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posted by martyb on Monday October 19 2015, @08:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-preparing-for-thorium-and-molten-salt-reactors? dept.

from the economic-realities dept.

Utility Dive reports

Entergy Corp. plans to shutter its 680 MW Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass. no later than June 1, 2019, the company said this week.

AP reports that financial factors drove Entergy to make the decision, including tough market conditions, reduced revenues, and increased operational costs. Entergy said it did not anticipate the economics of the plant to change in the near future, either through a rebound in power prices or a different market structure.

The exact timing of the closure will be decided next year, but the company has already informed the ISO New England that it intends to stop participating as a capacity resource.

CounterPunch continues

Entergy is also poised to shut the FitzPatrick reactor in New York. It promises an announcement by the end of this month.

Entergy also owns Indian Point 2 and Indian Point 3 some 40 miles north of Manhattan. Unit 2's operating license has long since lapsed. Unit 3's will expire in December.

[...] Meanwhile, like nearly all old American nukes, both Pilgrim and FitzPatrick are losing tons of money. Entergy admits to loss projections of $40 million/year or more at Pilgrim, with parallel numbers expected at FitzPatrick. The company blames falling gas and oil prices for the shortfalls.

[...] the boom in wind [and] solar, increased efficiency, and other Solartopian advances are at the real core of nuke power's escalating economic melt-down.


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  • (Score: 2) by snick on Monday October 19 2015, @07:54PM

    by snick (1408) on Monday October 19 2015, @07:54PM (#251986)

    It is more of an investment in sustainability

    Well, we are going to have to sustain the dead plant near me forever, because there is no place to put the waste, and no way to move the waste. Money is a big problem for the perpetual care that will be needed to keep the plant safely in mothballs, but even if we had all the money in the world, we _still_ couldn't clean it up.
    So yeah. I guess you could call that sustainability.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Tuesday October 20 2015, @12:07AM

    by Zz9zZ (1348) on Tuesday October 20 2015, @12:07AM (#252115)

    Real sustainability is in feeding the waste into breeder reactors for further fuel. Also, if Chernobyl is any indication it is far from forever that we have to wait so don't worry toooo much about radioactive problems. One big issue with solving the problems is that they are not usually financially sound investments... if you take the profit motive out and switch to a "what's best for humanity and the planet" then we actually could do a lot better.

    --
    ~Tilting at windmills~
    • (Score: 2) by snick on Tuesday October 20 2015, @01:12PM

      by snick (1408) on Tuesday October 20 2015, @01:12PM (#252274)

      Did you just use Chernobyl as an example of how safe nuke plants can be?
      That is a stunning argument. My hat's off to you.
      If we are willing to take the profit motive out of energy and assume infinite resources are available to to do "what's best for humanity and the planet" then we could use fossil fuels + mitigation and carbon sequestration. It would cost a buttload of money, but it would be clean and wouldn't dot the landscape with happy friendly Chernobyls.
      We could switch en-mass to biofuels. Again, not economically feasible at this time, but as long as we are throwing economics out the window ... it would be great.
      We could cover all horizontal surfaces with solar cells. The initial investment would be huge, but after the initial investment, the energy would be Freeeee! Couple this with bio fuels for base load generation or lots-o-batteries, and you have a complete solution.
      If you cut _any_ energy production mechanism the slack that you are willing to cut nuclear power, then we would live in a better cleaner happier world. But you seem to want to put your thumb on the scale specifically for nuke plants.

      • (Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Thursday October 22 2015, @03:18AM

        by Zz9zZ (1348) on Thursday October 22 2015, @03:18AM (#253070)

        You're the absolutist type I see, guess I wasted my effort. Since I'm this far in I'll try and correct the misconception... Chernobyl being one of the worst nuclear events in human history IS a reason for hope since the surrounding area has bounced back considerably. It appears that we won't have to wait thousands of years before the land is habitable again. THAT was the point, a big whoosh over your head.

        I much prefer solar/wind/hydro to nuclear, but there are issues with energy storage. Also, having a stable source of power is a good thing, whether coal, oil, gas, or nuclear. If we can solve the energy storage issues, then I'm am 100% for using all renewable sources of power.

        Why is any slack needed for other energy production? They are all doing fine. Nuclear is the one that scares people and brings about irrational behavior. I have no idea where each would land, but comparing the full cost per kilowatt would be a good study. How much power and pollution goes into manufacturing solar / wind farms for how much return? How much for nuclear? Most battery tech is highly polluting and requires a huge amount of power to create in the first place. Bio fuel trades food for fuel, and has the possibility of swiftly ruining our topsoil... With energy use only on the increase, and set to seriously spike as we transition to electric vehicles, the power density of nuclear may become a more important factor. The only other solutions I can imagine are huge wind/solar farms across the Earth and connected by a network of huge power carrying cables (hopefully room temp superconducting cables by that point) so that global demand can be stably supported.

        It seems like you have made up your mind and chosen any "green" tech to simply be superior, but I hope I have brought up a few points that help you see that every option is just that, another option. There are pros and cons for everything and it is best to keep an open mind or you will get sold down the river by someone somewhere.

        There are so many factors, setting one option up for failure ahead of time is a terrible method of discussion.

        --
        ~Tilting at windmills~