Two states with deep roots in the history of civilian nuclear power in the U.S. are facing disputes over nuclear plant shutdowns: Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
In Pennsylvania, site of the nation’s first commercial reactor, Shippingport, opened near Pittsburgh in 1957, the legislature may consider legislation to provide state aid to preserve five nuclear stations, with nine units. Several solons has said they will soon introduce a bill to upstate the state’s 2004 portfolio standard law – requiring that 18% of the Keystone State’s electricity come from renewables by 2021 – include nuclear as a carbon-free resource.
Pennsylvania is the nation’s second-largest nuclear electricity producing state, after Illinois, which has a state nuclear subsidy program in operation. Pennsylvania’s nukes face the same pressures as those in Illinois, owned by Exelon: difficulty in competing in wholesale competitive power markets against natural gas and heavily subsidized wind and solar.
At risk in Pennsylvania are:
* Beaver Valley, two 852-MW pressurized water reactors (PWR), owned by Ohio’s First Energy Nuclear Operating Co. in Beaver County not far from the Shippingport site.
* Susquehanna, two 1,180-MW General Electric Boiling Water Reactors (BWR) in Luzerne County in eastern Pennsylvania, owned by Talen Energy.
* Exelon’s Three Mile Island Unit 1, an 871-MW PWR near Harrisburg, sister to the Three Mile Island Unit 1 that melted down in 1979 in the worst nuclear accident in the U.S.
* Limerick, Exelon’s two 1090-MW BWRs near Philadelphia.
* Peach Bottom, Exelon’s two 1065-MW BWRs in central Pennsylvania.
Most at risk are Beaver Valley and TMI. This month, Exelon said that the state legislators have until June to come up with a subsidy regime for TMI or the plant will close. CEO Chris Crane said that the plant needs to order a new core before refueling, and that is driving the June date.
It’s not an easy sell for nuclear interests in the state. Plentiful and cheap natural gas is putting severe economic pressure on the nukes, and Pennsylvania is at the heart of the gas revolution. The Marcellus Shale formation, which extends broadly in the state, and hydraulic fracturing technology has transformed energy supply in the state and across the country. Fracking has been a growth industry in Pennsylvania for more than a decade, while nuclear has been falling behind economically.
In New Jersey, subsidies for the state’s nuclear plants are now before the state regulators, the Board of Public Utilities. Last year, the legislature passed a law establishing a nuclear subsidy regime similar to that of Illinois and New York, with “zero emissions credits” rewarding the plants for their minimal air emissions. The law gave the BPU the role of deciding how to implement the program.
The Garden State has three nuclear operating nuclear units, all in the southern end of the state in Salem County and all owned by Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG): the 1172-MW Hope Creek GE BWR, and the two 1150-MW PWRs at the Salem station.
New Jersey is the site of the iconic Oyster Creek plant, a 636-MW GE BWR that went into service in late 1969. It came about as a result of a financially ruinous commercial war between the two pioneer reactor vendors, Westinghouse with its pressurized water reactors and GE with its BWRs, to establish positions in the market for commercial nukes. Exelon closed Oyster Creek last fall.
PSEG has said that it will shutter the three plants if the BPU in April does not approve some $300 million annually is state subsidies for the plants. President Ralph LaRossa said, “As part of that application process, you have to commit that you are closing the plants (if the subsidy is not approved) and we indicated that with an officer’s signature in that document.”
The utility is getting pushback. As New Jersey Spotlight reported earlier this month, Joseph Bowring, the independent market monitor for the PJM Interconnection, where the New Jersey nukes compete, disputed PSEG’s argument that it will have to close the plants within three years if it doesn’t get the subsidies. He said, “PSEG overstates its need for subsidies of Hope Creek and Salem I and Salem II units. PSEG understates forward energy revenues, understates capacity revenues, overstates costs and overstates the risk.”
Earlier, the New Jersey Rate Council, a state consumer protecting agency, also rained on PSEG’s subsidy parade. Rate Council Stafanie Brand said, “When their assumptions are examined closely, their claims of financial hardship fall away.”
The Atlantic City Press editorialized last week, “Too bad New Jersey’s subsidy law doesn’t include a recapture provision to require the plants to return the subsidy should profits turn out to be much higher than expected.”
— Kennedy Maize