The Three Mile Island nuclear power station survived the worst commercial nuclear accident in American history.
But 40 years later, a full economic meltdown - triggered by a changed energy economy - is finally claiming the Londonderry Township, Dauphin County plant and its more than 600 permanent jobs.
Chicago-based Exelon Corp. officials announced the plant’s Sept. 30 shutdown Wednesday after attempts to win state-sanctioned financial assistance fizzled, and - as the region’s civil defense officials might have put in the days of the 1979 partial meltdown - this is not a drill.
There are a number of reasons why:
A changed energy market.
For a solid decade now, the energy generation market has been revolutionized by non-conventional drilling that has opened up vast reserves of natural gas in Pennsylvania and other states.
That abundant gas supply - along with relatively flat demand for electricity as energy efficiency measures have kicked in - has steadily lowered the prices of natural gas, making the wholesale energy marketplace much tougher going for the existing nuclear power plants.
Three Mile Island was in a particularly vulnerable spot because, as a single-reactor plant (courtesy of the aforementioned accident at its Reactor 2) it has long generated relatively less power for the costs associated with operating a nuclear station.
Independent market reports for PJM Interconnection, the energy grid manager for Pennsylvania and 12 other northeastern states, continue to show that it is the only one of the five nuclear plants in the state that is currently not profitable, with projected losses of $57 million this year alone.
Which brings us to...
The politics.
In a number of other states, the nuclear industry has successfully won subsidies for its zero-emissions attributes - in other words, the fact that those clouds coming out of the cooling towers are only steam, and not pollutants that contribute to lung disease or climate change.
The ongoing campaign arrived in Pennsylvania two years ago, resulting in subsidy proposals in both the state House and state Senate. But supporters found the going harder here than in Illinois, New York or New Jersey.
Unlike those other three states, Pennsylvania is a national leader in both natural gas and coal production. Lawmakers representing those fossil fuel regions were always going to be slow to support what those industries characterized as a bail-out for nuclear plants.
Add in a sustained, multi-million dollar anti-subsidy advocacy campaign funded by gas and oil interests, and pro-nukes interests had a real war on their hands.
Then too, there is a large contingent of Republican members in both the House and Senate GOP majorities who are devoted to free-market philosophies, and therefore naturally opposed to putting a governmental thumb on a deregulated energy scale that - over the last 10 years - has reduced wholesale energy prices and cut carbon emissions in Pennsylvania.
The subsidy, after all, would have cost residential and commercial electric ratepayers a cumulative $500 million a year, according to several estimates.
Enough members were troubled by that thumb on the scale, as it turned out, that GOP leaders like House Majority Leader Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, or Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre County - neither of whom publicly endorsed the subsidy bills - could never declare that they had a majority of their majorities in favor of moving forward.
“We never got to a point we had a majority or even a near majority of our caucus," conceded Sen. Ryan Aument, R-Lancaster County and a leader of the bicameral nuclear caucus.
There wasn’t enough time for a courtship between environmentalists who want to see a greater push for wind, solar and other renewable energy resources in Pennsylvania and the pro-nuclear forces to develop into a full-blown policy romance as has blossomed in places like Illinois or New Jersey.
Finally, Gov. Tom Wolf failed to give a clear sign of support for the subsidy bills as proposed, or to publicly push any alternatives, even though taking policy steps to preserve the state’s nuclear fleet is part of the recommendations in the state’s latest Climate Change Action plan.
Wolf’s press secretary, J.J. Abbott, pushed back Wednesday on criticism that the governor was not engaged, noting the administration had worked the issue hard behind the scenes.
"Governor Wolf and his staff have been actively engaged for months with the General Assembly on finding a solution that could actually pass,“ Abbott said. “To this point, such a plan has not emerged.”
The deadline.
Three Mile Island’s owners, Exelon, had a natural pressure point on the issue because of a scheduled refueling outage this fall, and it would become their line in the sand.
TMI Spokesman Dave Marcheskie said Wednesday that because of the unique features of the nuclear fission process, power generation can’t be ramped down to make an existing fuel core last longer. Nor can the makers of custom-tailored fuel assemblies rush their fabrication process.
So when Exelon issued its June 1 deadline for seeing signs of action on the subsidy bill, “that was the condensed timeline,” Marcheskie explained. “We’ve evaluated all possible options to try to squeeze as much time as possible.”
With the Pennsylvania Senate gaveling out on Wednesday with no other session days scheduled for May and no momentum to bring members back, Exelon officials said they felt a responsibility to tell their employees the battle was lost.
“We literally reached a decision this week that there wasn’t enough time left,” said Lael Campbell, Exelon’s director of state government affairs, explaining Wednesday’s announcement. “We wanted to notify them (employees) as soon as we came to that reality.”
Where’s it go from here?
While all sides are blowing taps on Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania’s nuclear subsidy issue is not necessarily dead.
Aument and Rep. Tom Mehaffie, R-Lower Swatara Township, and the leader of the nuclear subsidy forces in the state House, both confirmed Wednesday they hope to re-set a broader discussion before more nuclear plants, which makes up about 40 percent of power generation in Pennsylvania, are lost.
Their hope now is that with the pressure of an immediate deadline gone, but the fact that one of Pennsylvania’s nuclear plants is now on a glide path to retirement 15 years before its license expiration a bracing reality, the quest for a new solution will resume.
Some independent energy market analysts expressed hope Wednesday that that happens, both because of nuclear energy’s present importance in the fight to lower greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, and the state’s interest in preserving a diversified energy portfolio for the long-term.
“It is unfortunate the bill didn’t seem to evolve (from a policy standpoint) into something narrowly tailored to avoid this outcome,” said Christina Simeone, a senior fellow with the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.
“It reflects the complicated energy politics in Pennsylvania, the second-largest gas and (overall) power producing state in the nation.”
One thing state officials do have now is a little more time.
The next Pennsylvania nuclear plant on the economic chopping block is believed to be Beaver Valley, outside Shippingport. Its owner, FirstEnergy Solutions, has announced a 2021 de-activation without legislative support and/or market reforms.
We’ll see what they do with it.