Closure of OPPD’s Fort Calhoun plant looks likely; cost to generate electricity is double U.S. average

As reported by Cole Epley in the Omaha World-Herald, it appears a solid majority on the board of directors on the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD), owner of the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant on the Missouri River in Nebraska, are ready to back OPPD management's recommendation that the problem-plagued atomic reactor be permanently closed.

As reported:

Said four-year board member Tom Barrett: “When you look at it from either the future of energy or the price of energy, the economics kill it. My vote is going to be to shut it down.” (emphasis added)

The article also reports:

[W]ind energy will make up nearly all of the replacement power in the wake of the nuclear plant’s expected closure.

David Kraft of Nuclear Energy Information Service in Chicago renamed Fort Calhoun as "Port" Calhoun, in the wake of historic flooding on the Missouri River in 2011 (see photo, above left).

The atomic reactor narrowly dodged disaster due to the flooding. Fortunately, upstream dams held. If one or more had breached, Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Associates, Inc., warned an "inland tsunami" could have caused disaster at Fort Calhoun. (Although OPPD had wisely shut down the reactor to ride out the flooding before it began, the high-level radioactive waste storage pool was nonetheless vulnerable to catastrophe, if its cooling were disrupted.)

A simultaneous electrical fire -- allowed to smolder for days -- landed "Port Calhoun" on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) "Red Finding" degraded performance category of worst reactors in the country. In the past several years, this has cost OPPD ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars, as OPPD has struggled to get off NRC's bad list. Apparently that investment has been wasted, as "Port" Calhoun will now likely close by October 2016, after the OPPD board of directors votes to do so tomorrow.