Bill to promote nuclear energy headed to Polis with bipartisan support

Gov. Jared Polis soon will have the opportunity to do something that, as recently as one year ago, would have seemed ludicrous — sign a bill into law that promotes nuclear energy in Colorado by redefining it as clean energy.

Colorado senators on Friday approved House Bill 1040 by an overwhelming vote of 29-5, just one year after a similar bill died in its first Senate committee hearing and two years after the same proposal died without a single Democratic supporter. That vote last week followed a Feb. 25 approval in the House by a tally of 43-18 in which more Democrats supported the bill than opposed it while all but one Republican jumped on board as well.

HB 1040, sponsored by the unlikely duo of environmental-minded Democratic Rep. Alex Valdez of Denver and traditional-energy-supporting Republican Rep. Ty Winter of Trinidad, declares nuclear energy to be clean energy because its production is emissions-free. It does not, as backers noted, require any energy to be produced in Colorado from nuclear fission, and it doesn’t offer any kind of specific incentives to attract nuclear producers.

But it opens private projects up to several types of already available financial help that is designated for clean energy projects, and it also allows utilities to count nuclear energy toward their mandates to get a certain percentage of their power from clean source. And on a big-picture level, it resets the conversation about nuclear being a dirty and dangerous energy that has existed since a partial but nonfatal meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 and the deadly Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986.

Democrats do about-face on need for nuclear energy

Sen. Larry Liston, the Colorado Springs Republican who has sponsored each of the past three bills, emphasized to the Senate Transportation & Energy Committee on March 10 that unlike other zero-emissions energies, nuclear can be produced reliably around the clock. Twenty-eight other states generate at least some nuclear energy while green-minded countries like France get most of their power that way, and there’s never been a nuclear fatality in the United States, he noted.

What made the difference for Liston this year, though, was the acceptance by Democratic legislators of the premise that Colorado will not be able to meet its goals of net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 if it doesn’t add renewable fuels beyond solar and wind power. Valdez, a former renewable-energy company operator, noted that 94% of spent nuclear fuel can be recycled, and he said that small modular reactors that are being developed now will be a source not just of clean energy production but of jobs — including union jobs.

Speaking to the Colorado Chamber of Commerce’s Energy & Environment Council on Wednesday, Valdez called the passage of HB 1040 his biggest achievement this legislative session, saying it will bring about renewable and affordable energy. With President Donald Trump clawing back money former President Joe Biden had set aside for other types of green projects, legislators need to lean into what they still can do to reduce emissions, and the promotion of nuclear energy is key to that, he said.

“We as politicians are needing to read between the lines on where this money might go instead,” Valdez said. “We need to be a little bit more pragmatic than usual to be on track to hit our goals.”

Future of Pueblo a prime point of argument on bill

HB 1040 soon will be on its way to Polis, and the Democratic governor who has pushed to expand the range of renewable energy in Colorado to include sources like hydrogen and geothermal energy has hinted that he will sign it. Were that to occur, state economic-development and energy-office leaders can court developers of small modular reactors, noting the pro-nuclear landscape through which they could enter Colorado.

The community that may be the primary target of such wooing is Pueblo, where Xcel Energy is shutting down its coal-fired Comanche 3 power plant by 2031, 40 years ahead of when its closure was originally scheduled, to meet its renewable-energy requirements. The loss of that plant will have a $200 million economic impact on the community, whose unemployment rates outpace the state’s level, and an in-depth study argued that only a carbon-capture plant or small modular reactor could replace that impact adequately.

Finding a way to replace those jobs in Pueblo — and, to a lesser extent, in Northwest Colorado, where other coal-fired plants are shutting down — became a key point in discussions. While environmental groups like GreenLatinos warned these new reactors are too costly, too dangerous and still a decade or more from going online, Pueblo leaders and legislators said they need to think about taking care of the people of their community.

An agitated Sen. Nick Hinrichsen, D-Pueblo, argued that not only can nuclear plants provide good jobs, but they can provide the electricity that is needed to power economic-development opportunities like data centers in his area of the state. Changing this law opens a world of possibilities that is not open now, he argued.

Environmentalists label nuclear energy as a false hope

“We’re not building data centers in Colorado. They’re not coming. And they’re not coming because of our regulatory framework. That will hinder our business development. That will hinder our productivity,” Hinrichsen said during the Senate committee hearing. “It breaks my heart watching data centers — while Pueblo is in prime position to build one — go to other states … What proposal do you have for my community to avoid that cliff, to avoid that train wreck?”

Opponents of the bill, largely from the environmental community, have argued that these wished-for small modular reactors are a false hope that will prove too expensive for power companies to use even if they get the benefit of clean-energy labeling.

Megan Kemp, Colorado policy advocate for Earthjustice, noted that the current cost of producing nuclear energy, between $112 and $189 per megawatt-hour, is three to four times the cost of generating solar or wind energy. Duke Energy in South Carolina abandoned plans to construct six nuclear plants in 2023 because the costs ran so high, she added.

And while nuclear plants can recycle spent fuel, there is no mandate that they do, meaning radioactive masses that take thousands of years to become safe either must be buried in Colorado or transported out of state, said John McDonough of the Colorado Sierra Club. This, he and others said, requires rethinking the definition of “clean energy” to go beyond its emissions to its overall impact on the environment, thereby marking nuclear energy as a form that is distinctly unclean.

Companion bill promotes development of nuclear energy curricula

“This bill is about adding nuclear energy as a clean-energy source, and that is downright Orwellian,” said Rep. Meg Froelich, a Greenwood Village Democrat who opposed HB 1040. “It ignores the historical impact of nuclear waste, a predominant amount of which is stored on tribal lands.”

Polis likely will hear all these arguments until he signs or vetoes the bill, which he must do within 10 days of it landing on his desk — a clock-starting point that is expected to happen very soon.

Regardless of his decision, the bill’s one-year leap from being a first-committee casualty to getting majority support from both parties in both chambers must rank as one of the most remarkable turnarounds in recent legislative history.

And it could be followed into law by a companion piece from Liston, Senate Bill 120, that would create a nuclear workforce development and education council to solicit gifts, grants and donations to launch courses and degree programs at higher-education institutions. That bill advanced out of its first Senate committee unanimously last week.

“This will send a clear signal to all types of companies and individuals that Colorado is open for business,” Liston said. “As we sit here right now, there are numerous large-scale nuclear plants being built in Bangladesh, India and other countries … I believe there is a role for nuclear energy in our future too.”