Exelon said Wednesday that efforts in the Pennsylvania legislature to provide financial support to the state’s nuclear power sites would not arrive in time to save its reactor at the Three Mile Island Generating Plant near Harrisburg.
“With only three legislative days remaining in May and no action taken to advance House Bill 11 or Senate Bill 510, it is clear a state policy solution will not be enacted before June 1, in time to reverse the premature retirement of the plant,” the Chicago-based power company said in a press release.
Three Mile Island Unit 1 remains on schedule to close by Sept. 30, according to the release. A specific date has not been set, Exelon spokesman David Marcheskie said Friday.
Exelon announced the planned retirement of the money-losing power reactor in May 2017, citing the need for state and federal energy policy reforms to bolster nuclear power against economic challenges including lower-price natural gas.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission license for the 45-year-old Unit 1 reactor does not expire until April 2034. The plant has 675 employees. Layoffs will begin after closure, drawing down to about 50 remaining personnel in 2022, Marcheskie said by email.
The bills under consideration in the current session of the Pennsylvania General Assembly would create a new tier, for nuclear, to the state Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard that requires utilities to purchase power from zero-carbon sources. Neither piece of legislation has made it out of committee. They could have been worth $500 million for Pennsylvania nuclear power plants, according to The Associated Press.
“I hope the conversation continues in the Legislature about the future of Pennsylvania’s nuclear industry,” state Rep. Thomas Mehaffie (R), who introduced the House bill, said in a statement after the Exelon announcement. “We still have eight reactors in this state supplying a large piece of our state’s electricity production. Time may have run out for Three Mile Island, but the fight is not over for the rest of our nuclear fleet.”
There are currently five operating active nuclear plants in the state. Along with the soon-to-close Three Mile Island reactor, FirstEnergy Solutions’ two-reactor Beaver Valley nuclear plant is scheduled for retirement by 2021.
FirstEnergy Corp. also owns reactor Unit 2 at Three Mile Island, which has been closed since its partial meltdown in 1979. That reactor is in SAFSTOR mode, under which final decommissioning can be delayed for up to 60 years.
In paperwork filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in April, Exelon said it plans to place Unit 1 into SAFSTOR mode as well. Preliminary decommissioning operations would be conducted through February 2021, and all spent fuel moved to dry storage by 2022, according to Exelon’s post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR).
Active decommissioning would resume in the 2070s and wrap up by 2079. The entire operation is estimated to cost over $1.2 billion.
Exelon’s decommissioning trust held $626 million at the end of 2016, according to an NRC report from last August. Part of the reason for placing a reactor into monitored safe storage is to allow decommissioning funding levels to increase.
“The TMI Unit 1 decommissioning trust fund should fully cover the cost of decommissioning,” Marcheskie wrote.”If there were a shortfall in the fund, Exelon would be responsible for the rest.”
