Exelon said May 30 that “absent needed policy reforms” it will retire its Three Mile Island Generating Station (TMI) near Harrisburg, Penn., by September 30, 2019.
Chris Crane, president and chief executive of Exelon, held out the caveat that the reactor could operate beyond that point if Pennsylvania follows the lead of New York and Illinois and implements a nuclear-friendly zero-emissions credit program that rewards carbon-free baseload generation.
But for now, Exelon is informing key stakeholders, which will include sending the PJM Interconnection a deactivation notice and making permanent shutdown notifications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission within 30 days of Tuesday.
Three Mile Island, which currently has only a spent fuel pool, is in the process of building an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation. At the end of 2016, Three Mile had approximately 753 metric tons of fuel or 1,594 fuel assemblies on site, a company spokesman said Tuesday.
Exelon is also taking steps to end capital investment projects required for long-term operation of TMI and canceling 2019 fuel purchases and outage planning, potentially affecting about 1,500 outage workers.
TMI, a pressurized water reactor, directly employs 675 workers and contracts another 1,500 local union workers for refueling outages.
In 2009, Three Mile Island Unit 1 received a 20-year extension to the plant’s operating license from NRC. The license is not scheduled to expire until April 2034.
Three Mile Island Unit 2 is owned by FirstEnergy which was damaged during an infamous meltdown accident in 1979 and never reopened.
