Entergy to shut down Pilgrim nuclear plant by 2019

Wall Street Journal : On Tuesday Entergy Corp announced that it would close the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts by June 2019. The company says that low power prices, regulatory challenges, and public policies have made maintaining the plant economically unfeasible. The company also plans to decide the fate of the FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in New York in the next two weeks. The same issues face at least 36 other nuclear plants, according to the Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment. Government restrictions on fossil-fuel power plant emissions will not go into effect soon enough to make a difference and many of the older nuclear plants such as Pilgrim, which began operations in 1972, use dated technology that faces higher maintenance and safety costs. In fact, Pilgrim was recently downgraded to the next-to-lowest category in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s safety rating system, which means it now requires federal oversight. Entergy could shut the plant down even earlier if it decides not to resupply it with fuel in 2017 as scheduled.