EXELON CALLS FOR FED SUPPORT FOR NUCLEAR

Exelon touts the nuclear necessity

Barbara Vergetis Lundin, April 24, 2014 (FierceEnergy)

Government policies and market structures don’t give nuclear power the value it deserves as a source of emissions-free base load generation and, according to Exelon, as much as 25 percent of the U.S. nuclear fleet could be shuttered. Exelon’s nuclear plants, it said, were crucial to the PJM response during the extreme January cold because of natural gas supply constraints and price spikes. Exelon has pushed to end the federal production tax credit (PTC) vital to the wind energy value proposition, claiming the PTC causes negative pricing in electricity markets. Exelon does not mention the federal incentives available to the nuclear industry or the fact that markets have largely decided that nuclear plant costs and lead times make nuclear an uneconomic choice for new generation. Wind energy advocates say the negative pricing is not due to the PTC but to local transmission outages, extremely low electricity demand, and the inability of Exelon’s nuclear plants to ramp down when transmission is out or demand drops off. Executives of both NextEra and Xcel, both of which have generation portfolios broadly comparable to Exelon, say low natural gas prices play a much bigger role than the PTC in negative pricing and current nuclear plant economics. click here for more

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