Word: exelon
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Over the past few years, the nuclear industry's top players, led by Entergy and Exelon (formed by the merger of Philadelphia-based PECO Energy and Chicago native Unicom), have shelled out nearly $4 billion to purchase 15 of the nation's 103 operating plants--including such unlikely prizes as the surviving sister unit of Pennsylvania's infamous Three Mile Island No. 2 reactor. These new nuclear powers, which also include Duke Energy, Southern Co., Dominion Resources and Constellation Energy, have reversed years of mismanagement and cost overruns to turn the plants into the reliable, profitable atomic engines they were...
...plants, Exelon is already working on the next generation, exemplified by a helium-cooled, pebble-bed test reactor it is helping build in South Africa that, theoretically at least, wouldn't ever need to be shut down for refueling and is practically meltdown-proof. Of course, the company would still have to find a place in the U.S. to put it. Many homeowners would sooner burn coal in their own fireplace than live next to a reactor. So rather than try to find converts, the industry hopes to construct new facilities on existing sites, in communities that already depend...
...Still, when it comes to safety, there's no denying that the industry has made great strides. The annual number of protective automatic shutdowns at each reactor, for instance, has fallen tenfold in the past 16 years, to 0.5. Exelon and Entergy have a lot more riding on their vast nuclear portfolios than an old-line utility with one measly reactor and a guaranteed rate of return. By pooling the expertise of a much larger, dedicated staff and spreading out the fixed costs, they've been able to reduce the length of refueling outages from 100 days...
...With the value of existing plants rising dramatically, companies like Exelon and Entergy can no longer snap them up on the cheap. That's a rationale for building new ones. If that were to happen, though, Wall Street could lose its radioactive crush. The past generation of nuclear plants ran way over budget, taking more than a decade to finish and ultimately costing around $5 billion each. Back then, utilities could tack that onto customers' bills. But today shareholders may not be happy to take that risk...
...Sounds great in theory. But as Exelon Nuclear chief Oliver Kingsley puts it, "I do think Wall Street will be a little skeptical until we have a bit of a track record." It had better not be anything like their previous one, or nuclear power won't stay hot for very long...