Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant to Close

Subtitle: Another one calls it quits - Losing Money

Three Mile Island nuclear plants,
containment domes as white circles at top right
credit:  NRC

The infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania has one reactor still running.  The other one, the one that melted down after only one year of operation, has been closed with its radioactive fuel core removed.  Now, almost 40 years later, the financial losses are overwhelming, the government refused to provide tax dollars as still more subsidies, and the owners have announced the plant's closure in September, 2019.    (UPDATE:  It closed on Sept 20, 2019.  Cheers for another one closed, forever. )

So much for the nuclear cheerleader mantra that "nuclear plants last for 60 years."  No, they don't.   SLB has a list of the US' closed nuclear plants, see link.   Three Mile Island will join that list if and when it actually closes down, in approximately 10 weeks from today. 

At SLB, the opinion is that many more nuclear reactors in the US will shut down in the next few years, approximately half of the existing fleet, as the electricity market changes for the better, and nuclear plants cannot compete.  The combination of old plants, high operating costs, and tremendous pressure from low-cost wind and natural gas power, makes shutting them down the only practical solution.   However, a few states (notably Ohio) have chosen to give even more subsidies to their nuclear plants to keep them running and the workers employed.    One wonders how much largesse actually exists in the legislature and governor's office, when the plants require many hundreds of million $ invested to remain within the Federal safety regulations.   Who will purchase bonds to fund the investments, when at best the plants will run for only 10 years?

So, what actually happens when a nuclear power plant shuts down?  How does the grid cope?  Quite well, actually.   We have seen this demonstrated time and time again, in California, Nebraska, Massachusetts, and others. 

Many of the remaining power plants each increase their output to cover the load that the nuclear plant formerly supplied.    At night especially, some plants will not reduce output as much as when the nuclear plant was operating.   The grid remains stable, the customers are happy, and a high-cost provider is removed from the generation mix.   This is how regulated capitalism is supposed to work, the most efficient survive, and the least efficient fall by the wayside.  

One last point, about nuclear plants supposedly being zero-carbon sources of power.   No, they aren't, especially when they shut down.  That Three Mile Island plant will soon be a big load on the grid, drawing power 24 hours per day, to keep spent fuel cooled and various other needs.   That power intake is from the grid as a whole, which of course includes coal-fired power and natural gas-fired power.   That is not unique to Three Mile Island, as every closed nuclear plant continues to draw power from the grid in various amounts.  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Houston, Texas

copyright (c) 2019 by Roger Sowell - all rights reserved

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Climate Change................here  and here

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