A Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission marker at the Exelon Corporation Three Mile Island nuclear generating station seen from the training center. February 28, 2017. Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.comThis is admittedly a “what if” story, but sometimes the answer to that little question could be compelling enough to command our attention.something that’s drawn a lot of notice in the American energy sector because no closed nuclear plant has ever been brought back online in the U.S.
It falls far short of a yes. But it also sounds like a little bit of an open door on an issue that many midstaters assumed was dead from the moment then-owner ExelonIf Constellation Energy does think about restarting a shuttered nuclear power station, one doesn’t have to be a nuclear scientist to understand that means TMI’s Unit 1. It is, company spokesman Mark Rodgers confirmed Wednesday, the only closed reactor that Constellation owns.
In 2009, the TMI Unit 1 operating license was renewed by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, extending its operating lifetime by 20 years to 2034. Immediately following that, its steam generators were replacedBut by the end of the last decade, TMI’s economic fortunes had changed. Its operators, then Exelon, shut it down, saying its operational costs could no longer compete with the cheap natural gas flooding today’s energy market.
Independent market reports for PJM Interconnection, the energy grid manager for Pennsylvania and 12 other northeastern states, showed it was the only one of the five nuclear plants in the state that was not profitable at that time, with projected losses of $57 million for 2019 alone.The Palisades project, in Michigan, has been helped by a lot of public support, and no doubt by the fact that the Biden Administration’s Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, was a former governor there.
PennLive reached out to several members of Pennsylvania’s Congressional delegation Wednesday but got no confirmation of any talks about reviving TMI. Gov. Josh Shapiro has not proposed any funding for a TMI restart in his 2024-25 budget proposal.