Pennsylvania lawmakers are circulating memos in both the state House and Senate seeking sponsors for legislation that would better support the state’s five nuclear power plants as the facilities continue to face stiff competition from other generation sources such as natural gas.
The bipartisan memos were circulated by the Pennsylvania Nuclear Energy Caucus, which late last year, with the governor and legislature, recommended a handful of options to help nuclear power in the state, including a zero emission credit (ZEC) program like those in New York and Illinois, or a carbon pricing program.
The memos are seeking legislation to update the state’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act (AEPS) to recognize nuclear energy. The AEPS requires that 18 percent of electricity supplied by Pennsylvania’s distribution companies come from alternative energy sources by 2021.
The memo noted that the plants generate 93 percent of the state’s zero-carbon power, but they have been excluded from the AEPS.
Pennsylvania has five nuclear power plants, a total of nine reactors, that generated 39 percent of the state’s power in October 2018, according to the Energy Information Administration. The plants include:
- First Energy Nuclear Operating Co.’s (FENOC’s) Beaver Valley Power Station, which comprises two 852-megawatts pressurized water reactors (PWRs) in Beaver County
- Talen Energy’s Susquehanna Steam Electric Station, which houses two 1,180-megawatt boiling water reactors (BWRs) on its site in Luzerne County
- Exelon Nuclear’s Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station, comprising two BWRs each rated at 1,065 megawatts in York County
- Exelon Nuclear’s Limerick Generating Station, two BWRs each rated 1,090 megawatts in Montgomery County
- Exelon Nuclear’s Three Mile Island Nuclear Station, a single 871-megawatt PWR, in Dauphin County