![]() Were they to find that to be the case, nuclear operators would likely expect some move by Washington to improve their revenues.īut many states are not waiting around. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is in the midst of a more than year-long study to determine whether the closure of nuclear plants, along with coal, is likely to lead to wide-scale power outages, as Perry and others in the Trump administration argue. “I don’t know how anybody who cares about the environment can’t be for nuclear.”Īccording to S&P, over the next six years more than 10 percent of the nuclear power plants operating in this country have either announced they are closing or are at “high risk” of doing so - with another 15 percent at “moderate risk” of closure by 2033. “We’re looking for the answers to a question that vexes us right now,” Energy Secretary Rick Perry said at the CERAWeek conference in Houston last week. ![]() But the industry’s relatively high costs and potential for meltdown, long a point of tension with environmentalists, have not made them an easy sell. The situation in Texas mirrors one states across the country are grappling with, as nuclear power plants face increased pressure to reduce costs to compete with a surge of cheap natural gas and increasingly efficient wind turbines and solar plants.Īt a time countries the world over are grappling with trying to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear power plants’ ability to produce large quantities of carbon-free power should be a clear winner. “Given Comanche Peak is one of the youngest plants in the country, significant decisions on license renewal are a few years away, but the plant is currently well-positioned, and we have no plans to close the it prematurely,” a Vistra spokesman said in an email. ![]() “The prices are fairly weak, even in a fairly hot July last summer.”īoth NRG and Vistra Energy, which operates Comanche Peak, maintain the plants are economic and have no plans to close them. Do you sit around and wait for those high prices, which could happen this summer because there’s been some (coal plant) retirements,” he said. When Manan Ahuja, senior director of North American power at the research firm S&P Global Platts, recently updated his firm’s list of nuclear plants at risk of closing, he listed both Texas plants at “moderate” risk of closing as early as 2030 - despite the fact that NRG Energy recently renewed its operating license for the South Texas Project for another 20 years.Īhuja explained that while the plants were “of a much more recent vintage,” low power prices in Texas and state regulators’ policy of not paying plants for their ability to ease power shortages at times of high demand or for generating carbon-free energy - like other states have done - left the two facilities vulnerable. ![]()
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