Wisconsin Nuclear Reactor To Be Closed
Source: New York Times
The owner of a small nuclear reactor in Wisconsin said Monday that it would close the Kewaunee Power Station early next year because it was unable to find a buyer and the plant was no longer economically viable.
The decision was viewed as an early sign that the wave of retirements of old generating stations across the Midwest is now stretching from the coal industry into nuclear power, driven by slack demand for energy and the low price of natural gas.
After receiving a 20-year extension from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in February 2011 to continue operating Kewaunee, Dominion, based in Richmond, Va., put the power station up for sale. At 556 megawatts, it is about half the size of the largest plants now operating and is the only reactor at the Carlton site, rendering costs higher per unit of power than sites with two reactors. Dominion had hoped to buy several reactors in the Midwest that could share some overhead expenses with Kewaunee, but did not succeed.
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In some regions, the average selling price of a megawatt-hour today is less than $50 at times. But a survey of the industry by the Electric Utility Cost Group, an industry consortium, found that one quarter of nuclear plants with the highest costs were spending an average of $51.42 to produce a megawatt-hour from 2008 through 2010. And costs have gone up since then.
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Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/business/energy-environment/dominion-to-close-wisconsin-nuclear-plant.html?_r=0
"unable to find a buyer and the plant was no longer economically viable"
We'll be hearing that more often.
Better to shut it down than to try keep making a profit by dangerous uprates and corner-cutting.
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darkangel218
Aha, I guess "dear leader Ceausescu" was safeguarding the safety of his people when he, and the Party was not telling how things was I guess
I have never been to Romania - but I have been a few times in Bulgaria - in the area of Dobrudja in the north of the country many times between 1986 and 1991.. More or less the same in Bulgaria I guess in many ways.. Even thou Ceausescu is said to be some of an extreme.. I know a few things about Romania in the 1980s - it was not exactly a party to live there in the 1980s...
I don't know about that they bussed people up to Ukraine - but i would not be surprised if they did - the dictatorship of Ceausescu was rather weird in many ways - and he had some rather unpleasant treats to use people as he pleased if it worked him favor with the russians - who he was in debt in to by loans and credits for his ambitions to make Romania a "power to reckon with"... He even invoked the old idea that romanians is descendants of roman soldiers who was stationed there after Emperor Traian conquered the land more than 2 millennium before... (I'm not sure about that, but the romanian language do have a lot of latin in it, and it also use the latin alphabet
)
Many in East Europe was listening to Free Europe in the days before the berlin wall was been tearing down... For the ones with a radio, and the antenna to listen to Radio Free Europe it was one of the ways to get to know how the world was even if the party line in the country say otherwise.. Must be conflicting to say at least to hear one things from the government - and a different thing from Radio Free Europe..
Nuclear plants - and the offspring's nuclear weapons IS extremely dangerous, horrible things that should not have been invented... Or at least have fair stricter guidelines to safeguard the population.. The civilian nuclear industry, should at least have the same guard lines when it come to nuclear power, as the US navy have.. At least they have not yet have nuclear disasters - even though they do have had their share of mishaps.. But compared to the mishaps who have been the norm in civilian nuclear plants - the US navy is known for their security on ships and submarines...
Hopefully, in the near future we will have new, more clean forms of energy to our disposal so we can get rid of all this nuclear plants we have today.. Even though it will take a LONG time before the last plant is cleaned off the land... Even a small nuclear power plant takes at least 20 to 30 years to get rid of - and it cost at least as much as it was costing to build it...
Diclotican
The nuke industry seems to be saying, "What, our fuel rods? YOU take care of them, we're outta here." 
There is a state park and beach within a couple miles of Kewaunee's plant. Brave folks who'd boat or scuba near it claimed the lake water offshore was usually warm. And there's a fishing village nearby, too. Yum. 
