How safe is nuclear power proposed for Kentucky?

WVXU's Cincinnati Edition turned to a professor of nuclear and radiological engineering at the University of Cincinnati for context about a proposal to build a new nuclear power plant complex in Eastern Kentucky.

UC College of Engineering and Applied Science Professor Henry Spitz said nuclear plants use technology that is much safer than a generation ago.

The Nuclear Company, founded in 2023, is proposing a massive nuclear power project in Lewis County in Eastern Kentucky.

Given the nation's increasing demand for power, Spitz said nuclear is an attractive option.

“The nuclear source is the best choice, in my opinion, for increasing our production of energy and making the least significant impact on the environment,” Spitz said.

Spitz was joined in the segment by Joe Klecha, chief nuclear officer for the Nuclear Company. The company is proposing as many as six nuclear reactors on site that could generate more than 6 gigawatts of power.

While nuclear power is a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels, nuclear plants are significantly more expensive to build with millennia-long obligations to store spent fuel safely.

Spitz noted that two of the world’s more than 400 nuclear power plants have suffered core meltdowns. The Fukushima reactor in Japan sustained a core meltdown in the wake of an earthquake-generated tsunami that flooded electrical systems in 2011. The plant was permanently closed and is being decommissioned in a process expected to take until 2051.

Meanwhile, the world’s most disastrous nuclear accident happened in 1986 when the Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine melted down during a planned blackout test of backup electrical systems. A massive buildup of steam caused an explosion that spilled radiation fallout across 300 miles.

Today, the power plant lies in the heart of a 1,000-square-mile exclusion zone designed to protect human life.

In 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania suffered a partial core meltdown when water escaped from the cooling system. The damaged reactor never reopened. It was dismantled and its nuclear material was shipped to storage at the Idaho National Laboratory.

But Spitz said accidents are exceedingly rare.

“We have fewer than 100 operating reactors in the United States. And they’ve been operating since the 1950s,” he said.

Likewise, Spitz said today’s safety and engineering systems are superior to those of a generation or more ago.

“Today’s reactors and designs are much more inherently safe than those designed in the 1960s,” he said. “I think the risk of plants proposed for Kentucky is extremely low — and very acceptable, in my opinion.”

Listen to the Cincinnati Edition segment.

Featured image at top: UC Professor Henry Spitz, right, talks to Cincinnati Edition host Lucy May in the studios at WVXU. Photo/Michael Miller