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New Jersey Spotlight reports
Three Mile Island may be the next nuclear power plant to be shuttered by its owner unless it gets financial help to keep the facility afloat.
Exelon Corp., the owner of the Pennsylvania generating station, announced yesterday it will retire the plant by or about September 30, 2019 absent any change in that state's policies dealing with nuclear power.
The announcement is the latest by an owner of a nuclear plant to threaten or close its facility unless given financial assistance to make the facility profitable, a drama that could play out soon in New Jersey with its three nuclear units operated by the Public Service Enterprise Group in South Jersey.
If Exelon follows through on its threat, it would mean the Oyster Creek plant in Lacey Township, also owned by the Chicago energy giant, could outlast TMI, the site of the nation's biggest nuclear accident when it had a partial meltdown in 1979.
Oyster Creek, the country's oldest commercial nuclear plant, agreed to shut down at the end of 2019 under a settlement worked out with the Christie administration in 2010.
[...] Environmentalists oppose extending the incentives renewable sources obtain to nuclear, because unlike solar, wind, and water, the former is not sustainable. “It’s not renewable; you have to keep buying the fuel,’’ said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @01:44PM (4 children)
A bit of both
'Shuttered' is a little misleading. They are not abandoning a plant full of nuclear nasty.
The company is saying that natural gas makes cheaper electricity than Nuclear, so they want to shut down the nuclear plant.
Alternatively, they want a rate hike to subsidise the plant to their standard of profit.
That's not the same as abandoning it without security, maintenance, or cleanup.
(This might be a bluff, because the cost of properly keeping a shutdown plant may be higher than a running one?)
The bad news is this will make more CO2 and more spent fuel storage issues.
The good news is eventually less chance of another Fukushima.
Given I'm a climate change skeptic and only mildly curious about glowing in the dark, closing this plant seems more good than bad to me.
In general, I have two problems with our nuclear power systems.
First they require active cooling. Not being able to just put in the control rods and walk away is far from ideal.
Second, the spent fuel story is just plain criminal on the part of the government.
Neither of these say that nuclear power has to be a bad idea. Just that the way we seem to do it is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @05:27PM (2 children)
The good news is eventually less chance of another Fukushima
Is 3 mile island in a known tsunami zone?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @11:56PM
> Is 3 mile island in a known tsunami zone?
Yes, tropical storms driven by all the hot air from MBA managers.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday June 05 2017, @12:54AM
Three Mile Island is on an island in the Susquehanna River. Whether the grandparent poster meant that the site could be flooded or just meant that a serious accident could occur, I don't know. Flooding has happened in the area:
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_Nuclear_Generating_Station [wikipedia.org]
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susquehanna_River [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday June 05 2017, @12:38AM
> The good news is eventually less chance of another Fukushima.
The article notes that Three Mile Island itself had "a partial meltdown in 1979." Radioactive iodine and noble gases were released. There are two reactors at the site; the one that had the melt-down has been shut down ever since, and there are no plans to restart it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale#Level_5:_Accident_with_wider_consequences [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident [wikipedia.org]