“The nuclear renaissance isn’t just coming, it’s here already here.”

Those were the keynote remarks form J.M. Bernhard, Jr., CEO of the Shaw Group, at PennWebb’s “PowerGen” conference in Orlando last week.

The industry’s premier event, attended by 18,000 people, PowerGen was abuzz with talk of a nuclear revival. If you listened carefully, though, there was always a distinction to the scuttlebutt. “We’re doing a great business right now,” said one industry exhibitor after another. “But it’s all abroad.”

And it’s true. Although there is much talk about the number of applications now before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission  17 proposals that include 28 new reactors  the real action in nuclear construction right now is still taking place overseas. While Americans remain enthralled with the idea that we can solve all our electrical problems by covering the landscape with thousands of windmills, nuclear technology is still viewed with a great deal of fear and skepticism. The result is that America is actually beginning to fall behind the rest of the world on the technology. If the nuclear renaissance does not pick up steam here soon, the world revival is likely to be led by countries abroad.

Here’s a rundown on the current state of the renaissance:

Europe’s France remains the world leader in construction with 80 percent of its electricity coming from nuclear power. As a result, France has the lowest greenhouse gas emissions of any European country except Sweden as well as the cheapest electricity. Areva, the French nuclear giant, 96 percent owned by the government, is emerging as the world flagship, constructing new reactors in Finland and China and investing in key facilities in the United States. France is so replete with nuclear energy that it is shipping kilowatts to Belgium, Germany and Italy, making electricity its fourth largest export.

Finland has hired Areva to build Europe’s first new reactor in 30 years at Olkiluoto. Although the project has now fallen behind schedule largely because of the slow rate of approval by Finnish government inspectors. it is still scheduled to open in 2012. Even more reliant on nuclear in Scandinavia is Sweden, which gets half its electricity from nuclear, 40 percent from hydro, and has the lowest carbon emissions in Europe. A national referendum taken right after Three Mile Island in 1980 voted to shut down all 12 of the nation’s reactors by 2010. Two older reactors have been closed but any further action is now regarded as highly unrealistic.

Germany also voted in 2001 to phase out its reactors by 2020 and the policy is being implemented by Social Democratic Party members in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet. Two small reactors have been closed and four more, providing 4,000 MW, are scheduled to shut down in 2009. But nuclear still provides 30 percent of Germany’s electricity, with the rest coming from coal. The only alternative is to import more electricity from France or become more dependent on Russia for natural gas. A huge effort in wind has given Germans the second-highest rates in Europe (behind Denmark) but windmills cannot provide base load electricity and no power plants have been replaced, leaving Germany more energy-dependent than ever. Chancellor Merkel is now suggesting the country reconsider the reactor shotdowns.

Italy provides the best example of a country that has encountered first-hand the risks of going anti-nuclear. Whereas Sweden and Germany set long timelines, Italy closed down all its reactors within a few years and found itself woefully short of electricity. The country now imports nearly 80 percent of its power and has experienced recurring blackouts. In January 2008 Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi dismayed Europe by announcing plans to build eight new coal plants. He quickly switched to nuclear and the country is now considering a revival of its reactor program.

Russia and Eastern Europe. Anyone who thinks the Chernobyl accident in 1986 has permanently soured the former Soviet bloc on nuclear power is wrong. All Eastern European reactors have now been retrofitted with full safety regalia  little things like containment structures that Soviet scientists figured they didn’t need. Since the Soviets tended to locate their reactors far from Moscow, the surprising outcome of the Soviet breakup is that many of its former satellites get the majority of their electricity from nuclear.

The rub here is that Green Party influence in France and Germany has prevailed upon the European Union bureaucracy to insist that former East Bloc countries close most of their reactors before joining the European Union. (These are the same people who have persuaded Kyoto Protocol authorities to rule that countries cannot get carbon-reduction credits by building reactors in other countries.) “It’s been very unfair to Eastern Europe,” says Ognyan Minchev, Bulgarian director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Bulgaria used to export electricity all over the Balkans. Now we can’t even provide for ourselves.” After being forced to close four smaller reactors, Bulgaria is building a larger new facility at Belene.

Lithuania’s dilemma has become an international sore spot as it faces a 2009 EU deadline to close Ignalina-2, which provides 70 percent of the country’s electricity. Safety upgrades at the reactor have won a stamp of approval from several international agencies but the EU hasn’t budged. The effort is actually increasing tensions in the region, since the closure will make Lithuania almost totally dependent on Russian natural gas. The country is working to bring a new European Pressurized water Reactor (EPR) online by 2015 and has asked the EU to postpone any shutdown until the new unit is completed.

Asia. If Eastern Europe is a hotbed of new construction, real action is taking place in Asia. While the West has dithered, Asia has been forging ahead with nuclear technology - much as the world’s tallest skyscrapers are now being built in the Middle and Far East.

Japan has 55 reactors providing 30 percent of its electricity and is now seeking to close the nuclear cycle. In addition to constructing two new reactors, the Japanese are in the final planning stages of the 1300-MW Ohma mixed-oxide (MOX) facility, which will drastically reduce its inventories of so-called “nuclear waste.” South Korea has 20 reactors providing 40 percent of its electricity and is now aiming at the level of France, with 11 new plants under construction. Taiwan has four reactors providing 20 percent of its electricity.

The big news, however, is in China, which has bought technology from Russia, France and Japan and is planning to open 21 reactors by 2014. China’s nuclear push will mitigate its embrace of coal, which is already causing so much alarm in relation to global warming. Likewise, the recent signing of a technology agreement with the United States has stimulated India’s nuclear effort and the country is now planning 18 to 20 new reactors over the next 15 years, some of them using thorium, of which India has the world’s largest supplies.

So where does all this leave the United States, the one-time monopoly owner of the technology, now straggling dangerously toward the rear of the parade?

The future remains very uncertain. In theory, it now takes a minimum of three years to get through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s construction-and-operating license process but no one thinks it will happen that fast. With intervener groups dragging decisions into court, the more likely timeframe is five years and beyond.

Moreover, the courts have proved to be singularly obtuse in dealing with nuclear technology. Yucca Mountain is now delayed another five years because the District of Columbia Court of Appeals decided a 10,000-year environmental impact statement was not sufficient. The court ruled the EIS must project forward one million years. A million years ago, Homo erectus was pounding out stone tools on the African savannah. What will technology be like a million years hence? Who know? But the idea of holding up a facility until an accurate projection can be made is more than ludicrous.

As a result, America is now flirting with the possibility of becoming an economic colony where nuclear power is concerned. Only one American company,  General Electric,  still builds reactors and this is done in partnership with Hitachi. Westinghouse Electric, a 1970s pioneer in the field, was bought by Toshiba in 2006. Babcock and Wilcox, another first-generation participant, has dropped out entirely.

Last May Areva announced plans to build a uranium fuel fabrication plant in Idaho. In October, it partnered with Northrup Grumman Shipbuilding on a facility to manufacture reactor components in Newport News. And in December EDF (Electricity de France), the national utility, topped the bid of Warren Buffet’s MidAmerican Energy in the battle to for control Maryland’s Constellation Energy, which is planning a new reactor at Calvert Cliffs. Areva is making money hand-over-fist selling nuclear technology to the rest of the world. When asked how Areva planned to finance the Newport News facility in the midst of a credit meltdown, Jacques Besnainou, the director of American operations, replied: “Cash.”

“The last shall be first and the first shall be last” has been true since the days of the Bible. America once held the lead in nuclear technology but we have become so obsessed by fear and caution that we are rapidly falling into the second ranks. Besnainou summed it up well in his opening remarks at the PowerGen Conference: “If America had embraced nuclear power twenty years ago, it would be in much better economic shape than it is today.”

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