Every business has a connection with the community it’s in; your local coffee shop, your local post office, and even your local nuclear power energy facility. But it can be easy to forget how connected some businesses are with you and your life. You might walk into a coffee shop every day to get your medium iced extra extra caramel latte and flirt with the barista, but you never walk into your local nuclear plant to buy energy and flirt with an engineer. With that said, we’re seeing more and more instances of the positive impact that nuclear plants have on their communities, even if you didn’t notice them.
Are you looking for a company acting neighborly? Might I introduce you to the Diablo Canyon Power Plant? Diablo Canyon, the only operating nuclear energy facility in California, provides around-the-clock power to a region that is otherwise prone to blackouts. Recently, it was announced that the lifespan of Diablo Canyon’s Unit 1 would be extended through 2029, and Unit 2 would be extended through 2030. With this plant generating nearly 10% of California’s total energy, this is a big win for countless communities as reliable energy demands surge in California.
Good news about plant life extension isn’t the only way nuclear has been a community favorite lately—we’re also seeing news of plants planning to restart and bring new life to communities. With Palisades set to restart in Michigan in the not-so-distant future, we’re going to see just that. With this restart, we can expect to see nearly 600 jobs created, an increase in tax revenue to support things like schools and parks, and an increase in clean energy to bolster the energy transition. Across the country, in 2022, the nuclear energy industry gross domestic product, or GDP, contribution totaled $63.8 billion with a little more than $2.6 billion of that in Michigan—you can understand why there is a desire to restart Palisades for continued growth!
In Ohio we recently saw Centrus (re)introduce High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) to the United States with the opening of the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon. As we look for the buildout of as much as 3x today’s nuclear energy, many advanced reactors will need HALEU to fuel their facilities. Centrus has not just provided jobs right away to the Piketon area, they could be building the foundation for creating hundreds-to-thousands of high-paying union jobs in the future energy economy as well. Centrus announced last fall that they would “invest an additional approximately $60 million for this effort over the next 18 months to lay the groundwork to support a potential large-scale expansion of uranium enrichment at Centrus' American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio.” So, if you live in Piketon, get ready to meet your friendly neighborhood clean energy supplier.
Creating new jobs is always important, but when a community is on the brink of losing lots of jobs, replacement jobs could be needed to keep that community afloat. Enter: TerraPower and PacifiCorp’s Natrium plant in Kemmerer, WY. With PacifiCorp planning to reduce its coal fleet in Wyoming by two-thirds, communities like Kemmerer could lose not only a major energy source, but also the many associated jobs that keep the area going. TerraPower and PacifiCorp’s plans to bring a nuclear reactor to this town will create, at its peak, around 2,000 jobs and help move Wyoming towards a clean energy future. Over the long term, a 2024 Stakeholder Guidebook for Coal-to-Nuclear Conversions finds that such “transitions will likely lead to increased employment opportunities and higher incomes in the community.”
These are just a few examples from an endless list of nuclear companies helping to build up a community. And since it is an endless list, you can expect to hear us talk about it more and more. You may not be buying coffee from the nuclear plant in town, or getting mail from them, but your community is getting jobs, you’re getting electricity, and they’re helping improve the environment and the economy. Seems like a lot of wins.
