valuable time and knowledge if their operations were off shore.7

Thus, moving manufacturing overseas impeded the companies’ ability to compete and keep at the forefront of design and production and to efficiently push forward new technologies.8 Inexorably, then, these companies will follow other manufacturers who have shifted design and innovation closer to their physical operations— witness the photovoltaic manufacturing industry.

Fuchs’s findings are critical not only to the question of why basing manufacturing in the United States matters but also to the analysis of what kinds of policies might best support the types of manufacturing that will ultimately put our nation in the best economic position. In the most simplistic terms, Fuchs’s research shows that when you’re talking about the United States, manufacturing does matter, but advanced and cutting-edge manufacturing matters even more. When such manufacturing leaves, it takes much more than the factory floor jobs—as important as those may be—it takes technology, innovation, and the next generation of products with it. The United States will clearly never again compete in the most low-wage, laborintensive areas of industrial production. But when it comes to advanced manufac turing that dominates the 21st century, we must compete if we want to hold onto our role as global innovators and entrepreneurs.

Beyond innovation and competitiveness, basing manufacturing in the United States also is important to our overall national and economic security. The most clear-cut example of this, of course, is the importance of being able to produce for the needs of our armed forces. The importance of domestic capabilities in defense manufacturing is obvious—one doesn’t want to be dependent on foreign suppliers in a time of conflict. Equally obvious is the importance of keeping innovations in military technology close to home.

This is underscored by a list kept by the State Department known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, which designates the manufactured goods and services deemed to be “defense articles” and tightly controls their export and import.9 The list includes a range of items from firearms and nuclear weapons systems to less obvious items like energy conversion devices that are specifically designed for military application.10

Beyond defense, however, manufacturing offers a greater degree of economic security. The simple existence of the sector helps balance out other sectors to create a more stable economy overall.11 Had, for example, manufacturing been a larger share of the economy at the time of the recent housing and financial crises, the fragility of those two sectors would not have been quite as devastating to the overall economy.12

Indeed, when multilateral development banks such as the World Bank Group fund international projects in the developing world, they often point to the importance of a “diverse economy”—that is, an economy based on a wide range of profitable sectors, not just a few—as essential to sustained, broad-based economic growth. The same holds true for industrialized nations.

This kind of analysis, however, is seldom done in the United States at the national level because we have had a diverse economy overall. Individual regions and states, however, can be significantly less diversified.13 For this reason, states often develop economic plans aimed at making their economies more diverse. For instance, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm specifically set out to diversify her state’s economy away from traditional auto manufacturing and into other sectors such as solar technology, wave power, and electric drive trains.

This kind of economic development strategy is rarely tried at the national level, however, perhaps due to concerns about excess involvement of government in the operation of the economy. Still, research abroad and at the regional level in the United States makes clear that putting too many of our eggs in one sectoral basket is a bad bet for long-term stability.14 Manufacturing, like any sector, is affected by economywide events, but manufacturing’s internal diversity—supplying consumer goods as well as industrial goods, serving both domestic and external markets—gives it great potential resiliency in addition to simply adding one more leg for the broader economy to stand on.

Domestic manufacturing is also the key to more balanced trading relationships— a fact recognized by President Obama when he challenged the country to double its level of exports. Of course, that growth in exports doesn’t have to all be manufactured goods—but in truth it will need to mostly be notwithstanding the recent growth in services exports.

That growth in services exports receives a lot of the attention but it is to some degree misplaced. A good deal of that increase is actually a byproduct of the outsourcing of manufacturing overseas. For instance, when a U.S. company sets up a foreign subsidiary to manufacture in another country, its U.S. parent may charge the foreign subsidiary for royalties, licensing fees, accounting, and engineering services. These transactions can be counted as U.S. exports of services and, in fact, appear to explain a large portion of the increase in U.S. exports of services.

Yet these of course do not represent an increase in overall U.S. production—the activities are servicing the same manufacturing they always did—it’s just that the manufacturing itself has moved overseas. Hardly a plus for the country, especially given the increasing trend for these associated services to eventually follow on the heels of the manufacturing activities they support.

There also are inherent limitations in the export of services. Certainly bankers in New York can lend to firms in Tokyo, engineering consultants can advise clients in Frankfurt, and U.S. architects can design buildings in São Paulo. But that will always be the exception, not the rule. A Japanese borrower will generally first look to a Japanese lender, a European industrialist to a local engineering firm, and a South American real estate developer to a South American architect.

With manufactured goods it’s about the good itself, not the language or the culture or other aspect of a service relationship. While some areas of service exports can grow—and their promotion is certainly to be encouraged—manufacturing is where our export growth is going to have to come from. The bottom line: Without a robust manufacturing sector, the U.S. balance of payments will deteriorate and the exodus of our national savings and earnings will slowly sap our economic strength.

Finally, manufacturing matters for people. One-tenth of all jobs in the United States are in manufacturing and these pay on average 20 percent more than the national average.15 They pay decent wages to production workers, many of whom lack a four-year college degree but have technical or associate’s degrees in skills related to their manufacturing work. These middle-skill workers make up more than 60 percent of today’s workforce.

And manufacturing matters not to just these workers but to all workers. Without manufacturing the downward pressure on wages throughout the economy would increase, with negative consequences for America’s overall economic well-being— to wages, to income equality, and to middle-class families.

So manufacturing matters for America.16 It matters for our technological leadership, national security, economic security, economic stability, national wealth, and the well-being of the middle class that underpins our economic strength. It’s important, but is it too far gone to save? No. The good news is that while manufacturing in the United States is under threat, and faces serious challenges, it is by no means a mere relic of the past. It is a vibrant, large sector of our economy—even if sometimes it’s hard to see that as manufacturing jobs are lost, as factories close, and as sections of the country deindustrialize. To this we now turn.

SMRs create direct and indirect manufacturing jobs – they create more than any other reactor

Locatelli and Mancini 10 (Giorgio Locatelli and Mauro Mancini - Politecnico di Milano, Dept. Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering)

(11/13/10 “The role of the reactor size for an investment in the nuclear sector: An evaluation of not-financial parameters” http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149197010001575)

11. Impact on employment

This aspect is important especially for a public investor because welfare of the country is an important objective of his mission. However, a private investor will be interested to the government’s support following a higher number of new jobs created. This issue is so relevant that the literature is rich of frameworks for the evaluation of new jobs created from new NPP programs ( [U.S. DOE, 2005], [Oxford Economics, 2008], [INEEL, 2004], [Klinger et al., 2009] and [Bechtel Power Corporation et al., 2004]). The following considerations summarise their contribution with respect to the construction and the operation phases.

11.1. Construction phase

There are three different impacts on employment:

1. Direct. People employed in the manufacturing of components and modules, on-site construction and operation of NPP.

2. Indirect. Jobs created in the extended nuclear supply chain: suppliers of equipment manufacturers, suppliers of machineries and building materials, agencies for inspection and safety controls.

3. Induced. Jobs created in non-nuclear industries due to the new jobs added in the previous categories. They are the sum of non-nuclear jobs that would be created because of industry growth, such as additional grocery store employees, school teachers and residential construction workers. These jobs have a significant impact especially in local economies, as reported in ( [Wendling and Bezdek, 2006], [Nuclear Energy Institute, 2004] and [Nuclear Energy Institute, 2006]).

The differential impact on new jobs creation is evaluated considering the comparison between an LR and four SMRs in the same site.

Oxford’s study (Oxford Economics, 2008) used Input–Output analysis to define the relationships between different kinds of impact through the use of multipliers, as in Fig. 4. We extrapolated direct on-site and off-site man years required for the construction of a 1340 MWe reactor from ( [U.S. DOE, 2005] and [Oxford Economics, 2008]). For what concern SMRs, the values of the two direct impacts were obtained from LRs’ values through the application of labour and equipment coefficients in Garrone et al. (2009). Indirect and induced impacts were obtained from the applications of multipliers.

Impact on construction employment is strongly differential and promotes the SMR choice:

1. The SMRs in co-siting configuration create 11% more man years content than LRs. Major part of new jobs opportunities created by SMRs are related to the major percentage of work content transferred off-site, through modularization and pre-fabrication approaches. Multipliers indicate that off-site direct employment drives greater indirect and induced effects than on-site direct employment. So, SMRs create a more beneficial impact thanks to the higher work content of facilities and the following induced effects. Moreover, this welfare benefit does not undermine attractiveness of the investment.

2. The amount of on-site employment is in Fig. 5. The phased demand for LR is from Oxford Economics (2008). We re-arranged the approach to three-years-construction SMRs to obtain a plausible schedule.

The literature (Thomas et al., 2009) shows that one of the biggest challenges is finding qualified people, including craft labourers and technicians (qualified boilermakers, pipefitters, electricians, ironworkers), to support construction. SMRs’ demand is more time-levelled, therefore it will be easier to face the shortage of qualified construction workers, even if the total number of man years is higher than LR.

11.2. Operation phase

Positions in this phase include permanent plant operators and engineers, managers, accountants and general staffs. Extrapolation from existing plants’ experience (IAEA, 2001) shows average staffing levels of approximately one person per MW(e) for a single unit LR. For SMRs, the specific staffing level tends to increase to about 1.5 person/MWe.

But existing SMRs are only scale models of LR designs. New GEN III+ SMRs incorporate features that require fewer personnel to operate and maintain the plant in a safe and reliable manner. Model presented in Garrone et al. (2009) concludes that a site with four 335 MWe SMRs has an OandM cost 24% higher than a site with one 1340 MWe LR. Labour cost is about the 70% of total OandM costs, so operational work content will experience roughly the same increase.

Concluding:

• SMRs create a higher number of new jobs also in the operation phase;

• new operation positions still involve indirect and induced impacts: SMRs and LRs are characterized by equal multipliers (Oxford Economics, 2008), but they amplify the higher direct operation employment of the SMR. Impact on operation employment is differential and promotes the SMR choice.

SMRs revive domestic manufacturing – they will become a fulcrum for export growth

Rosner and Goldberg 11 (Robert Rosner, Professor, Departments of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Physics, and the College; Senior Fellow @ UChicago. Stephen M. Goldberg is Special Assistant to the Director at Argonne National Laboratory)

(November 2011. Energy Policy Institute at Chicago The Harris School of Public Policy Studies “Small Modular Reactors – Key to Future Nuclear Power Generation in the U.S.” https://epic.sites.uchicago.edu/sites/epic.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/EPICSMRWhitePaperFinalcopy.pdf)

As stated earlier, SMRs have the potential to achieve significant greenhouse gas emission reductions. They could provide alternative baseload power generation to facilitate the retirement of older, smaller, and less efficient coal generation plants that would, otherwise, not be good candidates for retrofitting carbon capture and storage technology. They could be deployed in regions of the U.S. and the world that have less potential for other forms of carbon-free electricity, such as solar or wind energy. There may be technical or market constraints, such as projected electricity demand growth and transmission capacity, which would support SMR deployment but not GW-scale LWRs. From the on-shore manufacturing perspective, a key point is that the manufacturing base needed for SMRs can be developed domestically. Thus, while the large commercial LWR industry is seeking to transplant portions of its supply chain from current foreign sources to the U.S., the SMR industry offers the potential to establish a large domestic manufacturing base building upon already existing U.S. manufacturing infrastructure and capability, including the Naval shipbuilding and underutilized domestic nuclear component and equipment plants. The study team learned that a number of sustainable domestic jobs could be created – that is, the full panoply of design, manufacturing, supplier, and construction activities – if the U.S. can establish itself as a credible and substantial designer and manufacturer of SMRs.

While many SMR technologies are being studied around the world, a strong U.S. commercialization program can enable U.S. industry to be first to market SMRs, thereby serving as a fulcrum for export growth as well as a lever in influencing international decisions on deploying both nuclear reactor and nuclear fuel cycle technology. A viable U.S.-centric SMR industry would enable the U.S. to recapture technological leadership in commercial nuclear technology, which has been lost to suppliers in France, Japan, Korea, Russia, and, now rapidly emerging, China.

Scenario 2 is volatility

The US is increasingly dependent on natural gas - it’s inherently volatile, killing the economy

Huber 12

Lisa Huber, Rocky Mountain Institute Intern, 8/1/12, “Managing Natural Gas Volatility: The Answer is Blowin’ in the Wind,” http://blog.rmi.org/blog_Managing_Natural_Gas_Volatility_The_Answer_is_Blowin_in_the_wind

The recent shale gas boom has gained the reputation as our energy savior: clean, domestic, cheap, and plentiful. But, the attractiveness of today’s low natural gas price can cause us to overlook a serious risk: volatility. Natural gas is one of the riskiest commodities around, historically bearing twice the volatility price risk of oil. While this is common knowledge among industry professionals and commodity traders, the long-term risk often goes ignored, despite previous attempts to put a price tag on volatility. Why This Matters According to RMI Chief Scientist Amory Lovins, “we must not set our sights too low and end up with a 20-year plan instead of a 21st century goal.” This logic on the importance of long-term strategy is the driving force behind RMI’s Reinventing Fire, a vision and roadmap for a 150 percent bigger 2050 U.S. economy requiring no oil, coal, or nuclear energy, and one-third less natural gas. Without accounting for the volatility risk of natural gas, wholesale power-producing renewables don’t appear very competitive without the support of tax credits (expiring at the end of the year for wind) and renewable portfolio standards, whose incentives are less substantial than in the recent past. Investing in gas over wind without consideration of volatility would be like chasing yield without regard to risk—something a prudent investor would never dream of. As U.S. natural gas supply grows and liquefied natural gas export terminals come online, our economy becomes more and more dependent on the success of shale; changes in natural gas prices could greatly impact the broader market. Historically speaking, natural gas tends to move opposite the market (that’s a negative beta for the finance geeks out there). As natural gas prices rise and the market falls (remember 2008?), consumers take a significant hit.

Energy price volatility hurts the economy – it affects all consumers and businesses

EIA 01

Energy Information Administration 4/10/01, http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/economy/energy_price.html

Volatility matters for all consumers and producers in the economy. Business firms, both energy and non-energy, make investment decisions based on expectations about prices. If decisions are made on the expectation of low (or high) energy prices, and the energy market varies sharply from these expectations, firms may make inappropriate investment and business decisions. Even those firms that expect volatility may be adversely affected by simply putting off a decision until the market is more stable. Consumer purchases of housing and consumer durables such as autos and appliances are also affected by instability in energy markets. The economy would most likely perform better with stable or predictable energy prices, than when the price of energy fluctuates greatly.

Nuclear is key to reduce energy price volatility – it helps every sector

EU Department of Energy and Climate Change 12

EU Department of Energy and Climate Change 5/18/12, “Davey: Climate change policies could halve negative impacts of energy price shocks,” http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn12_061/pn12_061.aspx

“The more we can shift to alternative fuels, and use energy efficiently, the more we can ensure that our economy does not become hostage to far-flung events and to the volatility of market forces” (Edward Davey) The negative impact that spikes in global oil, gas and coal prices have on the UK could be reduced by over 50% in 2050 as a result of climate change policies, Edward Davey said today. The analysis, produced by Oxford Economics and commissioned by Government, shows how the UK’s sensitivity to oil and gas price shocks could be reduced by using low-carbon forms of electricity generation including renewables, new nuclear and through increasing energy efficiency. Secretary of State, Edward Davey said: “Every step the UK takes towards building a low-carbon economy reduces our dependency on fossil fuels, and on volatile global energy prices. “Only last year, the impact of the Arab Spring on wholesale gas prices, pushed up UK household bills by 20%. “The more we can shift to alternative fuels, and use energy efficiently, the more we can ensure that our economy does not become hostage to far-flung events and to the volatility of market forces. “Of course, there are costs to building more low-carbon plant, but the gains are so much greater, and crucially they are lasting. “This is about building a more resilient economy and providing more stable energy prices for the generations that follow us”. Energy prices have been trending up over the past decade and are becoming increasingly volatile. Once the UK fully transitions to a low-carbon economy, the negative impacts of energy price volatility on these 4 factors are halved: Halving the impact of energy price volatility on disposable household income, and therefore reducing amount households would have to put aside to spend on energy bills. Halving the negative impact on the level of business investment. Halving the impact on inflation Halving the impact on levels of unemployment, which could rise through increased economic inactivity caused by high energy prices.

Specifically, SMRs solve market risk and fit the need to replace natural gas

Rosner and Goldberg 11 (Robert Rosner, Professor, Departments of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Physics, and the College; Senior Fellow @ UChicago. Stephen M. Goldberg is Special Assistant to the Director at Argonne National Laboratory)

(November 2011. Energy Policy Institute at Chicago The Harris School of Public Policy Studies “Small Modular Reactors – Key to Future Nuclear Power Generation in the U.S.” https://epic.sites.uchicago.edu/sites/epic.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/EPICSMRWhitePaperFinalcopy.pdf)

Furthermore, CBO discussed the market risk associated with GW-scale plants: Market risk is the component of risk that investors cannot protect themselves against by diversifying their portfolios. Investors require compensation for market risk because investments exposed to such risk are more likely to have low returns when the economy as a whole is weak and resources are more highly valued…In the case of nuclear construction guarantees provided to investor-owned utilities or merchant power providers, for example, plant construction may be more likely to be slowed or canceled when the demand for electricity is depressed by a weak economy. 23,24

SMRs could potentially mitigate such a risk in several ways. First, SMRs have lower precompletion risk due to shorter construction schedules (24-36 months as compared with 48 months). Second, because of their smaller size, SMRs have lower market risk because there is significantly less power than needs to be sold as compared with GW-level plants. Finally, the modular nature of SMRs affords the flexibility to build capacity on an as-needed basis. In the case of unsubsidized financing, particularly relevant to merchant markets, utility decision makers that have significant aversion to risk of future natural gas spikes (i.e., gas prices rising to about $7/Mcf or one standard deviation above the recent average behavior of natural gas prices) would possibly view alternatives to gas-fired generation as attractive options, particularly if the investment requirements are comparable – SMRs could potentially “fit the bill.”

Economic collapse causes global nuclear war.

Merlini, Senior Fellow – Brookings, 11 [Cesare Merlini, nonresident senior fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Italian Institute for International Affairs (IAI) in Rome. He served as IAI president from 1979 to 2001. Until 2009, he also occupied the position of executive vice chairman of the Council for the United States and Italy, which he co-founded in 1983. His areas of expertise include transatlantic relations, European integration and nuclear non-proliferation, with particular focus on nuclear science and technology. A Post-Secular World? DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2011.571015 Article Requests: Order Reprints : Request Permissions Published in: journal Survival, Volume 53, Issue 2 April 2011 , pages 117 - 130 Publication Frequency: 6 issues per year Download PDF Download PDF (~357 KB) View Related Articles To cite this Article: Merlini, Cesare 'A Post-Secular World?', Survival, 53:2, 117 – 130]

Two neatly opposed scenarios for the future of the world order illustrate the range of possibilities, albeit at the risk of oversimplification. The first scenario entails the premature crumbling of the post-Westphalian system. One or more of the acute tensions apparent today evolves into an open and traditional conflict between states, perhaps even involving the use of nuclear weapons. The crisis might be triggered by a collapse of the global economic and financial system, the vulnerability of which we have just experienced, and the prospect of a second Great Depression, with consequences for peace and democracy similar to those of the first. Whatever the trigger, the unlimited exercise of national sovereignty, exclusive self-interest and rejection of outside interference would likely be amplified, emptying, perhaps entirely, the half-full glass of multilateralism, including the UN and the European Union. Many of the more likely conflicts, such as between Israel and Iran or India and Pakistan, have potential religious dimensions. Short of war, tensions such as those related to immigration might become unbearable. Familiar issues of creed and identity could be exacerbated. One way or another, the secular rational approach would be sidestepped by a return to theocratic absolutes, competing or converging with secular absolutes such as unbridled nationalism.

1AC – Solvency

Contention 3: Solvency

Licensing is the biggest hurdle for small modular reactors or SMRs Now

Wheeler 11 (Brian Wheeler - Associate Editor of Power Engineering)

(February 11, “Small Modular Reactors Are "Hot"” proquest. Power Engineering. Volume 115. No. 2)

The distant timeframe is for numerous reasons. The plan is to build a SMR, start generating power and bring more online to form a larger nuclear plant, as needed. The SMRs are expected to be ready, as the DOE calls it, to "plug and play" when the reactor arrives on-site. Sounds simple? There are still obstacles that need to be defeated before the arrival of a commercial SMR. Licensing is the number one challenge at this point. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission established the Advanced Reactor Program in 2009 to focus on new licensing technologies. NRC is studying several pre-application reviews to identify possible technical issues, such as safety, security and emergency planning. The light water small reactors may be very similar to large designs, but they still must go through a separate licensing process. Vendors that engage the NRC early can resolve these technical issues. To address safety and security concerns, the small reactors will be built with post-9/11 safety concepts into the designs. NRC expects the first application submission by 2012. The funds for the research and development of the SMR could pose a problem as well. But the Obama administration has requested $38.9 million for the 2011 fiscal year budget for the development of SMRs. The DOE supports public and private partnerships to advance mature SMR designs and supports "research and development activities to advance the understanding and demonstration of innovative reactor technologies and concepts." Among other goals, in FY2011 the DOE plans to “solicit, select and award project(s) with industry partners for cost-sharing the U.S. NRC review of design certification document for up to two of the most promising light water SMR concept(s) for near-term licensing and deployment” and “develop recommendations, in collaboration with NRC and industry, for changes in NRC policy, regulations or guidance to license and enable SMRs for deployment in the U.S. And as the general public’s interest in energy continues to grow, so does the interest in SMRs, said Philip Moor, vice president of consulting and management firm High Bridge Associates. If approved, the funding towards the development of small reactors in the U.S. may play a part of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s estimate of between 49 to 97 SMRs built by 2030. Utilities may have more interest in SMRs once the NRC gains more expertise and the uncertainty of deploying these reactors in the U.S. can be addressed. And if the regulator approves any of the designs for licensing, the U.S. may see a stronger nuclear renaissance take place. As we have seen, some operators have scaled back or completely pulled out on plans to build new large reactors due to the cost. The ability to construct these reactors in factories could lead to lower costs and shorter construction times. Of course, the upfront capital to develop and engineer the facility is going to be needed. But after that, the reactors can be built in the controlled environment in repetition to lower cost, which could in return lead to more clean energy on the grid.

Regulatory gridlock is blocking SMRs – streamlining regulations is key to commercialization – it’s modeled globally

Jessica Lovering, Ted Nordhaus, and Michael Shellenberger are policy analyst, chairman, and president of the Breakthrough Institute, a public policy think tank and research organization, 9/7/2012 (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/07/out_of_the_nuclear_closet?page=full)

Nuclear has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress for more than 60 years, but the enthusiasm is running out. The Obama administration deserves credit for authorizing funding for two small modular reactors, which will be built at the Savannah River site in South Carolina. But a much more sweeping reform of U.S. nuclear energy policy is required. At present, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has little institutional knowledge of anything other than light-water reactors and virtually no capability to review or regulate alternative designs. This affects nuclear innovation in other countries as well, since the NRC remains, despite its many critics, the global gold standard for thorough regulation of nuclear energy. Most other countries follow the NRC's lead when it comes to establishing new technical and operational standards for the design, construction, and operation of nuclear plants.

What's needed now is a new national commitment to the development, testing, demonstration, and early stage commercialization of a broad range of new nuclear technologies -- from much smaller light-water reactors to next generation ones -- in search of a few designs that can be mass produced and deployed at a significantly lower cost than current designs. This will require both greater public support for nuclear innovation and an entirely different regulatory framework to review and approve new commercial designs.

In the meantime, developing countries will continue to build traditional, large nuclear power plants. But time is of the essence. With the lion's share of future carbon emissions coming from those emerging economic powerhouses, the need to develop smaller and cheaper designs that can scale faster is all the more important.

Streamlining bureaucratic licensing transforms the nuclear industry – the market is strong enough to support SMRs.

Spencer 11 (Jack Spencer is Research Fellow in Nuclear Energy in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies)

(2/15/11 “Is the President’s Small Reactor Push the Right Approach?” http://blog.heritage.org/2011/02/15/is-the-presidents-small-reactor-push-the-right-approach/)

Establishing a Regulatory Framework

The Obama budget essentially acknowledged the regulatory problem in his budget, which requests $67 million for DOE to work on licensing technical support for small light water reactors. While the intent is correct, the approach is wrong. The Administration is relying on the same bureaucratic, taxpayer-funded process that is stifling large reactor certification when it should use this opportunity to establish a new, more efficient licensing pathway.

Instead of paying for DOE bureaucrats to get in the way of commercial progress, the Administration should commit to ensuring that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is fully equipped and prepared to regulate new reactor designs. This should include high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and liquid-metal-cooled fast reactors as well as small light water designs. This would provide a strong regulatory foundation for each of the expected design certification applications. The DOE should have no role in the process. If a company wants to get its reactor design certified for commercial use in the U.S., it should be able to go straight to the NRC for that service.

Such an approach would substantially decrease the risk associated with getting designs certified, which in turn would alleviate the need for public support. Then, instead of seeking taxpayer funds to offset regulatory risk, reactor designers could develop investors to support the certification process.

Build the Framework and They Will Come

Nuclear energy is already clean, safe, and affordable. Introducing small reactors could make it transformational. But the federal government should not drive the process. It should be supported by the market. If the underlying technology is as strong as many of us believe it to be, the federal government needs only to provide a predictable, stable, efficient, and fair regulatory environment. The rest will happen on its own—or it won’t.

SMRs rejuvenate the nuclear industry by resolving financing challenges.

Davenport 12 [Coral, energy and environment correspondent – The National Journal, Cleaner Energy, Beyond the Horizon April 19, 2012 The National Journal, Lexis]

However, many of the nation's nuclear power reactors will reach retirement age in the coming decades, and there are no plans to replace them. The biggest challenge in building a nuclear-power plant is financing: It can take up to $10 billion and six years to build a plant, compared with less than half that time and cost to build a natural-gas facility. Some of that cost is for construction, and some of it is for higher rates of insurance and liability in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. Either way, the nuclear-power industry says that Wall Street isn't interested in investing in new plants, and the result is a freeze on getting this major source of new zero-carbon power onto the electric grid for the foreseeable future. But what if a nuclear-power plant wasn't so expensive to build? Small modular reactors might solve that problem. Companies such as Northrup Grumman and Babcock and Wilcox have developed plans to mass-produce small, identical modular nuclear reactors that could be built for a fraction of the cost of existing plants. Two main factors drive the cost of a nuclear power plant: size and on-site construction. A typical nuclear power plant is massive and produces enough electricity to power a city (about 1 million homes). On-site construction of such a project requires billions of dollars, reams of paperwork, and years of regulatory hurdles. So engineers have designed nuclear plants that are one-third the size of a typical plant and can be cheaply mass-produced and delivered to various sitesmuch like the savings on prefabricated houses. Mass-producing small plants would cut down on the price and make low-carbon nuclear power available to rural communities that can't consider it otherwise. Electric utilities could customize the size of the plants, ordering multiple reactors and getting a discount for a two-pack, four-pack, or six-pack of identical reactors that would work together. Or a power company could just order premade plug-and-play reactors as its service population grows. The modular reactor designs include key improvements over older nuclear plants: They have advanced safety systems, allowing them to operate for up to three days in the case of power outage and thus offer better prevention against a Fukushima-style meltdowns; they also will be able to burn and reuse parts of the spent nuclear fuel, cutting down on nuclear waste. For now, however, these designs remain on the drawing board. To get a small modular plant plugged into the grid, a utility will first have to pay up to $500 million for the design to be approved and permitted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commissionabout a five-year process.

Cheap natural gas won’t block SMR commercialization

Marston 12 (Theodore U. Marston PHD. – Principal @ Marston Consulting. Board of Managers, Idaho National Laboratory. Formerly DOE NERAC Generation IV Oversight Committee 2001-2002)

(March 2012, “Status of Small Modular Light Water Reactors in the US” in “The Nuclear Decarbonization Option: Profiles of Selected Advanced Reactor Technologies”

The primary economic challenge to the commercialization of smLWRs is whether the electricity production costs are (1) affordable and (2) competitive with other forms of generation. With regard to affordability, smLWRs offer potential optionality to the US electric utilities, when the only real options for large generation additions are gas fired, coal fired or large nuclear plants. SmLWRs, being smaller and modular, potentially offer a more manageable nuclear option. SmLWRs are more ‘affordable’, i.e. less of a fiscal risk. They can be deployed in much smaller increments, matching the utilities’ load growths better and reduce the ‘single shaft’ generation risk to an acceptable level.

Competing with other forms of electricity generation is a much greater challenge today. Vast amounts of natural gas are being discovered across the US in so-called tight gas (shale) deposits, resulting in cheap and abundant natural gas. The current spot market price of natural gas is less than $3.00/MMBTU. Carbon restraints (taxes or credits), which would improve the competitiveness of smLWRs, appear unlikely to arise in the near future. However it is expected that carbon emissions from large stationary sources will be reduced systematically over time one way or another, and US utilities are very interested in reducing their ‘carbon footprints’. If the economics of the smLWRs are what some of the designs claim, there is a real chance to compete with natural gas fired plants, particularly when carbon constraints are in place. The cost competitiveness of smLWR depend heavily on achieving the following opportunities:

l Streamline design and manufacturing are necessary to offset the economies of scale of other generation options, particularly nuclear plants. ALWRs are becoming larger and larger due to the economies of scale. The only prospect to reverse this effect for the smaller smLWRs is to streamline the shop fabrication of the NSSS and other modules, ship them to the site and install them rapidly. The requisite quality standards must be maintained throughout the entire process.

l Modularity of the smLWRs provides the opportunity to transform how we design, build, operate and decommission nuclear power plants.

l Reduce construction time by modularization and construction efficiencies

l SMRs do not require loan guarantees. This sets the smLWR apart from the larger ALWR, which currently benefit from federal loan guarantees, especially for regulated utilities. Experience shows the loan guarantee process to be a protracted and expensive affair, requiring the expenditure of significant political and fiscal capital.

And, SMRs are super safe – accidents, attack, disasters

Rosner and Goldberg 11 (Robert Rosner, Professor, Departments of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Physics, and the College; Senior Fellow @ UChicago. Stephen M. Goldberg is Special Assistant to the Director at Argonne National Laboratory)

(November 2011. Energy Policy Institute at Chicago The Harris School of Public Policy Studies “Small Modular Reactors – Key to Future Nuclear Power Generation in the U.S.” https://epic.sites.uchicago.edu/sites/epic.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/EPICSMRWhitePaperFinalcopy.pdf)

While the focus in this paper is on the business case for SMRs, the safety case also is an important element of the case for SMRs. Although SMRs (the designs addressed in this paper) use the same fuel type and the same light water cooling as gigawatt (GW)-scale light water reactors (LWRs), there are significant enhancements in the reactor design that contribute to the upgraded safety case. Appendix A provides a brief overview of the various technology options for SMRs, including the light water SMR designs that are the focus of the present analysis.

Light water SMR designs proposed to date incorporate passive safety features that utilize gravity-driven or natural convection systems – rather than engineered, pump-driven systems – to supply backup cooling in unusual circumstances. These passive systems should also minimize the need for prompt operator actions in any upset condition. The designs rely on natural circulation for both normal operations and accident conditions, requiring no primary system pumps. In addition, these SMR designs utilize integral designs, meaning all major primary components are located in a single, high-strength pressure vessel. That feature is expected to result in a much lower susceptibility to certain potential events, such as a loss of coolant accident, because there is no large external primary piping. In addition, light water SMRs would have a much lower level of decay heat than large plants and, therefore, would require less cooling after reactor shutdown. Specifically, in a post-Fukushima lessons-learned environment, the study team believes that the current SMR designs have three inherent advantages over the current class of large operating reactors, namely:

1. These designs mitigate and, potentially, eliminate the need for back-up or emergency electrical generators, relying exclusively on robust battery power to maintain minimal safety operations.

2. They improve seismic capability with the containment and reactor vessels in a pool of water underground; this dampens the effects of any earth movement and greatly enhances the ability of the system to withstand earthquakes.

3. They provide large and robust underground pool storage for the spent fuel, drastically reducing the potential of uncovering of these pools.