Workers are setting the groundwork at Three Mile Island for a maintenance outage this month to replenish Unit 1’s uranium core, an elaborately choreographed event that requires 1,500 contract workers and injects millions of dollars into the local economy. But TMI’s biennial refueling outage has a tinge of melancholy this year: It could be the last time fuel is ever loaded into Unit 1, whose neighboring twin reactor shut down in 1979 after the nation’s worst commercial nuclear accident. Exelon Generation, the company that operates Unit 1, announced in May that it plans to prematurely shut down the power plant in 2019 unless the Pennsylvania legislature rescues the nuclear industry, which is struggling to compete in a world where newfound natural-gas resources have driven down electricity prices.
The Inquirer 14th Sept 2017 read more »
