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posted by martyb on Sunday June 04 2017, @10:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the needs-more-wealthfar dept.

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. β€œIt’s not renewable; you have to keep buying the fuel,’’ said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 05 2017, @04:40AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 05 2017, @04:40AM (#520576) Journal
    Pricing the externality of CO2 is a good example, but far from the only one. For example, more such common ones are driving an individual vehicle, any behavior that increases material going to a landfill, any behavior considered wasteful of electricity or other resource such as using an incandescent light bulb or flushing a toilet with too much water, and having the wrong diet - like eating meat or being overweight.

    Here, in addition to CO2 emission, the relevant externalities are the various risks of nuclear power generation. There are genuine externalities to a disaster like Fukushima. But these are made worse by unreasonable demands made by the public and politicians before and after such accidents. Creating excessive liability for a disaster is one such thing that should be borne by the parties responsible for creating the excess liability rather than the nuclear power operator - for example, the absence of more modern nuclear plants to replace existing aging ones, the need to store used fuel rods on site rather than at safer storage locations like Yucca Mountain), and demanding higher standards of clean up than are warranted by safety considerations.