Power/energy: A rational approach to power plant siting: A technique that integrates economic, environmental, and site-specific data could result in better decisions

Abstract

The selection and approval of sites for power-generating facilities has become extremely complex, lengthy, and costly. Utilities, regulators and rate-payers alike suffer most when regulatory proceedings impose delays after financial commitments have been made and construction has begun. One response has been to create analytical tools that may be applied earlier to help identify and begin to resolve controversial environmental issues. The authors believe these tools will help avoid costly delay, help reduce uncertainties that impede efforts by the electric-utility industry to plan for the future, and help the Government to anticipate future energy and environmental issues. The approach they recommend is innovative because it incorporates environmental constraints and siting alternatives into long-range planning. Thus, these analytical tools can help evaluate the key tradeoffs between environmental impacts and economic costs. Furthermore, this approach makes it possible to identify cumulative environmental impacts of generating facilities across an entire region, such as New England. However, the authors caution that these tools have yet to pass the test of time. This approach was developed by Clark-McGlennon Associates of Boston, for the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Council, and is part of an on-going New England project funded by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.When the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided last June to suspend construction of the controversial atomic power plant at Seabrook, N.H., after 10 percent of the work had been completed, it prompted a New York Times editorial calling the plant "a monument to the nation's paralysis on vital energy questions." Nowhere is this paralysis greater than in power-plant siting. Massive environmental reports are prepared with thousands of pages of technical and environmental data on each proposed power plant site, and days of hearings are endured by company representatives, regulators, and intervenors. However, many participants in such proceedings have felt that there has been no balanced weighing of the tradeoffs between environmental impacts and economic costs.In the case of the nuclear plant at Seabrook, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered a construction halt that lasted for almost two months, in order to review alternative sites. The order came on July 21, 1978, after some five years of regulatory proceedings and about $400 million worth of construction on the site.Some of the problems in setting up power plants stem Legend:State agencies-environmental protection and siting agencies;