Nuclear Monitor #934
Jan van Evert, reporter WISE-Netherlands
Microsoft has signed a contract to purchase electricity from the notorious nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island (TMI) Pennsylvania, better known worldwide as the Harrisburg nuclear power plant. It owns its bad reputation due to the meltdown of Unit 2 back in 1979. Unit 1 was shut down on September 20, 2019 because it was not profitable. Exelon, the previous owner, lost over $300 million over the last half-decade despite it being one of its best-performing power plants. In April 2019, the company stated it would cost $1.2 billion over nearly sixty years to completely decommission Unit 1.
photo by Alessandro Rampietti
Constellation Energy, the company that currently owns TMI Unit 1 (Unit 2 is owned by EnergySolutions), will sell power to Microsoft for $98 per megawatt-hour (MWh), compared to market power prices of around $50/MWh.
But The former chairman for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Neil Chatterjee, warns in a newly posted opinion piece from The Hill that restarting the reactor is far from easy. “The reactor vessel could be brittle and fatigued. The core rods may need to be refurbished, the steam generators might have corroded, the turbines may break after not being rotated for years. And we know the cooling tower was partially removed as a fire hazard,” Chatterjee said. Apart from technical problems, Chatterjee warns for bureaucracy: ” I have seen firsthand how red tape can choke even the best intentioned projects under goodwill regulators. Reactors that were permanently shut down must go through an extensive regulatory review process and request special exemptions for both their operations and use of radioactive fuel”.
TMI is not only a nuclear power plant. It is also a high-level radioactive waste site. There are 700 tons of high-level radioactive garbage stored on-site. If TMI-1 operates for another twenty years, central Pennsylvanians will be asked to accept an additional 600 tons of toxic waste. So far, the federal government has paid two billion dolllars to keep nuclear waste at Pennsylvania’s nuclear power plants. And the bill will rise: TMI is out of waste space so two new nuclear waste storage facilities have to be build.
Despite these problems, Constellation has ensured a restart slated for 2027.
This is the second plan to restart a mothballed nuclear power plant: last year, plans were announced to restart the Palisades nuclear power plant near Chicago. (see Nuclear monitor 930).
Jan van Evert
Sources:
https://www.tmia.com/content/case-against-restarting-three-mile-island%E2%80%99s-unit-1
Wikipedia
