Three Mile Island faces shutdown without financial rescue from Pennsylvania
Source: Associated Press
Three Mile Island faces shutdown without financial rescue from Pennsylvania
Associated Press in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Tuesday 30 May 2017 16.58 BST
The owner of Three Mile Island, site of the worst commercial nuclear power accident in US history, will shut down the plant in 2019 unless it receives a financial rescue from the Pennsylvania state government.
In March 1979, equipment failure and operator errors led to a partial core meltdown of one of Three Mile Island’s two reactors. The damaged reactor has been mothballed since then but the other reactor is still in use.
The owner of Three Mile Island, Exelon, said operating costs for just one unit at the plant were high, further damaging Three Mile Island’s financial viability in a time of competition from natural gas and renewable energies.
The Chicago-based company’s announcement comes after what it called more than five years of losses and a recent failure in a capacity auction to sell Three Mile Island power into the regional grid. Exelon wants Pennsylvania to give nuclear power the kind of preferential treatment given to energy sources such as wind and solar.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/30/three-mile-island-nuclear-plant-shutdown-pennsylvania
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