Exelon Corp. says it will shut two IL nuclear plants because of legislative inaction on state financial support, but that the company is still lobbying for the plan.
Advertisement
The Clinton Power Station in Clinton, Ill., will close on June 1, 2017, and the Quad Cities Generating Station in Cordova, Ill., will close on June 1, 2018. Exelon says its lost $800-million dollars over the past seven years.
Teamwork and resilience is what people in Clinton say will get them through the closure of their power plant.
Exelon was hoping the Illinois Legislature would adopt legislation, known as the Next Generation Energy Plan, that would compensate nuclear reactors for the reliability, environmental and economic benefits they provide like round-the-clock power with no carbon emissions, and jobs and taxes for the local communities.
“While the IL legislative session has not ended, the path forward for consideration of the Next Generation Energy Plan legislation is not clear”, Exelon said. Pending legislation would have advanced the state’s clean air goals while making it possible for Clinton and Quad Cities to continue operating.
The retirement of the Clinton and Quad Cities plants before their useful life is over will take almost 3,000 megawatts of generating capacity offline, potentially making it harder for IL to meet its greenhouse gas reduction requirements under the federal Clean Power Plan.
It is young employees like Krones who Ed Pannell, the plant’s training director, is most concerned about. Together, the Quad Cities site, which began operation in 1973, and Clinton, which reached full power in fall 1987, employ 1,500.
“Unfortunately, legislation was not passed, and now we are forced to retire the plants”, chief executive Chris Crane said in a statement. 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.
Ceasing the investment projects will impact more than 200 workers, and more than 1,000 outage workers will be affected, according to the company.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has publicly opposed SB1585. That said, sometimes those are necessary, more plus than minus for their communities and the state as a whole, as arguably it was for Keystone itself back in 2001 when the state came to the rescue with a $10 million loan.
Clinton school officials plan to educate district residents on the effect of the proposed closure of the Exelon nuclear plant.
Philosophically speaking, we’ve never been terribly keen on government bailouts of single companies at the expense of their customers. “And for many customers, it would lead to a very steep rate increase”.
Advertisement
“We’re 95 percent there, so I’m asking them to just hold off for a little bit longer, see if we can get there, said Sen”. “We wish the outcome would have been different”. “Our greenhouse gases didn’t become a problem until they started ratcheting down the nuclear energy”.
