The technology is unproven, the financing undetermined and the market prospects unclear. But those uncertainties aren't preventing a phalanx of Missouri business and political heavyweights from lining up behind a next-generation nuclear energy project that Gov. Jay Nixon hopes will help define the Show-Me State much like the American auto industry helped elevate Detroit.
Flanked at a Monday afternoon news conference by more than 20 statewide business leaders, utility executives and fellow politicians on the University of Missouri campus, Nixon on Monday hailed a plan to build small modular nuclear reactors. The effort is the potential "spark (of) a new global industry" that would not only benefit the state's power supply but also create portable power units that could be shipped overseas or elsewhere in the United States, he said.
Westinghouse Electric Co. and Ameren Missouri are competing with several applicants for a share of $452 million the U.S. Department of Energy has set aside to help design and develop the new technology. Top executives from those companies joined Nixon and spoke later in the day to an overflow crowd of more than 300 people at the university's Life Sciences Center at an event billed as the "Missouri Economic Development Summit."
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