It’s desperation time at Akron, Ohio’s, FirstEnergy utility as the company faces the closure of two nuclear units in Ohio and two in Pennsylvania. As a last ditch effort to save the plants, the company has petitioned Energy Secretary Rick Perry to invoke an emergency provision of the Federal Power Act (Section 202c) to keep the plants running.
The action comes after the company has repeatedly failed to convince Ohio and Pennsylvania lawmakers to subsidize the operation of the plants in the PJM Interconnection. The Trump administration crashed spectacularly early this year as it tried to get the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to support changes in its competitive market rules for wholesale electricity to bail out failing nuclear and coal plants.
Following the FERC failure, advocates of supporting the uncompetitive coal and nuclear plants called for DOE to use the emergency procedures in the FPA to rescue the generators. At that time, Bruce Walker, assistant DOE secretary, said the agency “would never use a 202 to stave off an economic issue.” But “never” in the Trump administration has had an extremely flexible definition.
FirstEnergy announced on March 28 that, without a bailout, it would close the Davis-Besse unit (a 40-year-old 894-MW Babcock & Wilcox pressurized water reactor) near Toledo; the 44-year old, 1,256-MW GE boiling water reactor Perry plant in the northeastern corner of the state; and the two-unit, 1,800-MW Beaver Valley Westinghouse PWR (Unit 1 is 48-years old and Unit 2 is 44) 35 miles from Pittsburgh,
In its announcement, FirstEnergy said it will close Davis-Besse in 2020, and Perry and Beaver Valley in 2021. The Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper said that the announcement from FirstEnergy’s nuclear operating subsidiary does not address the large debt the subsidiary has accumulated, “more than $2.8 billion to creditors and another $1.7 billion to the parent company FirstEnergy Corp.” The company could be facing a bankruptcy filing if the states or the fedeeral government can’t come to the aid of the nukes.
In its 44-page petition to DOE, FirstEnergy said, “It is in the national interest to ensure a dependable, affordable, safe, fuel-secure, and clean supply of electricity produced by a diverse array of energy resources, including coal, natural gas, nuclear material, flowing water, and renewable resources. Such diversity of generation enhances dependable and resilient electric supply, reduces electricity price volatility, ensures the Nation’s economic and physical security, and promotes economic development.”
Those are much the same arguments DOE made in its unsuccessful attempt to get FERC to alter its competitive market rules to give advantages to nuclear and coal plants. PJM responded to the FirstEnergy petition, saying, “This is not an issue of reliability. There is no immediate emergency.”
According to DOE, the agency has used Section 202(c) seven times since 2000, including responding to the California energy crisis at the end of the 20th Century; a dispute between New York and Connecticut over an undersea transmission cable between Long Island and Connecticut; in response to the 2003 major blackout in the Northeast; in 2005 in response to Hurricanes Rita and Katrina; a 2005 dispute over sending power from Virginia to the District of Columbia; a 2008 in response to Hurricane Ike; a 2017 order involving a reactive power issue in Oklahoma; and again in 2017 related to power flows from Virginia’s Dominion Energy to PJM.
Should DOE issue a 202(c) order to keep FirstEnergy’s nuclear plants online, the result would be a legal challenge from opponents. Mary Anne Hitt of the Sierra Club posted a statement saying, “This order willfully ignores the reality of the marketplace, the health of our families, and the letter of the law. If the Trump Administration bows to FirstEnergy and moves forward with this bailout attempt, Sierra Club fully intends to challenge and defeat the administration in court.”
— Kennedy Maize