What role does the nuclear power industry have in the current debate?
Grandey: Nuclear power was, in many ways, excluded from the earlier Kyoto protocols. However, in Copenhagen, you began to see increased recognition of the huge contribution that nuclear power can make on the environmental front. If you replaced all of the existing 436 nuclear plants with coal facilities, emissions would rise astronomically. That’s just existing plants. However, there are many new coal and gas-fired plants being built, and many others are on the design table. If some of these were replaced by nuclear facilities, the industry could make an even greater contribution in helping to limit the growth of carbon emissions. The challenge is that the cost of building nuclear power units has become expensive. With the insistence upon ultra safety, nuclear power facilities have a much higher hurdle to leap than do other power sources. That may or may not be appropriate, but it is expensive. CIM: Uranium prices have come down considerably during the past few years, from close to $13
