The energy market “doesn’t value” nuclear power plants which results in their premature decommissioning, industry executives told a Senate panel this week.
Utility companies don’t “recognize the full value” of nuclear power as a long term source of energy, Jeffery Lyash, president of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee during a hearing Thursday morning.
Lyash said that he believed TVA’s plants could operate for 100 years with proper licensing. Extending the lives of nuclear plants is critical to “maintaining a necessary balance” between low-cost electricity and clean energy generation, Lyash said.
Clay Sell, CEO of advanced nuclear engineering company X-Energy, agreed. Plants that are “in perfect condition to operate” get shut down because the energy market doesn’t see the benefits of “24/7 emissions free generation” that nuclear provides, Sell said.
Four power plants are set to go offline over the next couple of years. The Byron and Dresden plants in Illinois, Palisades in Michigan and Indian Point’s Unit 2 reactor are all scheduled to go dark through 2022.
