With Exelon Corp.'s Three Mile Island nuclear plant scheduled close Sept. 20, the debate over whether Pennsylvania should give financial support to the remaining facilities remains unresolved.
Citing lack of timely action by Pennsylvania lawmakers that might have kept the facility open, Exelon subsidiary Exelon Generation Co. LLC in May said it would follow through with closing the 829-MW reactor in Dauphin County, Pa., by Sept. 30. An Exelon representative said Sept. 19 that the shutdown of unit 1 would happen around noon on Sept. 20.
The unit began operating in 1974. While its operating license runs through 2034, the unit struggled with an influx of cheap gas-fired generation that depressed capacity market prices in the PJM Interconnection. The plant's now-decommissioned unit 2 experienced a partial meltdown in 1979 and was never restarted.
Closure of Three Mile Island will happen the same day the first of two planned climate demonstrations are set to take place across the globe. The demonstrations, scheduled for Sept. 20 and Sept. 27, will call for a shift away from fossil fuels.
The two events — closure of Three Mile Island and the climate demonstrations — are in complete opposition to each other, said Nuclear Energy Institute, or NEI, spokesman Matthew Wald.
"Millions of people will call for stabilizing the climate, and the Pennsylvania nuclear reactor that has provided zero-carbon energy for decades, whose output dwarfs all the sun and wind [power] in the state, will be retired prematurely," he said.
Three Mile Island unit 1 produces 6 million to 7 million MWh of electricity a year, almost double what the renewable resources make. While the NEI also supports other carbon-free sources like solar and wind, at the rate that Pennsylvania is adding those resources, it will take more than 600 years to make up for the nuclear unit's loss, Wald said.
Exelon operates two other nuclear plants. One plant is co-owned with Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., totaling four units; another plant, which Talen Energy Corp. operates, has two units.
Closure of the unit is the latest in a series of premature retirements in recent years, most of which have been attributed to market or policy conditions. Since 2013, nearly 6,000 MW of nuclear capacity across the country has closed, the NEI said. Between 2019 and 2025, another 8,313 MW of nuclear capacity, including Three Mile Island, is scheduled to shut down.
In Pennsylvania, FirstEnergy Solutions Corp. plans to shut down the 1,872-MW Beaver Valley plant in Beaver County in 2021. Legislation approved in Ohio in July provides ratepayer-funded support to the company's two nuclear plants there through the end of 2027.
Wald said the problem will persist for as long as the market system is out of sync with the policy goal.
"If electricity is treated as a commodity product, regardless of its carbon footprint, fossil fuel, especially natural gas, will continue to displace zero-carbon renewables, as well as making the economics of sun and wind more challenging," he said.
After Exelon confirmed plans to retire the plant, Pennsylvania lawmakers who had hoped to prevent that closure said they wanted to keep other nuclear facilities in the state from meeting the same fate.
What form that action would take is still unknown. Representatives for state Rep. Tom Mehaffie and Sen. Ryan Aument, who led legislative efforts to support Pennsylvania's nuclear fleet, were not immediately available to discuss what, if any, plans the lawmakers have in mind.
Should those in support of the legislation try to make another push this fall, opponents of the idea stand ready to keep those efforts from succeeding. Citizens Against Nuclear Bailouts, a coalition of citizens' groups and power generators along with energy, business and manufacturing associations, thinks there is no need to give financial support to profitable nuclear power generators, said spokesman Steve Kratz.
A study commissioned by the group found that with the exception of Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania's nuclear plants are expected to be profitable for the next 10 years.
One development that could affect things, Kratz said, is Gov. Tom Wolf's reported interest in having Pennsylvania join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, a carbon cap-and-trade program for nine northeastern states.
"I think there's mixed views on what Pennsylvania joining the initiative would look like and what impact it would have on consumers and power generators in the state," he said. "Regardless of what happens with movement on RGGI, our coalition and certainly our allies will continue to advocate that competitive markets remain the basis for Pennsylvania's power generation, resources, and that no direct subsidy go to favor one power generator over another."
