The bill, led by senator Ben Cardin, provides a production tax credit of $15 per megawatt hour for existing nuclear plant owners or operators in states such as New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania which have deregulated power markets. Mr Cardin’s state, Maryland, has two commercial power reactors at Exelon Corp’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear stations.
“America needs to reduce our reliance of fossil fuels, so it is imperative that we keep these reactors operating safely while we continue to work on demand reduction, renewables, energy storage, and transmission grid resiliency,” Mr Cardin said in a statement.
The credit would be phased out for any market revenues above $25/MWh or after 10 years.
In August 2020 Exelon announced that it would close the Byron and Dresden nuclear stations, a total of four units, in autumn of 2021 without some form of state aid to provide compensation for their clean power.
Exelon said Byron would close first in September 2021 followed by Dresden in November 2021. The two units at Dresden are licensed to operate for another decade and two units at Byron for another 20 years.
According to Exelon, despite being among the most efficient and reliable units in the nation’s nuclear fleet, Byron and Dresden face revenue shortfalls in the hundreds of millions of dollars because of declining energy prices and market rules that allow fossil fuel plants to underbid clean resources in PJM Interconnection capacity auctions.
Proponents say nuclear reactors are virtually emissions-free and provide baseload power that is crucial for the country’s energy security, but have been struggling to compete with power generation fuelled by natural gas, and wind and solar power.
The US has 93 commercial nuclear reactors, down from 104 in 2012.
