Two interesting nuclear developments from Pennsylvania, the cradle of civilian nuclear power in the US, both positive and negative.
First, the positive. As reported in Philadelphia’s The Inquirer, Talen Energy, which owns the two-unit Susquehanna nuclear plant in north-eastern Pa. near Berwick, has signed a deal with an Easton Maryland cryptocurrency “mining” firm to locate a new energy-intensive computer cryptocurrency factory that processes crypto transactions next to the 2,500 MW nuclear station.
In a press release, Texas-based Talen said that “it has entered into a Joint Venture with TeraWulf Inc. (“TeraWulf”), a U.S.-based bitcoin mining company, to develop up to 300 Megawatts of zero-carbon bitcoin mining capacity. The Joint Venture, named Nautilus Cryptomine will leverage the strengths of both Talen and TeraWulf as they collectively work to advance the convergence of clean energy sources and digital infrastructure assets.”
The first phase of the project will be a 180-MW TeraWulf data processing center located on Talen property adjacent to the plant, connected directly “behind the meter” to the nuke. The cost of the first phase, the joint venture estimates, will be $350-400 million. Talen says it will put up $150-200 million as its 50% share for the first phase. Commercial operation is expected to be in mid-2022. Details of the second phase were not announced.
The Inquirer reported, “Last month Energy Harbor Corp., the former power-generation subsidiary of First Energy Corp., announced it signed a five-year agreement to provide zero-carbon electricity to a new bitcoin mining center operated by Standard Power in Coshocton, Ohio. Energy Harbor owns two nuclear units in Ohio and the twin-unit Beaver Valley Power Station in Western Pennsylvania.”
And the negative. In middle Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg, StateImpact Pennsylvania, an NPR project, reported delays in the fatally-damaged Three Mile Island-2 plant. TMI-2 Solutions, a subsidiary of Utah-based Energy Solutions, which offers nuclear decommissioning service in return to the decommissioning funds for the reactors, will delay taking down the unit’s two closed-cycle cooling towers until 2022, instead of this year.
TMI-2 Solutions bought the plant from Ohio-based FirstEnergy in December. The Utah company said it plans to remove the remains of the reactor seriously damaged core in mid-2022, and complete the decommissioning in 2037.
EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker said the delay in taking down the cooling towers does not affect the rest of the process. “During the planning process of TMI-2 decommissioning we determined there would be less impact to other decommissioning activities taking place on the island later this year,” Those other items include moving the spent fuel from TMI-1, which Exelon shut down permanently in 2019, to dry-case storage.
On its website, TMI-2 solutions said it expects the entire decommissioning process will take until 2037.
TMI-2v was a Babcock&Wilcox pressurized water reactor, which went into service December 1978 and suffered the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history on March 28, 1979, although no one was injured. The plant experienced an unanticipated small-break loss of coolant accident, which caused most of the nuclear fuel in the plant to melt down. Industry euphemisms have “referred to it as a ‘partial meltdown,’” design to underplay the seriousness of the event.
–Kennedy Maize