Another U.S. nuclear plant is at risk of being closed prematurely and replaced by fossil fuels.
Last week, the owner of the Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa, NextEra, announced it had secretly negotiated a deal with a state electric utility to close the plant early.
If all of the announced nuclear closures go forward, the total number of operating nuclear reactors in the United States will decline precipitously — from 99 to 89 — by 2025.
The amount of clean electricity lost from those 10 reactors would be 23 percent more than all of the solar electricity generated in the U.S. in 2017.
NextEra claims its deal to close Duane Arnold will save each customer in Iowa $42 annually in energy costs starting in 2021, but has requested that the Iowa Utilities Board keep its calculations about future energy savings confidential.
In truth, the deal could raise electricity prices in the state and result in adding the equivalent of between 700,000 and 1,000,000 cars to the road, depending on if the plant is replaced by a mix of gas and coal, or entirely by coal, respectively.
A group of climate scientists and environmental scholars, including James Hansen and myself, sent an open letter this morning to President Donald Trump, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, Iowa legislative leaders, and the Iowa Utilities Board, urging them to take action to kill the secret deal to close Duane Arnold.
In contrast to fossil fuel plants, once a nuclear plant is closed, it is closed forever, due to discriminatory federal policies. What’s also lost is the chance to expand America’s clean energy. History shows that adding a new reactor to an existing nuclear plant is often the lowest cost way of replacing fossil fuels.
Anti-nuclear groups claim the plant will be replaced by wind energy, but even if the total quantity of wind energy added were equal to the total output of Duane Arnold, the people of Iowa will still heavily depend on coal and natural gas.
For example, during July and August, when high temperatures push up demand for air conditioning, Iowa’s wind output falls to about one-third of the output in January and February.
What’s certain is that closing the plant prematurely will result in higher emissions than would be the case had the plant stayed open. Any new wind energy could have — and should have been — additional rather than a replacement for lost nuclear.
The 10 nuclear reactors scheduled to close have an average age of 40 years, and well-maintained nuclear plants can operate for at least 80 years and perhaps 100 or more, which means that Duane Arnold could potentially be operated until 2054.
Journalists, climate advocates, and policymakers who themselves hope to live to 80 or 100 demonstrate their anti-nuclear bias by mischaracterizing 40-something nuclear plants like Duane Arnold as “old” or “aging.”
For example, the owner of the Peach Bottom nuclear plant in Pennsylvania has applied to extend its license so the plant will operate until 2054. Coincidentally, the two units still operating today came online just months before Duane Arnold.
The deal would be a bad one for people and businesses in Iowa. They will lose a vital power plant for keeping electricity rates steady and low as it hedges against natural gas and coal prices.
While nobody knows what natural gas prices will be in 2020, much less 2034 or 2054, what is certain is that they will not be any cheaper than they are today. The fracking boom has reduced natural gas prices to uneconomically low levels, bankrupting many companies involved in natural gas production.
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And those ten reactors produce electricity 24×7 rather than when the sun is up and is not blocked by clouds. Plus the amount of sunshine during winter months is much shorter than summer so even less is generated during that time.