Of the Coleman and Al Franken campaigns’ increasingly aggressive ballot challenges, Coleman said, “There are games being played on both sides and it would be great if people put the games aside.” He disavowed personal involvement in the recount’s nitty-gritty — “I’m not involved in day-to-day recount stuff” — but offered what seemed an informed opinion: “I would bet that most of the challenges are going to be dismissed.”

Asked about any awkwardness in his position as a sitting senator who may or may not have won re-election, Coleman responded: “I’m still senator. I believe I’m a winner. … I’m proceeding with the belief that we prevailed the first night, prevailed in the certification and we’ll prevail again.”

Coleman repeatedly denied being caught up in the recount hysteria. “‘I’m not walking around wringing my hands worrying about the recount,” he said. “I haven’t checked today to see where we’re at.” He did however cop to having checked the recount stats online Thursday night.

“We started out with the lead. I’m pretty confident we’ll end up with the lead,” Coleman said. “We have got a good canvassing board. I have faith we’ll get it done the Minnesota way. … I just want to get the recount done.”

In case anyone might have somehow gotten a different message, Coleman insisted: “I think this a fair process.”

Coleman, asked about his Nov. 5 statement that Democrat Al Franken should halt the then-impending recount, said he wouldn’t say the same thing today.  ”I ascribe that to not having slept for three days,” he said.

Coleman made his remarks at a press conference this afternoon at a nuclear plant training facility in Monticello, Minn. (Coleman’s staffers couldn’t eject the Minnesota Independent from this press event as they did on Wednesday, since this time we covered it via The Uptake’s video livestream.) The official topic of the presser was energy policy. “I don’t think anybody … rejected the drill-baby-drill mantra,” Coleman said in response to a question about his continued support for lifting restrictions on domestic oil exploration.

“I’m a great believer” that America will eventually be able to reprocess its nuclear waste, Coleman said.

Video via The Uptake

Related: MnIndy video: Coleman’s staff ejects reporter from press conference

The bills–which include two introduced this month and four that are still active from 2007–don’t appear likely to move far this year. Key legislators who chair the House and Senate energy committees are lukewarm to the proposals. Sen. Yvonne Prettner Solon, DFL-Duluth, and Rep. Bill Hilty, DFL-Finlayson, say they’re open to a discussion but that nuclear power isn’t a priority in the current session.

That’s roughly the conclusion of Minnesota’s Climate Change Advisory Group, which submitted a draft of its report to legislators about a week before the governor’s statement. The role of nuclear energy needs to be considered, the advisory group report said, but the state figures to be able to meet its greenhouse-gas reduction goals through at least 2025 using more affordable solutions.

“It was certainly not an endorsement of building new nuclear plants anytime soon or removing the moratorium immediately,” says Bill Grant, Midwest regional director for the Izaak Walton League, a national conservation group, and a member of the climate change group’s energy-supply work group. The committee includes representatives from Minnesota’s largest electric utilities, and it voted unanimously to defer the question of post-2025 nuclear power plants as an issue for future study.Charles Bomberger, Xcel Energy’s vice president for nuclear projects, said the company didn’t recommended lifting the moratorium and wasn’t involved in lobbying for the legislation. Bomberger says that Xcel will support the bills, but reiterates that the company has no plans to build new nuclear power plants. (Officials at two other utilities that serve the state, Minnesota Power and Otter Tail Power, said in interviews last week they have no opinion on the legislation because nuclear power is not a part of the companies’ plans.)

“It came as a surprise to us, especially the governor’s announcement,” Bomberger said. “It’s not driven by any utility in Minnesota that is seeking to build a new nuclear plant.”

So if the state’s largest utilities and leading climate experts aren’t behind this apparent renewed interest in nuclear power at the state capital, what is driving the discussion? The governor’s director of energy security, Edward Garvey, responded via email, “[W]e are aware that no utility is proposing a new nuclear facility. Nonetheless, we believe that repealing the nuclear moratorium is appropriate because it will allow for the consideration of such plants. They may not ever be needed let alone built but they should be considered but right now that is not possible due to the moratorium.”

Sen. Steve Dille, R-Dassel, said he’s worked on nuclear issues for more than a decade and always supported expanding the number of nuclear facilities in Minnesota. The reason he waited until Feb. 14 of this year to introduce a bill repealing the moratorium is that he now thinks the proposal is politically viable because of climate change concerns.

It’s been almost 35 years since a nuclear power plant was constructed in Minnesota. Xcel Energy owns the state’s only two nuclear power plants, one in Monticello and another at Prairie Island. Both have been operated since the early 1970s and supply about 20 percent of the state’s electricity. A moratorium was put in place in 1994, the same year legislators settled a lengthy debate and permitted Northern States Power to expand its storage of nuclear waste at Prairie Island. Dille was a primary figure in that debate.

“The bill you see is not something that just came to me in the dead of night a couple weeks ago,” Dille said. “It’s something I would have supported long ago, but it’s got legs now because of this report on how to reduce CO2 emissions.”

The climate change advisory group was much more cool to the prospect of new nuclear facilities, according to its members. J. Drake Hamilton, science policy director at Fresh Energy and a member of the energy-supply work group, said the discussion centered on the high costs and uncertainty surrounding nuclear power. “Actually, all of our computation show that there were many less expensive options before you even had to look at nuclear,” he said. “So we were looking instead at starting with those policies that would result in cost savings, and then much lower costs than (nuclear).” The report shows reducing carbon emissions by building new nuclear power would cost about $70 per ton of carbon reduced, compared to, for example, about $17 per ton from upgrading existing power plants and infrastructure to run more efficiently.

Sen. Steve Murphy, DFL-Red Wing, a co-author of Dille’s bill, dismissed the advisory group’s cost estimates. “If you doctor the numbers in a certain way, that’s exactly the kind of calculation you’ll get,” said Murphy, who retired as a welder and technician at Xcel Energy in January after 26 years with the company and has also been a nuclear proponent for years. “When you talk to the people who build these plants, the cost per carbon reduction is pretty comparable with anything else you build. I think it’s a pretty wise investment. We just can’t build enough windmills … You need to have a solid base load of electricity that you can bring on line that is static [and] reliable, and that’s nuclear power.”

Other legislators who have authored bills to lift the state’s nuclear power construction ban include: Rep. Thomas Huntley, DFL-Duluth, Sen. Michael Jungbauer, R-East Bethel, Rep. Joyce Peppin, R-Rogers, and Sen. David H. Senjem, R-Rochester.

“I wonder if any of these legislators have talked to any of the state’s utilities about this, because my strong impression is that none of them have even the slightest interest in pursuing new nuclear power-plant construction in Minnesota, at least not for well into the foreseeable future,” said Grant, of the Izaak Walton League. “My strong impression from all of them–including Xcel, which already owns two nuclear power plants–is thanks but no thanks. So, I don’t get it. I’m just not quite sure where this is coming from.”

Rep. Bill Hilty, chair of the House Energy Finance and Policy Division, said he has doubts about nuclear that would need to be resolved before he supported ending the moratorium. Even though the power plants themselves don’t emit carbon dioxide, he pointed out, they have a large carbon footprint when you consider the mining and processing of uranium, which, like fossil fuels, is a non-renewable resource. Uranium is becoming scarcer, lower quality and more expensive to mine, Hilty said.

“I’m certainly willing to talk about it. But in terms of immediate priorities, I just don’t see anything on the immediate horizon,” Hilty said. “I think that’s something we’ll just get to it when we get to it.”

Another major change has been the fish. Anglers once reeled in scores of fish. Now, only a few are generally caught. A change in how the Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant at Red Wing cools its water has meant warmer water up there, so fish head that way instead of staying on the lake. “The guys have tried everything [for bait and tackle], he said. “Nothing really works well.”

When we think of “pollution,” it’s chemicals that probably come to mind first. I thought this paragraph was an interesting reminder that heat pollution can have an impact on the environment, too.

“We have no plans in the works to build any nuclear plants,” Xcel Energy spokeswoman Mary Sandok tells Minnesota Monitor.

What Kelly was talking about was the need for nuclear power to be part of the nation’s overall energy portfolio, Sandok said. Unlike power plants that burn fossil fuel, nuclear facilities don’t emit large amounts of greenhouse gases. As cutting carbon emissions rises as a priority, nuclear is gaining traction as a lesser-evil alternative to coal and gas.

“We did call Reuters. I don’t know if they plan to do anything, but we objected to the way that they reported that,” Sandok said. “I’m not sure if the reporter understood when he talks about nuclear needing to be part of the nation’s portfolio, it’s a little bit different than being new plants as part of ours.”Kelly has also said that Xcel Energy is too small to build a nuclear power generator on its own, and that if the company ever did want to pursue an additional nuclear plant it would need to partner with others. He’s consistently said, too, that Xcel has no plans to pursue building new nuclear power plants at this time.

Xcel does plan to expand both its Monticello and Prairie Island nuclear plants, which provide about a quarter of the electricity that’s delivered to customers. In its most recent resource planning report filed with the state in December, Xcel says it’s aiming to extend the life and increase output by 71 megawatts at Monticello and 160 megawatts at Prairie Island.

In 2006, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a 20-year license renewal for Monticello from 2010 to 2030. Prairie Island’s licenses expire in 2013 and 2014, and Xcel intends to apply for 20-year extensions on both of those reactors, as well, Sandok said.

Getting more use out of the existing nuclear plants falls in line with recommendations from the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group, which notes in its report that nuclear power is both controversial and important. The group also suggests the Legislature study the potential of building a new nuclear plant in Minnesota that would be online as soon as 2025.