Ken Silverstein reports that the passing of the 2014 holiday season also witnessed the passing of another landmark, which is the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station that had been in business since 1972. The questions now are from where will New England get its electricity and how will power markets there be affected?
The 604-megawatt nuclear generation plant had been operating at more than 90 percent capacity for the last three years, providing consumers with about 35 percent of the electricity that they had been using. But the plant succumbed to market forces, namely from low-cost natural gas as well as restructured markets that favor subsidized sustainable fuels and which receive state sanctioned, long-term contracts. Existing merchant generators that sell their power at market prices are unable to compete with cheaper and subsidized fuels.
Our projected revenues were significantly lower than the projected costs, says Bill Mohl, president of the Entergy merchant nuclear operations, in an interview. We could no longer make significant investments. Entergy will still have 4,400 megawatts of nuclear generating capacity that it is committed to keeping, he adds, noting that Vermont Yankee was licensed to run until 2032.
Currently, 100 nuclear plants are operational in the United States, although five plants have been or are getting nixed. Besides the Entergy plant, there are also those by Duke Energy and Southern California Edison that closed facilities in Florida and in California, respectively, for technical reasons. Also, Dominion Resources has shut down a Wisconsin unit while Exelon Corp. will close one in New Jersey, neither of which has been able to compete with cheap natural gas.
About half of the nuclear power facilities running today go head-to-head with plants using other fuels. Exelon has been the most vocal critic of fuels that receive government-backed supports, such as wind energy.
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