Three Mile Island Unit 1 closes for good, unable to run profitably

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CBS News

Three Mile Island Unit 1, the nuclear power station whose name has become synonymous with the nation's worst nuclear accident, was closed for good on Friday. The 45-year-old nuclear reactor, located in Middletown, Pennsylvania, was losing money and the state legislature in nearby Harrisburg could not pass a $500 million bailout to keep the plant open.

The plant's owner, Exelon Generation, bought it in 1999. The neighboring Three Mile Island Unit 2, owned by FirstEnergy, has been dormant since the 1979 accident that caused a partial nuclear meltdown — the worst commercial nuclear accident the U.S. has experienced. Exelon also owns plants in Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Maryland. The first three of those states have all passed nuclear subsidy bills in recent years. But the Pennsylvania efforts failed amid opposition from consumer groups, some environmental activists and the state's natural gas industry.

Pennsylvania has the second-largest nuclear fleet in the country, after Illinois. Nearly 40% of the state's electricity comes from nuclear power — more than is generated there by wind, solar and hydroelectric resources combined, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. But despite its carbon-free credentials, the nuclear energy industry has been in trouble because it's a relatively expensive form of power compared with competing natural gas. Pennsylvania's Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station, which is owned by FirstEnergy and sits on the Ohio border, is scheduled to start shutting down next year.

Just under 700 people work at Three Mile Island's Unit 1, making it the biggest employer in its county. Exelon has said that it would reassign all affected workers to other positions in the company.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/three-mile-island-unit-1-closes-for-good/

---

Was listening to the local CBS news affiliate and heard that the switch was flipped (euphemistically) earlier today and the deed is done. Previous stories I have read include the fact that it will take decades to decommission this site (like a tiny Chernobyl and tiny Fukushima daiichi, the site is still "hot" - i.e., there is still contaminated but "contained" material in the Unit 2 reactor area).

For the (few) youngins' on DU - this famous movie released a couple weeks before the 3 Mile Island accident happened and the tinfoil hats have not gone away -

[ffr]

1. Obama, Hillary, you, me, we were all right. Green Energy is the future.

Green is taking hold all over the world. The Fox bubble is told something else, but even Daimler announced yesterday, they're abandoning internal combustion engine R&D to focus on none other than electric vehicles.

Daimler abandons internal combustion engine development to focus on EVs
https://www.teslarati.com/daimler-abandons-internal-combustion-engine-over-evs/

[NNadir]

9. Nonsense. If so called "Green energy" is so great, why did we hit 415 ppm of CO2 this year?

The cloture of nuclear plants is about fear and ignorance, with emphasis on ignorance.

So called "renewable energy" has soaked up trillions of dollars for no effect on climate. It is nothing more than lipstick on the dangerous natural gas pig, over two trillion dollars in the last ten years alone.

There is a reason that among OECD nations the highest costs belong to Denmark and Germany.

Closing nuclear plants is a crime against all future generations, because the reality is that natural gas electricity puts out between 500-550 grams of CO2/kWh, whereas nuclear plants are responsible for putting out 25 grams of CO2/kWh.

The reason that the gas companies can get away with murder and that's what it is, is because they are allowed to dump their waste directly into the atmosphere where it will be killing the planet basically forever.

Their bullshit marketing of wind and solar power to excuse their criminality relies on purely Trumpian lies. In 20-30 years every single solar cell on this planet will be intractable electronic waste, and every wind turbine will be rotting grease, steel, and aluminum, all generated by the use of dangerous fossil fuels.

The problem we face is that we routinely believe these lies, and are perfectly comfortable dumping our irresponsibility and indifference and wishful thinking on future generations, because we hate scientists and engineers on the left almost as much as the assholes on the right.

Nuclear energy saves human lives, and is responsible for having slowed the advance of climate change by about 31 billion tons of CO2.

Oh, and electric cars? They also are a thermodynamic, environmental and ethical nightmare. The fantasy that they are good for the environment is bourgeois horseshit. The car CULTure is not now, never has been, and never will be environmentally sustainable, no matter what fixes are applied.

As for so called "renewable energy," it did not work, is not working and won't work.

Have a great weekend.

[Jedi Guy]

13. Nuclear energy is something like air travel, in a sense.

In general, it's quite safe. It's just that when something does go wrong, it's the sort of thing that makes news all over the world. The Three Mile Island incident is a pretty good example. For meeting the world's increasingly enormous energy demands, nuclear power is probably where we're going to wind up whether we like it or not, barring some monumental advance in a green energy application.

Insofar as cars are concerned, probably the best bet for a "clean" car is one powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. The problem there is that the most economically feasible method for creating hydrogen (as far as I know, anyway) is via natural gas and coal, so... we're right back where we started, in a way. Still, I suppose it's better to use natural gas and/or coal to fuel a vehicle whose only emission is water vapor, as opposed to a gas internal combustion engine's emissions.

I suppose we could always hope for a breakthrough in fusion power, though.

[progree]

17. ...

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/climate-crisis-town-hall-august-2019/index.html

"that [he or she] would oppose nuclear energy as a way to combat climate change should [he or she] be elected president in 2020.

“We’re not going to build any nuclear power plants and we’re going to start weaning ourselves off nuclear energy and replacing it with renewable fuels,” [candidate] said, adding that [he or she] hopes to phase out nuclear power by 2035.

[NNadir]

19. In 2008, Senator Obama ran for President on a platform including coal to oil.

This is quite possibly the worst way to address climate change and the best way to accelerate it. The practice has been industrially practiced in various places at various times since the 1940's.

However Senator Obama represented Illinois, which at the time had a substantial coal industry, and he was fine with mouthing support for Jimmy Carter's policy of coal to oil.

To be nominated in this party - and this is our form of creationism - one has to mouth anti-nuke rhetoric.

President Obama made no noise about coal to oil when elected. (I opposed him in the primaries, by the way, because of that rhetoric.) Instead he hired Nobel Laureate Steven Chu to run the energy department, who promptly went to work trying to get nuclear power plant construction restarted in this country, albeit with limited success.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu says Obama administration remains committed to nuclear power

Climate change is a catastrophe. Nuclear power is the only demonstrated form of readily expandable energy that has a record of producing more than 25 exajoules of energy each year for decades without dramatically affecting the climate.

I support a candidate who has a demonstrated record of changing her mind in the face of facts. (She used to be a Republican after all, until she studied, as an academic, bankruptcies.)

It is a fact that nuclear power, and only nuclear power is capable of being scaled enough to address climate change.

In about 25 years, the world built close to 450 nuclear power plants using technology developed in the 1950's and 1960's. The damage done to the environment, ecosystems and human health was minuscule when compared with what we blithely accept daily from dangerous fossil fuels.

What we need is a President who can change her mind, say one thing and do another because "another" is the right choice.

The greatest President of the 20th century, Franklin Roosevelt, ran on a platform in 1940 of keeping America out of World War II.

It's clear that in his heart of hearts he knew that was never going to be possible.

[progree]

20. I find your only argument for this candidate -- that she was once a Republican but changed her

mind, to be a really weak basis for selecting a candidate. There are also plenty of issues about her honesty and for her calling on a fellow Democratic senator to resign without even getting a hearing.

Interestingly you called another candidate in the Democratic primaries an "airhead" for being anti-nuclear.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1287&pid=217004

Why not pick one that is at least somewhat pro-nuclear -- there is one that is at the top of the polls (though I fear this one has much less upstairs these days than your candidate).

EDITED TO ADD --
Not all Democratic candidates mouth anti-nuclear rhetoric (though it is kind of weak tea in a lot of cases)

https://www.politico.com/2020-election/candidates-views-on-the-issues/energy-environment/nuclear-power/

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/06/joe-biden-has-5-trillion-climate-plan-which-includes-nuclear-energy-support.html

[NNadir]

21. I am completely satisfied with my choice of a candidate.

She is clearly not an airhead.

Senator Sanders has an explicit and long standing dogmatic opposition to nuclear energy. He has not had a new idea in 50 years, and still acts like a 20 year old campus radical from the 1960's and 1970's. He is so poorly educated, so wrapped up in dogma and slogans he is incapable of doing the right and necessary thing for energy.

I have been there and done that, and plainly confess that I was stupid enough to oppose nuclear energy until Chernobyl exploded, experimentally demonstrating the worst case, the worst case being better than the best case for dangerous fossil fuels, which kill continuously on a grand scale that dwarfs anything that happened at Chernobyl.

The thing I am most proud of other than my marriage and my sons is that I have changed my mind many times about many things, but I claim that I have done so based on evidence.

Sanders is a tired old uninspiring old man of a type I know all too well, smugly stuck in a particular rote mindset closed to all new inputs. Is it really true that everything in the world can be addressed by sneering whenever someone pronounces the word "corporate?"

In general, I regard people who are still living in the 1960's as airheads. The red bandanna may have been cool at Woodstock, but frankly, the people at Woodstock, after shedding the bandannas and putting out their joints, mostly grew up to be rather easily distracted consumer types with a rather muddled focus. My generation is a disgrace, mostly.

I personally love Joe Biden, by the way, and were he the nominee, would vote for him enthusiastically. There are no candidates in the top tier - which I consider to include Pete Buttigieg - for whom I would not enthusiastically vote except for Senator Sanders. But I'm sorry, Joe Biden lacks a certain, well, spark. I think that much of the criticism of him is of the "but, but, but, her emails" variety, but, that said, being Obama's shadow is not enough. I just don't see the dynamic thinking I think we very much need.

As for Senator Sanders who I apparently called an airhead - thanks for reading - if Sanders were the nominee - he won't be - I would still vote for him, since even though he would be a disaster, as a disaster he would be mild compared to the disaster that is Trump, since Trump is clearly even more weak minded than Sanders and since Trump would only do the right thing for the wrong reasons whereas Sanders would do the wrong thing for the right reasons.

A President Sanders would fail abysmally to address climate change - he would make it worse, not better - but that will not be much of a change from Trump, would it? If I had to choose between someone who doesn't give a rat's ass about climate change who is not a corrupt neo-Nazi, and someone who doesn't give a rat's ass about climate change and is a corrupt Neo-Nazi, I'll have to take what I can get, won't I?

As for serious candidates, Senators Warren & Harris, former VP Biden, and Mayor Buttigieg, my knowledge of history, including the aforementioned history of the greatest President of my lifetime, Barack Obama (who I opposed in the 2008 Democratic Primaries), suggests that primary positions do not define who a President will be, as I stated in my tale about Obama going from coal to oil rhetoric to pro-nuclear rhetoric.

Ms. Warren comes from the real lower classes, as do I, and has risen through them with the force of clear intellectual power; something that also characterized, albeit to something of a lesser extent in terms of how poor he was, with Barack Obama.

I expect her to think on her feet. If she does so, I expect her to come to the right conclusion, much as Obama did in the years working with Secretary Chu. If she is to address climate change and she doesn't do this, she will fail her planet and her country. But I'm really not worried.

She is an old woman, but one with a young mind. I have seen young minds in old people. I once spent an afternoon with Freeman Dyson.

The reality is that nuclear energy is absolutely essential to the survival of the human race. I have been at this game of actively endorsing nuclear energy since Chernobyl, and I sense a real change in attitude because it is a fact that nothing else is working to address climate change. I see the recognition widely expressed in the scientific literature.

I do not fear that a President Warren will ignore that reality because she's good at finding things out and changing her mind. The story of her looking for deadbeats in her academic hypothesis surrounding a study of bankruptcy and discovering that bankruptcy generally followed human tragedy, caused me to become her supporter.

That is all I think Americans should expect in a great President - and every great President, most notably Abraham Lincoln did precisely that - to be able to look at a situation in real time and change course as necessary. Recall that Lincoln ran on a platform of accepting slavery where it existed, something we all (except maybe Trump supporters) would find absolutely reprehensible today.

After the political disaster that has befallen our country, the total destruction of our national credibility, we will need a great President, not an ordinary one. The one who seems most to offer the best hope for being the type in my mind is Senator Warren. I don't consider that weak thinking on my part. It is simply the case that I value personality and intellect over issues. That is how I think.

I would love to have the opportunity to be proved wrong, since such an opportunity would mean that the criminal corrupt racist would be gone. But I expect to be proved right.

I will confess, though, that I surprised myself when I decided on Warren. I do not agree with her on a number of issues as stated, but that's perfectly OK with me.

Thanks for your comment.

[progree]

22. OK

Senator Sanders has an explicit and long standing dogmatic opposition to nuclear energy.

And here is Elizabeth Warren, who after all these decades, is opposed to nuclear, want to shut them all down by 2035, and only a few years younger than Bernie, but somehow she's not as explicit or dogmatic and is more flexible minded or something. OK. Was just wondering.

Thanks for the interesting conversation (meant sincerely and appreciatively).

[jpak]

2. But taxpayers will be spending **millions** of dollars each year to babysit its spent fuel

that it used to make handsome profits for the owners, back in the day

Such a scam....

[Miguelito Loveless]

3. Yes, for the next 250,000+ years

this stuff has to be kept safe. So, even using rent-a-cops at minimum wage, nuclear power is not economical.

[Submariner]

4. I worked at a nuclear power plant construction site

north of Baton Rouge in 1980, and the construction from ground breaking to turn-key was originally estimated to cost $350 Million dollars.

Because of the post-Three Mile Island accident, design changes being made and incorporated during construction, increased the price to $4.2 Billion at turn key. The cost increased 12 times the original estimate.

Most of the change orders I saw were dealing with seismic design of pipe hangers, electrical cable conduit runs, and reactor containment vessel concrete and rebar integrity.

It was an expensive mess that was described earlier as too cheap to meter.....until 3 mile...

[BumRushDaShow]

6. I was a senior in high school when 3 Mile Island happened

and being here in Philly (which is a bit over 100 miles east of there), there was of course full blown, wall-to-wall local news coverage of it (supplementing the national coverage). And naturally there was some panic about "radioactive steam" drifting with the prevailing winds, all the way here. Plus you had the fact that the plant is located on an island in the middle of a huge river (the Susquehanna, where the water was used for cooling the reactors) and the area was generally rural with quite a bit of active-production farmland, including dairy (although the location is also near the state capital), so there was concern about radioactivity getting into the food supply in central PA.

And the irony was this - my senior year physics class ended up on a field trip to the-then under construction Limerick Nuclear plant (which is about 20 miles from where I live), a couple months after the 3 Mile Island mess. Limerick eventually went into limited operation about 5 years later and was fully operational (both units) a decade after my visit and the 3 Mile Island incident.

Back then, we were told that once the reactors came online and started generating electricity, the average electric bills would drop "TO" (not "by" ) - hold onto your seat - $3/month.

I think a lot of this push was due to the Arab oil crisis/embargo just a few years before and thus the race for some "alternative", where use of solar was in its infancy and was not scalable enough to substitute for all the coal-fired (and in PA, "you better use our PA coal" ) or oil-fired electric plants around at the time.

[truthisfreedom]

5. No love lost here.

[NickB79]

7. Oh goody, more natural gas from fracking baked in for decades

Everyone does realize natural gas pipelines and Wells leak methane like crazy, yes? And methane is 34X as powerful as CO2?

On the day millions protested against climate change, millions of tons of additional carbon emissions are locked in.

[Codeine]

8. Anti-nuclear activism is the worst thing about modern liberalism.

[NNadir]

10. Thank you for a simple statement of truth. n/t.

[MicaelS]

11. Agree 100%. n/t

[progree]

16. "adding that she hopes to phase out nuclear power by 2035"

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/climate-crisis-town-hall-august-2019/index.html

I don't know if that qualifies as "anti-nuclear activism" or not, but I'm not 100% sure that it doesn't. "By 2035" is just 15-16 years away depending if we're talking about the end of 2034 or the end of 2035.

[MicaelS]

18. Well, she is not perfect.

Not a problem for me.

[Buckeyeblue]

12. Agreed. People don't understand the science so they are against it.

[Jedi Guy]

14. You said it. Agree 100%. N/T

[bucolic_frolic]

15. Just like the meltdown, there is always "no immediate risk to public health"

TMI event was a textbook case study of corporate public relations. The press would ask questions, the company, and the governor, would appear to answer them, but on close examination they were deflecting, qualifying answers with ambiguities, answering a different question.

There is no free lunch. Permanent radiation, contained or low level, is the cost. It's ok if you're not the workers and definitely NIMBY.

[apnu]

23. Why are states subsidizing private energy companies?

"Exelon also owns plants in Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Maryland. The first three of those states have all passed nuclear subsidy bills in recent years. But the Pennsylvania efforts failed amid opposition from consumer groups, some environmental activists and the state's natural gas industry."

We should question why citizens have to prop up a dying industry. Nuclear, like coal, is getting beat by competitors and a changing political landscape. And the solution is to give them more money?