Areva, the French nuclear, giant, has signed a letter of intent to build up to two nuclear plants near Fresno, California. California has a ban on new nuclear plants in the state but Areva believes the law will fade away under the state's demand for more clean power. Each plant could produce 1.6 gigawatts and the whole thing could cost between $5 and $8 billion.

Sez the Los Angeles Times:

The agreement with Areva is expected to be finalized in March, said John Hutson, chief executive of the Fresno Nuclear Energy Group, a partnership of local business executives and farmers. Once that's done, the two potential partners would begin a site selection and evaluation process that could take as long as two years, he said.

Will it happen? Hard to say. Nuclear advocates say that the U.S. will need 25 to 30 new nuclear plants by 2030 to just keep nuclear at 20 percent of the energy budget. The U.S. could ultimately need 187 new reactors by 2050 to meet its climate goals, they add, although nuclear advocates admit that's unlikely. Public opinion has begun to soften toward nuclear. Additionally, academics like MIT's Ernie Moniz and UC Berkeley's Dan Kammen have stated that nuclear needs to be part of the future energy diet. (Eric Wesoff and I also recently wrote a report on modular nuclear reactors--it makes a great gift.)

Nuclear could also produce jobs, both construction jobs and high-end, high-tech jobs. France and Japan have become the centers of nuclear engineering since the U.S. stopped building power plants in the 70s.

Still, waste, proliferation and other grave issues remain. On the same day that Areva announced its plans, a report came out that Iran has been trying to buy uranium from Kazakhstan. A new nuclear renaissance will mean more widespread knowledge of how to process uranium, and with that will come more opportunities for bribing and cajoling said individuals for that information. It's not an easy debate.

Californians are also prickly when it comes to the environment. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein continues to move ahead with a plan that would prevent solar thermal power plants, one of the more cost-effective forms of alternative enrgy, from going up in the Mojave. A thermal plant is one heck of a lot cleaner than a nuclear plant when you consider the construction materials and nuclear waste. And, unlike PV panels or wind, solar thermal plants produce power in steady, large quantities.

Sometimes older is better.

Although Toshiba and others have promoted fast breeder reactors for the nuclear industry and still other companies have promoted things like small, modular nuclear reactors, the quickest, most efficient way to add nuclear capacity lay in concentrating on light water reactors, according to Ernie Moniz, the director of the MIT Energy Initiative during a visit to San Francisco this week.

"For the next decades, it is light water reactors," he said. "The key question for the U.S. is getting them built."

Why? "We know how to build them," he added. Hyman Rickover developed the first light water reactors in the 1950s and variants of light water reactors constitute the majority of reactors around the world. The "light" in light water reactors refers to the fact that plain water, versus oxygen combined with deuterium (the heavier isotope of hydrogen), serves as a coolant.

Fast breeder reactors were developed with the idea that uranium and nuclear fuel would be in short supply. "It turns out that that pathway was based on assumptions that aren't relevant," he added.

Fusion? Not in our lifetimes, he stated after eyeballing me. (I'm a youthful 48.) He then added that that meant not likely before 2050. The Energy Initiative is MIT's multimillion dollar push into developing technologies and companies around solar, energy storage and other fields. Hence, his opinion carries weight.

While there are no nuclear power plants under construction at the moment in the U.S. many believe that nuclear will play a larger role in the future. Energy secretary Steve Chu has come out in favor of expanding nuclear. Several European nations are also looking at nuclear. The U.S. has also changed the approval process (reactor designs can be certified by the manufacturer separately from the site approval).

"I don't see a sensible solution [toward reducing carbon emissions] without having nuclear as part of the mix," said Dan Kammen, the UC Berkeley professor who also runs the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab at the school. Nuclear power plants can gobble up billions in capital and take years to build, but they also can act as a very low-carbon source of energy for decades. The carbon comes from the energy expended to build them.

Nonetheless, many, including Rocky Mountain Institute's Amory Lovins, argue that nuclear, with its chronic cost overruns, delays and waste issues, isn't nearly as economical as advocates claim.

The U.S. and Japan will begin to cooperate on "advanced fuel cycle technologies" for nuclear plants, or reprocessing nuclear waste, according to the Environmental Capital blog on the Wall Street Journal.

Reprocessing helps get rid of nuclear waste, which is why both France and Japan have been big advocates. But it also means generating and moving around quantities of plutonium. If captured, that plutonium could be used for a dirty bomb. The U.S. killed a reprocessing plan, which only enjoyed lukewarm support, in the '70s. The collaboration is a sign that the Department of Energy will take another serious look at reprocessing Yucca Mountain, after all, isn't going anywhere soon.

If fusion works, it could also help reprocess nuclear waste. Lawrence Livermore National Labs has promoted the idea of fusion reactors. In these, spare neutrons from fusion reactions are channelled into a blanket of nuclear waste from fission power plants to cause more fission reactions. Ideally, this would generate power from fission without running the risk of chain reactions.

Tri Alpha Energy, the fusion power company that dare not speak its name, may finally showcase, or at least describe, its technology next year, according to sources.

That's all we know now.

But that's not bad. Tri Alpha is one of the most secretive greentech companies out there. Back in 2007, I wrote about how the University of California Irvine spin-off raised $40 million from Venrock and others and Venrock still doesn't list it as a portfolio company. The company is based in Foothill Ranch, Calif., but it doesn't answer the phone.

But here are some things I've picked up:

• The basic technology comes from Hendrik Monkhorst of the University of Florida (see CV on link) and Norman Rostoker, the 84-year old professor that oversees fusion research at UCI. Other technical employees include Eusebio Garate and Artan Qerushi from UCI. Some of Qerushi's patents can be seen here. Sean Dettrick and Vitaly Bystritskii have been associated with the company. 

• George Sealy is the CEO.

• The technology sounds similar to some degree to the fusion and hybrid fusion research taking place at Lawrence Livermore National Labs. Tri Alpha wants to mix hydrogen and boron in a high temperature plasma to make helium. That reaction will release energy. Additionally, the fusion reaction can be wrapped in blankets of uranium, thorium, plutonium and your garden variety nuclear waste. Neutrons from the fusion process can create fission reactions within the nuclear blankets and generate even more power. The fusion-fission nature of the proces is what makes it a hybrid.

Lawrence Livermore, however, has 192 high-powered lasers to drive its fusion reaction. We're not completely sure what Tri Alpha has. Lawrence hopes to demonstrate its lasers in 2010 or 2011.

The U.K. today approved 10 sites for the possible construction of nuclear plants that could be deployed before the end of 2025, according to Power Engineering among others. The country also outllined an improved strategy for deployment. Nothing is set in stone and the approval does not take into account environmental factors, etc. It is just a starting poing.

Like the U.S., the U.K. gets around 20 percent of its electric power from nuclear but hasn't constructed new nuclear plants in ages. Instead, much of the activity in recent years has focused on wind and biomass.

It will be interesting to see how the Scotland reacts. Earlier this year, the government, which will likely seek a vote on autonomy in the relatively near future, placed a ban on future nuclear. In part, the ban exists to help get the local wind and wave industries off the ground, Jim Mather, Scotland's energy minister, told us.

U.S. Senator (R.-Alaska) Lisa Murkowski signaled on C-Span Sunday that she might go along with the climate change bill, as long as it includes provisions for expanding domestic oil drilling and nuclear energy.

"When you see changes to the land coming about ... what is causing the loss of the sea ice that adds to the erosion issues, yes, in Alaska we are seeing change," Murkowski told C-SPAN. "That's why I have been one of those Republicans who has stepped out front a little bit more on the issue of climate change."

She'd be the second. South Carolina's Lindsay Graham has already said he wants a climate change bill.

But is her price too high? It depends. Republicans have long wanted to open more parts of Alaska's north to drilling. Democrats are opposed. With current oil prices, it actually might be too expensive to drill up there anyway. But a concession given cannot be taken back so expect a heated debate. Some compromise on nuclear in some ways seems inevitable. Public opinion has warmed to nuclear and Energy Secretary Steve Chu and Steve Koonin, the DOE's chief scientist, have talked about the ability to nuclear to reduce coal dependence.

The nuclear debate is heating up in Maryland.

UniStar Energy, a joint venture between France's EDF and a local utility, is seeking approval for a 1.6-gigawatt power plant in the state, according to VentureBeat, as well as a portion of the $18.5 billion in funds for advanced nuclear research. Alhough UniStar has obtained key approval from some federal and state agencies, opponents say it will give a company owned by a foreign government too much say in rates (even though EDF is already involved in a few other joint ventures in the U.S. like Enxco and has a strong safety record).

More importantly, the opponents charge that the construction costs will run be more than double the $7 billion estimate. Cost overruns are epidemic in nuclear. At a recent conference, Amory Lovins from the Rocky Mountain Institute charged that nuclear, when the overruns are added, actually cost more than wind.

Some companies and national labs are trying to circumvent some of these problems with small, modular reactors, but final versions of those won't be ready for another few years.