Alarmed by the growing number of US nuclear power plants that have closed or might soon close because of cheap, abundant natural gas, industry officials are calling for speedy government action to rebalance an electricity market that they say is stacked against them.
“I’ll be straight with the [Obama] administration people here: We know you want to help nuclear, but all we hear about is renewables,” complained Marvin Fertel, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s trade association. Fertel addressed the issue at a 19 May Capitol Hill conference on nuclear power.
Over the past few years, US companies have closed or announced plans to close eight reactors with a combined capacity of 6300 MW. Fertel claimed that another 15 to 20 plants are at risk of closure over the next 5 to 10 years. “We’re driving companies to make decisions that our nation will regret for the next 20 or 30 years, or longer, on the basis of short-term, unsustainable price signals,” he said.
The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station in Blair, Nebraska, will likely shut down by the end of the year.
Replacing all the shuttered plants with new natural-gas generation would wipe out about one-quarter of the carbon emissions reductions that are projected in the administration’s Clean Power Plan. The changeover would also cancel out 40% of the cuts to greenhouse gas emissions that the US committed to in December at the Paris climate change conference.
Most recently, on 12 May, the utility that operates the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant in Nebraska announced it will likely close the single-reactor facility by the end of the year. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz told conference attendees that another 6.5 GW of nuclear capacity will likely be retired by 2030. A typical commercial reactor produces about 1 GW. “We are supposed to be adding zero-carbon sources, not subtracting or merely replacing by treading water,” Moniz lamented.
Over the past seven years, Exelon has lost $800 million operating its Quad Cities and Clinton nuclear plants in Illinois, and the energy company has said it can’t continue to sustain those losses. Although Quad Cities’ production cost is only 2.8 cents per kilowatt-hour, Fertel said it still can’t compete with natural gas.
“We’ve got to support the existing nuclear fleet,” said Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ). “We must make a goal of passing a law that establishes an economy-wide price on carbon to allow nuclear to compete on a level playing field.” Bill Mohl, president of electricity merchant provider Entergy Wholesale Commodities, added, “If the federal government can’t take the lead on a price for carbon, the states will have to do that.”
Electricity markets have failed to give nuclear energy credit for being a clean, zero-carbon source that has provided around-the-clock, base-load power. To encourage the growth of wind and solar energy, Congress has subsidized them with 30% production tax credits. But because they are intermittent sources and there are currently no reliable energy storage systems, neither is as dependable as nuclear or coal. Nuclear’s ongoing, seemingly intractable waste-disposal issue was not discussed, nor was the public’s uneasiness with the technology.
“Subsidies of renewables were done in a different time, when the price of gas was high and [electricity] load was growing at a fairly constant rate,” said William Levis, president of PSEG Power. In addition to nuclear power’s high reliability—US commercial plants operated at 92% of their capacity last year, far higher than other generating sources—the power generated is stored on site. Natural gas, by contrast, is supplied through pipelines, which could be severed in a natural disaster.
Nuclear power plants supply nearly 20% of US electricity needs, whereas wind produced less than 5% in 2015. “It’s conceivable that wind and solar may produce as much electricity in 2040 as nuclear does today,” Fertel said.
As part of its quadrennial energy review, the Department of Energy is analyzing how nuclear might be provided credit, or valuation, for its zero-emissions status, Moniz said. But Fertel warned that the situation demands urgent action. “A report on it doesn’t do anything unless the regional transmission organizations and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission do something with it,” he said. “You need to get it to them, they need to do something with it, and it needs to be done sooner rather than later.”
Matt Bennett, founder of the centrist think tank Third Way, suggested that the government could maintain closed plants so they might be restarted when market conditions warrant. Power purchasing agreements might also be struck with the Defense Department or other federal agencies to help prop up the industry.
