Exelon-owned nuclear power plants Byron and Dresden are shutting down in Fall 2021, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs, $63 million dollars in taxes and approximately a fifth of Illinois’ electricity.
Originally, neither Dresden nor Byron planned to retire for some time. Dresden Generating Station, located in Morris, Ill., will close Nov. 2021, regardless of the fact that they still have 10 years to operate on their license. The Byron station in Byron, Ill., will close in Sept. 2021. However, their license to operate does not end for another 20 years.
In a press release, Christoper Crane, president and CEO of Exelon, cites the closure as the result of “poorly conceived energy policies” and “market rules that favor polluting power plants over carbon-free nuclear energy.”
How does a nuclear plant work?
“Nuclear power plants are the world’s most expensive tea kettles,” Dr. Paul Bloom, associate professor of physics at NCC joked. “You’re using nuclear fission to generate heat and boil water. And once you boil that water and turn it into high-pressure steam, you use that to spin a turbine which is connected to a generator which creates electricity.”
The reactor core contains fissionable material. Fission is a process that occurs when an atom splits into two parts, releasing energy. To get that reactor core, someone must mine the uranium. The type of uranium used for nuclear energy in the U.S. is uranium-235. However, most mined uranium, about 99% of it, contains the isotope uranium-238, which does not fission. And so, the uranium-235 is enriched and concentrated until approximately 5% of the fuel contains uranium-235.
Although this seems like an extremely small amount of usable fuel, the fuel pellets themselves are only about the size of a dime. According to the American Nuclear Society, one uranium fuel pellet has as much energy potential as 126 gallons of oil, 1 ton of coal or 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas. An average nuclear reactor uses 18 million fuel pellets per unit. A simple math calculation, with the assumption of 1500 tons of coal per standard barge, equates the energy to 24,000 barges of coal worth of energy present in a dual unit reactor.
Over time, uranium-235 within the fuel rods, the structures that contain the fuel, fission and the amount of uranium-235 start to drop. “After it drops to a certain percent, it is no longer suitable for power production. And so they refuel the reactor,” Bloom said.
But shutting down the reactor and decommissioning is another beast altogether. It requires the removal of all the nuclear fuel contained within the reactor. In addition, nuclear plants store most spent nuclear fuel from the past 50 or so years on-stie, which also requires removal.
“There’s no off switch to a nuclear reactor. You can slow the reaction down, but you can’t just turn it off,” Bloom said. “Spent nuclear fuel is a problem in this country because we don’t really have any place to put it.”
Currently, Yucca Mountain is the planned national repository, but many are uneasy at the thought of transporting nuclear fuel through their states. “At some level, I don’t blame them. People tend to overvalue the risk associated with spent nuclear fuel, but it is bad stuff,” said Bloom.
In addition to the spent fuel, the reactor itself, especially the core, is radioactive. Everything from the cooling system to the containment system is radioactive. Everything that has absorbed neutrons is radioactive, and it needs somewhere to go. “You get more radiation living near a coal processing plant than you do living next to a nuclear power plant,” said Bloom.
Economic
Dresden Generating Station produces 1,845 megawatts of energy and has served approximately 1.8 million homes. Byron produces 2,347 megawatts and has served more than 2.3 million homes. “That is a lot of power,” Bloom said.
It’s one of the useful things about nuclear power. Within a relatively small area, nuclear plants are capable of producing massive amounts of energy with no carbon emissions. But by taking these plants offline, there will be a massive power shortage. In fact, the two plants are responsible for supplying 30% of Illinois’ carbon-free power.
The current power grid is “badly designed,” Bloom said, citing the 1920s design. “The way the power grid works is, if you need to turn on your light, right now, then somebody, somewhere, not so far away, has to be producing the electrical energy for your light, right now.”
Without the ability to store large amounts of energy, and an efficiency cost to move electricity long-distance, few options remain. “That’s why these plants are on the edge of Chicagoland,” Bloom said. They are supplying the area with much of the needed electricity.
Alternative options
Coal and natural gas are the only energy sources currently capable of sustaining the massive energy need. Unfortunately, both have drawbacks.
Coal causes large amounts of pollution, not just carbon emissions, but leftover coal ash, which is a waste product including sulfur and metal. Natural gas is very cheap because of fracking and, besides carbon dioxide, produces little waste.
“The problem is that our natural gas distribution system is leaky, and natural gas is also known as methane, and methane is a greenhouse gas,” said Bloom. “If we start using more methane, it means we’re going to leak more methane into the atmosphere, and that accelerates climate change.”
Renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, are much better for the environment. However, without the ability to store power, they too are not quality candidates. “Solar power is awesome, until the sun goes down,” Bloom said.
Nuclear power produces the baseload, the minimum level of energy always produced. “Wind and solar can fill in the gaps between baseload and peak load, but they can’t provide that bottom line. You take away these nuclear plants, and it’s going to force more fossil fuel generation,” said Bloom. “Yes, there will be more solar and there will be more wind, but they can’t provide everything.”
A 2019 Brattle report agrees. When the plants shut down, gas and coal will meet the increased demand. Much of this will come from out-of-state. The economic law of supply and demand comes into play. Consumer prices of electricity, especially in northern Illinois, will rise.
Politics
A similar situation has happened with the Clinton and Quad Cities plants. In 2016, both plants were struggling financially. The State Journal-Register reports that Exelon claimed losses of $800 million dollars in the last seven years. To stop the shutdown, state lawmakers approved legislation providing Exelon $235 million annually in ratepayer subsidies.
That deal, called the Future Energy Jobs Bill, was controversial, but ultimately passed, with Crane calling the deal a “forward-looking energy policy (that) levels the playing field and values all carbon-free energy.” Critics called the plan a corporate bailout.
“There’s a political angle to this. Exelon is looking for a deal,” said Bloom. This includes tax breaks and subsidies. It is also a threat, saying that Exelon will take such a massive resource if they are not properly compensated. “We live in a free market system; companies have the right to make money,” Bloom said, calling the situation “problematic.”
“We’ve made the decision to move forward with the shutdown,” said Dresden Site Communications Manager Sara Peters. “But at the same time, we’re committed to working with our stakeholders and our policymakers.”
Community
“Dresden employees are some of the most dedicated, hardworking nuclear professionals there are. And they’re not just focused on their jobs,” Peters said. “They come to work every day, but they’re good stewards to local communities. They’re volunteers, they’re on committees (and) they’re leaders.”
Although Exelon will try to place approximately 1,500 full-time employees within the company, they are not able to make any guarantees.
The surrounding communities are also on track to lose $156.5 million in payroll. The hundreds of thousands of dollars in station and employee contributions that go to United Way, local charities and businesses, community festivals and scholarships will also be lost.
Also set to leave is the $63 million dollars in annual taxes, which go to schools, fire and police departments and other public services.
There’s a “tremendous impact on the communities, and there’s just no way around it,” Peters said.
Environmental
States expect low cost, reliable energy. But in recent years, the voice for stopping climate change and going carbon-free is growing. However, states “don’t recognize ‘carbon-free’ as something that consumers should pay for,” according to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI).
The current administration has rolled back many EPA regulations with regard to pollution and fossil fuel extraction. “Natural gas has become not just cheap, but dirt cheap,” Bloom said. The market price is not reflective, he noted, of the true cost and toll on the environment. Gas has become so cheap it is “less expensive to build gas-powered plants than it is to continue running nuclear plants.”
“That’s what’s behind the entire climate crisis. We’ve never truly accounted for the true cost of using fossil fuels,” Bloom said.
Dry casks, high-tech holding containers, stored the spent nuclear fuel. While the containers are safe for the foreseeable future, the material inside of them is dangerous for millions of years. “We’ve got a solution for 100 years,” Bloom said. “I assume 100 years from now smart people will have figured out ‘now what?’”
