Eastern New Mexico could have some new nuclear neighbors in the next decade or so if an Amarillo, Texas, land developer’s plan comes off as proposed.

A joint venture between Amarillo Power, which is the brainchild of developer George Chapman, and UniStar Nuclear Energy is conducting engineering studies on feasibility of building a two-reactor plant near Amarillo, The Amarillo Globe News reported this week. If all goes well, Chapman told the paper, the partners could apply for a federal license to build the facility in late 2009.

Water could be a limiting factor, however. "I honestly believe that if the water’s out there, we’re going to build one," Chapman said.

Chapman announced his idea in 2006, and last year brought UniStar in on the project. The Baltimore company itself is a joint effort between Constellation Energy and the French nuclear giant Areva. UniStar has four other reactor license applications pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, each of which would use Areva’s Evolutionary Power Reactor.

If the Amarillo project pans out, the two reactors would be part of a new wave of nuclear power just beginning to form. More than a dozen companies, including UniStar, have filed applications for federal licenses to build and operate 18 new reactors, the NRC says, and at least three other applications are expected to be this month alone.

As reported earlier this week in The New Mexico Independent, the nuclear renaissance was made possible by loan guarantees approved by Congress in 2005 and extended last year. The financial news service Bloomberg.com reported this week on the same issue, and cited a Virginia investment banker saying, "Loan guarantees get reactors built, simply put."

The newest generation of nuclear reactors are expected to cost $6 billion to $8 billion apiece, a spokesman from the Nuclear Energy Institute told NMI. At that rate, the plan for 45 new reactors by 2030 put forward by Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain would require an investment of $315 billion.

The guarantees would be tapped only if a reactor cannot be finished — including because of cost overruns or community opposition, according to Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer group in Washington, D.C. The Bloomberg story cites a 2003 Congressional Budget Office report saying the default rate on power plant construction debt could be as high as 50 percent.

"The nuclear industry has been aggressively going after taxpayer-backed loan guarantees because nuclear technology cannot stand on its own two feet in the marketplace,” Public Citizen energy policy analyst Allison Fisher told Bloomberg.

Bloomberg also cited information from utility filings and company statements that put the cost of nuclear power at about $5,000 per kilowatt — more than twice the price of so-called clean-coal technology.

Amarillo, with a population pushing 200,000, is about 70 miles east of the New Mexico border and 270 miles from Albuquerque. Among its largest employers is Pantex, a plant 17 miles outside the city where retired nuclear warheads are disarmed. The company until recently has had about 3,600 workers and a $680 million budget, but according to the Pantex Web site is now trimming its work force in light of budget cuts.