Three Mile Island owner could close the plant

Bailout deal urged; plant had a partial meltdown in 1979.

The site of a terrifying partial nuclear meltdown in 1979 will close in 2019 unless Pennsylvania comes to its financial rescue.

Cheap natural gas could do what the worst commercial nuclear power accident in U.S. history could not: put Three Mile Island out of business.

Three Mile Island’s owner, Exelon Corp., announced Tuesday that the plant — the site of a terrifying partial meltdown in 1979 — will close in 2019 unless the state of Pennsylvania comes to its financial rescue.

Nuclear power plants around the U.S. have been struggling in recent years to compete with power generating stations that burn increasingly inexpensive natural gas.

The Chicago-based energy company’s announcement came after what it called more than five years of losses at the plant and Three Mile Island’s recent failure to be selected as a guaranteed supplier of power to the regional electric grid.

Exelon wants Pennsylva- nia to give nuclear power the kind of preferential treat- ment and premium payments that are extended to renewable forms of energy, such as wind and solar. It has not said how much it wants.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has made no commitment to a bailout. But in a statement Tuesday, Wolf said he is concerned about layoffs at Three Mile Island, which employs 675 people, and is open to discussions about the future of nuclear power.

Nuclear bailouts have won approval in Illinois and New York, but the potential for higher utility bills in Pennsylvania to cover the cost is generating resistance.

Around the U.S., nuclear plants have been hammered by the natural gas boom.

In December, Illinois approved $235 million a year for Exelon to prop up nuclear plants in the Quad Cities and Clinton, six months after the company threatened to shut them down.

FirstEnergy Corp. has said it could decide next year to sell or close its three nuclear plants — Davis-Besse and Perry in Ohio and Beaver Valley in Pennsylvania. PSEG of New Jersey, which owns all or parts of four nuclear plants, has said it won’t operate ones that are long-term money losers.

Built during a golden age for nuclear power, Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 went online in 1974 and Unit 2 in 1978. The plant is on the Susquehanna River, about 10 miles from Harrisburg.

In March 1979, equipment failure and operator errors led to a partial core meltdown of Unit 2, leading to several days of fear and prompting 144,000 people to flee their homes amid conflicting or ill-informed information from utility and government officials.

Scientists worried at one point that a hydrogen bubble forming inside the reactor would explode with catastrophic consequences.

Experts have come to no firm conclusion about th health effects or the amoune t of radiation released, though government scientists have said the maximum individual dosage was not enough to cause health problems.

Regardless, the accident badly undermined support for nuclear power. No nuclear plant that was proposed after the accident has been successfully completed and put into operation in the U.S.

The damaged reactor was mothballed, but the other reactor is still in use.

Nuclear plants have been hammered by the natural gas boom.

ASSOCIATED PRESS 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, near Harrisburg, Pa., is shown in March 1979, when equipment failure and operator errors led to a partial core meltdown of Unit 2, leading to days of fear and prompting 144,000 people to flee their homes.