Nuclear power’s share of U.S. electricity generation should continue to fall throughout this year and into the next, the government’s independent energy research authority forecast recently.
Just about 20% of the country’s electricity will have come from nuclear power in 2021, a figure that should remain stable in 2022, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicted in its December Short-Term Energy Outlook report published Dec. 7. That’s a decline from the 21% share nuclear had in 2020, EIA said.
The organization forecast in January that nuclear plant closures would make up the largest share of generating capacity loss this year at 5.1 gigawatts, or around 56% of total expected capacity loss.
In 2021, Indian Point Energy Center in New York shut down for good on April 30. Illinois’s Byron and Dresden plants were slated to close in the fall, but a last-minute state bailout allowed operator Exelon to keep the reactors humming away for now. The Palisades plant in Michigan is next on the chopping block, slated to go dark in early 2022.
Meanwhile, the federal government is planning to step in to keep the nation’s existing nuclear fleet online. President Joe Biden in November greenlit around $6 billion in civilian nuclear credits when he signed a bipartisan infrastructure bill into law. That cash is set to be auctioned off by the Department of Energy to at-risk nuclear plant operators — a process about which DOE has yet to reveal details.
