CHICAGO (AP) Exelon Corp. said Thursday that it will shut two IL nuclear power plants after the state Legislature declined to act on the company’s request for financial support. About 1,500 people work at the plants. The Quad Cities plant will close a year after that on June 1, 2018. These two Exelon nuclear power plants have been costing Exelon a total of $800 million in losses for the past seven years and competition from other energy generators has been hurting them. And it would change the way ComEd customers pay their power bills.
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Immediately, more than 200 jobs will be impacted.
But U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, said today he thinks there’s still time to save the plant. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, will hold a news conference at 1 p.m., with local and county officials in Clinton, to discuss the situation.
“We have to figure out how to stay within our means”.
“Our enrollment probably will go down”, said Nettles, “but we may also see an increase in low-income students because of it”.
The closures will impact roughly 1,500 workers; 700 employed at the Clinton plant and 800 at the Quad Cities plant.
The announcement comes a day after IL lawmakers ended their session without taking action on the energy bill proposed by Exelon.
In preparation for the closures, Exelon will: Make permanent shutdown notifications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission within 30 days, terminate capital investment projects required for long-term operation of Clinton and Cordova (which will impact more than 200 workers), will take one-time charges of $150 million to $200 million for 2016 and accelerate about $2 billion in depreciation and amortization through shutdown dates, and will cancel fuel purchases and outage planning (which impacts more than 1,000 outage workers).
Exelon left open the slim possibility Thursday that the decision could be reversed if talks move in a positive direction.
“While these needed policy reforms may come too late to save some plants, Exelon is committed to working with policymakers and other stakeholders to advance an all-of-the-above plan that would promote zero-carbon energy, create and preserve clean-energy jobs, establish a more equitable utility rate structure and give customers more control over their bills”, it said.
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It would also call for more than 20 percent of Illinois’ power to be generated by renewable sources like wind and solar by the year 2025. “Without passage of comprehensive energy legislation that recognizes nuclear energy for its economic, reliability and environmental benefits to IL, we will be forced to close Quad Cities and Clinton”.
