Manchin exploring ‘federal nuclear market’ to keep reactors online
Jeremy Beaman
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Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said he’s looking into developing a federal program whereby ratepayers across the country share in the cost of maintaining the nation’s fleet of nuclear reactors, several of which retired in recent years due largely to higher cost of operation compared to other generating sources.
Congress has plowed billions of dollars into preserving the legacy reactor fleet, but those dollars are not endless, Manchin said Thursday, and neither would be the appetite to keep supplying subsidies to the sector.
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“In merchant markets, no matter what we do and how much more money we invest into it, they’re not going to be able to survive and compete against the renewables and everything else,” Manchin said during a nuclear-focused event hosted by center-left think tank Third Way.
Manchin floated a possible solution to the room of nuclear professionals and policy experts that would create a “federal nuclear market” and could sustain nuclear plants at little cost to ratepayers, even those in states without nuclear power plants.
“If we had an overall — to where all of us in our rate base is paying a certain percentage for our nuclear fleet, it’d be minuscule. But I can tell you it would make the difference of trying to get states to pick up the slack or having federal government continue to have to subsidize,” he said.
“If we don’t do something, there’s going to be people saying, why are we doing it? Why do we keep subsidizing nuclear?” he said.
Nuclear advocates preach atomic energy as the ultimate climate change solution because it is carbon-free and “dispatchable,” allowing power plant operators to adjust electricity generation to demand.
Dispatchability distinguishes nuclear from renewable wind and solar sources, which also generate carbon-free electricity but are variable to meteorological conditions. Wind and solar, plus storage, is growing, but most installations lack battery storage.
Utilities have been retiring reactors because they are aging and, in some markets, significantly less competitive with other generating sources, including wind, solar, and natural gas.
As of April 2022, six nuclear-generating units with a total capacity of 4,736 megawatts had retired since the end of 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration.
More retirements were planned, but government intervention has helped save reactors, including in Illinois, where the government approved nearly $700 million in assistance in 2021 to keep two nuclear plants online
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Democrats and Republicans in Congress worked separately to stem retirements in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or the bipartisan infrastructure law, authorizing $6 billion for a Civil Nuclear Credit Program designed to support nuclear reactors struggling to compete against cheaper or more heavily subsidized generation sources in wholesale markets.
Nuclear generates around 20% of the nation’s electricity, a number Manchin said he wants to grow to between 25% and 30% with the help of next-generation reactor technologies, which Congress is also funding.