DECOMMISSIONING DECISIONS | SPECIAL REPORT The James A. FitzPatrick plant also won an extended
licence from NRC, which allowed it to operate until 2034. After several changes of ownership, Exelon acquired the plant from Entergy when the latter announced it would not operate the plant after 2016. The paper’s authors note that causal factors in closure decisions include factors such as structural shift in demand, recession, import penetration, technical change, loss of market share, takeover or merger and locational difficulties. But the authors also looked outside these arguments. They take account of the geographical political economy and consider the role of key state actors and how they use global and local themes, such as the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, climate change, corporate accountability and regional economic conditions. They look to socio-spatial ‘moments of closure’ processes rather than enumerating underlying factors, and how the owners used those ‘moments of closure’. Now James A Fitzpatrick is part of Constellation Energy and the company has placed it firmly in the context of climate effects and its role in both helping consumers ‘ride through’ climate events and helping the fight against climate change. In a recent press release it said, “As the country endured yet another brutal summer of extended heatwaves and extreme weather brought upon by climate change, Constellation’s carbon-free clean energy centers ran at nearly full power. The company’s 21 nuclear reactors at 12
sites from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast operated at a 98.1% capacity factor during the months of June, July and August to keep the lights on and air conditioners humming 24/7 for nearly 15 million homes and businesses.” It added that “Constellation’s clean energy centers remain indispensable assets providing reliable and affordable carbon-free energy to American homes and businesses”.
Diablo Canyon In 2023 Sara Nelson and M V Ramana examined the changing fate of Diablo Canyon in Managing decline: Devaluation and just transition at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant (published in Environment and Planning). The authors list political and economic factors
contributed to PG&E’s motivation to pursue a negotiated transition: the cost of installing cooling towers, the difficulties of integrating Diablo’s baseload power into a renewables-dominated grid and a declining ratepayer base due to the proliferation of Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs). They say, “These factors shaped both the economic pressures on the plant and the power dynamics that demanded a negotiated solution”. An agreement signed in 2016 would see the plant retire
by 2025, and Nelson and Ramana say its development had “been widely upheld as a model of ‘just transition’ linking labour, community, and environmental concerns”. It involved compensation for affected workers and communities
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