Exelon Corporation’s self-imposed deadline for closure of the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island (TMI) has legislators racing to find a way to keep the nuclear plant open for more years.
Producing electricity from nuclear fission is not cost-efficient. TMI is scheduled to close at the end of 2019 because it failed to sell its output in the annual PJM capacity auction last year. This was the fourth year that TMI failed to sell its capacity through this PJM auction, the regional electricity grid, according to the Harrisburg Patriot-News.
TMI has been a money losing operation for six years, as a result of persistently low wholesale energy prices and market rules, according to Exelon, the plant’s owner. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Exelon stated the primary factors contributing to Unit 1's "deteriorating economic value" include significant declines in plant revenues due to prolonged periods of low wholesale power prices, the absence of federal or state policies that place a value on nuclear energy for its clean-energy attributes, and the plant's relatively high operating costs as a single-unit site. TMI employs 675 workers, according to the Patriot-News.
Exelon, which also owns other nuclear facilities in Pennsylvania, is seeking to guarantee a market for all its nuclear plants by requiring Pennsylvania’s electric distribution companies, such as Met Ed and PPL, to buy a certain share of their electricity from nuclear plants. This is at the heart of PA House Bill 11, recently introduced by Rep. Mehaffie (Dauphin County). Implicitly all electric distribution companies in Pennsylvania would have to raise electricity prices for ratepayers.
The nuclear industry has needed huge government subsidies over six decades to stay afloat. Among other subsidies, TMI’s prior owners received a “stranded cost payment” when Pennsylvania was undergoing electricity market deregulation. A bill to subsidize TMI would reverse some aspects of the deregulated electric market.
Industry spokesmen have pitched a need to protect the nuclear industry from the free market because the electricity produced is “carbon-free.” Only the steam-generating fission process itself is carbon free. Every step in the lifecycle of uranium fuel is heavily reliant on fossil fuel to mine, process, deliver, and dispose of radioactive materials. The desire to keep TMI operating ignores the subsidies, costs, risks and inefficiencies of the nuclear process. Among the major costs that cannot be avoided this year is the construction of a nuclear fuel containment facility to store spent fuel rods at the plant.
Sierra Club has been working to educate legislators about the need for a sustainable, comprehensive strategy that moves renewable energy forward to address the climate crisis. Sierra Club is opposing this latest nuclear bailout proposal that perpetuates a costly, inefficie