Nuclear Reactors 364 - Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station May Be Closed By the End Of This Year Because It Is Not Competitive
I have blogged before about the economic difficulties faced by some nuclear power stations in the U.S. Several nuclear power reactors have already been permanently closed because they could no longer compete in the energy marketplace. Now another U.S. nuclear power facility may be headed for the chopping block.
The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station is located between Fort Calhoun and Blair Nebraska near the Missouri River. Construction began in 1966 and the Station went into operation in 1973. The Station is owned by the Omaha Public Power District of Omaha, Nebraska and it is operated by Exelon Nuclear Partners. The Station represents about a quarter of the generating capacity of the OPPD. At four hundred and eighty four megawatts, the single reactor at the Station is the smallest nuclear power reactor operating in the United States. It currently serves over three hundred thousand customers in southeastern Nebraska.
New operations regulations, volatile energy prices, falling costs of fossil fuels and new environmental regulations have all impacted the nuclear power market in recent years. Small reactors like Fort Calhoun are especially vulnerable to the recent market changes. Safety problems at the Station also add to its financial problems. It was shut down between April of 2011 and December of 2013 because of flooding by the Missouri River that required extensive repairs and other safety problems that had to addressed. The cost of recommissioning the Station was over one hundred and forty million dollars.
In April of this year, the chairman of the OPPD board requested a report on the potential of different power sources for the future. The president and CEO of OPPD just reported to the utility's board of directors that the Station is not financially viable. He recommended permanently shutting down the Station at the end of this year. Previously, the Station was said to be an important component in the future of the utility because it generated low-carbon electricity which helps combat climate change. The board expects to vote on the recommendations in the report during the meeting on June 16th. The board of directors of OPPD has set a goal of having their rates twenty percent under the rates for electricity in neighboring states.
The president of Grain Belt Energy, a utility company in Lincoln, Nebraska said that the cost of electricity generated by nuclear power was about fifty dollars a megawatt hour. The current market price for electricity is about twenty dollars a megawatt hour. So ratepayers purchasing electricity from a nuclear power plant are losing about thirty dollar for every megawatt hour. It has been estimated that closing the Station could save between seven hundred million and nine hundred million dollars over the next twenty years.
If the Station is closed at the end of this year as recommended, it will result in lost jobs for its seven hundred and fifty workers. In order to mitigate the economic impact of closure on the employees, the OPPD said that it intends to develop a retraining program for Station workers.
Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station:
