Nuclear Energy Institute President and Chief Executive Officer Marvin Fertel called for federal action "sooner rather than later," to help incentivize continued operation of nuclear power plants that are under economic pressures, most notably from low natural gas prices.
Fertel made his remarks last week in a meeting attended by Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz. At the meeting, Fertel said that the U.S. nuclear power industry could lose as many as 20 power plants within the next decade due to economic pressures.
Fertel said 15 to 20 nuclear power plants were “at risk” of closure. Pressure on the industry includes low natural gas prices, low demand growth and subsidized renewable energy projects.
Fertel did not name the most at risk nuclear facilities, but some are already known. The FitzPatrick and Pilgrim power stations in New York and Massachusetts are already scheduled to close in 2017 and 2019, respectively, due to economic pressure, the plants owner/operator Entergy has said. Recently, the Omaha Public Power District said that its executive team had recommended to its board of directors to close the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant. Exelon has threatened to close plants Quad Cities and Clinton plants in Illinois unless a state-backed policy shift changes the economic environment. Their announcement of closures is expected within a month or two.
In addition, the Vermont Yankee, run by Entergy, and the Kewaunee plant in Wisconsin, run by Dominion, have already been shut down for economic reasons.
In April, Moody's Investor Services said low natural gas prices have “devastated” the wholesale energy market. Low prices were an even more immediate threat to coal-fired power plants than nuclear plants, according to their report.
Fertel made his comments at an energy summit in Washington, D.C. At the meeting, Energy Secretary Moniz said that a policy analysis currently underway was looking into ways of “incentivizing” the industry. He said the reasons for incentivizing continued operations at large plants was “very clear, but the solutions are less clear.”
Fertel responded that a report “doesn't do anything unless the RTOs (regional transmission organizations) and FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) do something about it. So, you need to get it (the report) to them, they need to do something about it, and they need to do it sooner rather than later,” Platts quoted Fertel as saying.