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LER 2025-002-00 for Susquehanna Steam Electric Station, Units 1 & 2, Both Sub-Systems of the Control Room Emergency Outside Air Supply System Impacted by Concurrent, Unrelated Equipment Issues in the Control Structure Heating, Ventilation & Air .....
Don’t believe the hype, says a 50-year industry veteran
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.” — (Not actually Einstein, but it fits.)
Everywhere you look, the nuclear industry’s hype machine is in overdrive. Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy urges a “warp speed” nuclear revival. Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and the UK government all tout small modular reactors (SMRs) as the silver bullet for climate change and energy security. Tech billionaires are hiring nuclear veterans. Wall Street is whispering about “round-the-clock power” for AI data centers. The UK is betting billions on “mini nukes” to fill its looming energy gap.
For those old enough to remember, this should sound familiar. For those who don’t, listen up. I spent over 50 years in the nuclear industry, advancing to Senior Vice President and managing projects at 70 nuclear power plants. I hold a nuclear safety patent and co-authored three peer-reviewed papers on the spread of radiation after meltdowns.
Arnie Gundersen with a proposed model for a nuclear power plant in Montague, Massachusetts, 1973.
I once believed in the dream. I helped build the dream. And now, watching this third act unfold, I can only shake my head at the déjà vu. Because the nuclear industry’s latest pitch is not a revolution, but a rerun — an expensive distraction from real climate solutions.
The nuclear industry’s latest pitch is not a revolution, but a rerun — an expensive distraction from real climate solutions.
What is an SMR, anyway?
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are the nuclear industry’s latest shiny dream. It is more hope than strategy. SMRs only exist in the imagination of the nuclear industry and its supporters. SMRs can only be found on glossy PowerPoint slides. That is why Mycle Schneider dubbed SMRs “power point reactors.” There are no engineering plans, no blueprints, no working prototypes.
Still, hope springs eternal, and the idea is to build advanced atomic fission reactors, typically defined as producing up to 300 megawatts of electricity per unit, less than a third the size of a conventional nuclear plant.
The “small” part refers to their reduced output and physical footprint, while “modular” means they’re designed to be built in factories, shipped to sites, and installed as needed, supposedly making them cheaper and faster to deploy than traditional reactors. In theory, you could add modules over time to scale up output, like snapping together Lego blocks.
Too small to succeed
But let’s not be fooled by the word “small.” Even a single SMR is a massive, highly radioactive industrial machine, capable of powering a mid-sized city and containing a radioactive inventory far greater than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The “small” label is relative only to the behemoths of the last century. In practice, a “small” reactor brings all the big problems of a conventional reactor: dangerous radioactive fuel, complex safety systems, and the risk of catastrophic failure or sabotage. The only thing that’s truly small about SMRs is their inability to benefit from the economies of scale that, in theory, were supposed to make large reactors affordable — but never actually did.
All risk, no advantage
So, the SMR is a lose-lose: all the risks and headaches of traditional nuclear, but with none of the cost or scale advantages that never materialized in the first place.
But that is not stopping nuclear power zealots from championing what will be another failed chapter in the sad legacy of commercial atomic power. Sensing blood, the battered commercial nuclear industry is back with its most audacious pitch yet: SMR lobbying of governments worldwide for taxpayer money. Why? No private investor will touch nukes with a ten-foot uranium rod.
The SMR is a lose-lose: all the risks and headaches of traditional nuclear, but with none of the cost or scale advantages that never materialized in the first place.
The irony is rich: while Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and Amazon herald SMRs as the solution to everything from AI’s energy hunger to coal’s decline, the nuclear vendors themselves won’t promise atomic power will be cheaper than renewables. Perhaps they recall the Westinghouse executives who were imprisoned for defrauding the public on atomic project costs. They know what I know: it is pure fantasy to think smaller, less powerful SMRs will magically generate cheap power. Power generation doesn’t work that way.
A legacy of failure — and my place in it
I started my career in the early 1970s, a young engineer with a master’s degree and a reactor operator’s license, working on Millstone Unit 1 in Connecticut. We were going to make electricity “too cheap to meter.” Instead, we made it too expensive to afford — and too complex to run reliably.
For almost 75 years, the American public has been the “buyer of last resort” for hundreds of loss-making nuclear power plants first developed during the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower. No reactor has ever been built in the US on time or on budget. Another 130 nuclear power plants were canceled before they ever produced a single watt of electricity. None were financially viable without massive taxpayer subsidies.
In the early 2000s, the industry attempted a comeback, promising a “Nuclear Renaissance.” Two dozen reactors announced, all but two canceled. The only survivors — Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia — deliver the most expensive electricity in the country, at twice the projected cost and years behind schedule.
Rinse, repeat, rebrand
Now, it’s a new century, and the industry is back with small modular reactors (SMRs). The pitch is that assembly-line production will ensure quality and lower costs. Assembly lines can replicate flaws just as efficiently as they replicate parts. In the 1970s, I inspected a Chattanooga factory where every reactor vessel had contaminated welds. Six reactors arrived at their sites with factory-induced damage, which limited their lifespans and reduced their efficiency.
Also, consider that every steam generator ever built for U.S. reactors has failed prematurely. Replacement generators have failed, too — sometimes within a year. SMRs will use the same technology, but somehow we’re supposed to believe the outcome will be different this time.
Early prototypes — about the size of today’s SMRs — failed regularly, sometimes catastrophically. The infamous SL-1 reactor in Idaho exploded, killing all three operators. The Wall Street Journal called these plants “Atomic Lemons”— costlier and less efficient than anyone expected.
I’ve witnessed firsthand how unreliable nuclear plants can be. At Millstone Unit 1, where my career began, the plant was shut down for months at a time due to repeated mechanical failures. We’d fix one problem, only to find the same issue cropping up a year later.
Different is not better
Novelty breeds uncertainty. While SMRs and conventional nuclear reactors both fall under the umbrella of atomic reactors, the similarities largely end there. The mechanical and electrical differences between these two concepts are profound, with SMRs introducing a host of new engineering challenges that have not been thoroughly analyzed or experienced in traditional nuclear power plants, potentially offsetting any anticipated benefits and prolonging the path to reliable deployment.
Each of these changes introduces new opportunities for failure — none of them well understood, all of them expensive to fix. SMRs introduce a host of untested problems, including using higher-enriched uranium, close to weapons-grade, raising proliferation and safety concerns.
SMRs introduce a host of untested problems, including using higher-enriched uranium, close to weapons-grade, raising proliferation and safety concerns.
If anything, their smaller size exacerbates some problems. Because of their compact cores, SMRs can leak more neutrons than conventional reactors, leading to more complex damage to the nuclear reactor itself and different radioactive waste streams — waste that is harder and more expensive to manage and dispose of.
Still as dangerous as ever
So, despite the “modular” promise, each SMR is still a massive piece of radioactive infrastructure, requiring the same level of security, emergency planning, and long-term waste management as any other nuclear reactor.
Upside-down economics
With SMRs, you get all the risk and complexity, but at even higher costs per unit of energy, due to the loss of economies of scale. That is why nuclear power has never been financially viable. Every plant built in the U.S. required public subsidies, and every attempt to reduce unit costs by increasing reactor size, designing the plant in factory modules, or eliminating safety features has ended in disaster or disappointment.
Failed promises
The industry’s new pitch — that mass-producing SMRs will lower costs — ignores the harsh lessons of economies of scale. In nuclear, bigger was always supposed to be better. Now, suddenly, smaller is the answer? That’s not innovation; that’s desperation.
What better example of failed promises than the much-hyped NuScale SMR project in Utah that was set to be the first SMR built in the US? But last November, citing soaring costs, the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) canceled the project. Announced in 2015, the UAMPS project envisioned building 12 reactors by 2023 for a cost of $3 billion. By the time it was canceled in November, cost estimates had tripled.
Regulatory capture: The fox guards the henhouse
If you think the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is looking out for you, think again. The NRC has repeatedly weakened safety and staffing requirements at the behest of SMR vendors. It’s regulatory capture, pure and simple — a replay of the FAA’s disastrous oversight of the Boeing 737 MAX.
In nuclear, bigger was always supposed to be better. Now, suddenly, smaller is the answer? That’s not innovation; that’s desperation.
“The NRC is truly a captured agency… NEI complained that the agency’s proposed language for a new rule to weaken security for new nuclear reactors was too stringent. So, the NRC complied and completely eviscerated the draft. Pathetic,” said Dr. Edwin Lyman, Union of Concerned Scientists
Who’s who in SMRs
But none of this has stopped nuclear vendors from pushing their SMR hopefuls:
Holtec: It has never built a reactor. Its design has changed three times in three years, each version more complex. Larger and expensive than the last. At one point, Holtec claimed its reactor would be as safe as a chocolate factory. Willy Wonka would disagree.
Natrium:Backed by Bill Gates, it uses liquid sodium coolant and a thermal storage gimmick. The design is so complicated that the only thing it’s likely to generate is more press releases — and perhaps a few more government grants. And here’s the kicker: the only fuel available for Natrium’s first core load was to come from Russia. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the project was immediately delayed by at least two years, exposing the folly of building a new generation of reactors dependent on a single, geopolitically fraught source of fuel.
NuScale: The first to get NRC approval for an SMR design, but has no customers and just canceled its flagship project due to cost overruns. Its original 50 MW design was quickly upsized to 77 MW after the economics failed to pencil out. After revisiting the drawing board, the new version was just approved in May, but there are no unsubsidized potential buyers.
Westinghouse: The old hand. Its AP1000 reactors in Georgia nearly bankrupted the company. Now it’s back with an even smaller AP300. Because if at first you don’t succeed, shrink the reactor and try again.
Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and the UK: The new true believers
But never let facts get in the way of a good story. It’s almost touching to see the world’s financial and tech giants lining up behind SMRs, as long as they are subsidized by someone else. Goldman Sachs projects that SMRs could provide “round-the-clock power” for the data centers of tomorrow, even suggesting that their cost could undercut large-scale renewables. Microsoft is actively hiring nuclear veterans to accelerate its own small modular reactor strategy, convinced that mini-nukes will help keep its cloud and AI ambitions carbon-free.
The UK government is betting billions on Rolls-Royce and a new generation of “mini nukes” to fill the country’s looming energy gap, promising jobs, security, and a low-carbon future.
Why nuclear can’t compete with renewables
The dream of the first nuclear plants was that mining uranium was a lot cheaper than mining coal. But while nuclear costs continue to rise, wind, solar, and battery storage are becoming increasingly cheaper and more reliable every year. And the sun and wind give energy for free. Renewables are now the lowest-cost source of new electricity in most markets. Nuclear, by contrast, has never achieved cost reductions through learning or mass production. Every new design is a new experiment, with new risks and new costs.
Every dollar spent on SMRs is a dollar not spent on proven, less expensive, rapidly deployable renewable energy sources. Worse still, the delays and overruns that have plagued nuclear projects mean that SMRs cannot be built in time to meet urgent climate goals. Meanwhile, wind, solar, and storage are already delivering reliable, affordable, and clean power to the grid.
The climate crisis demands solutions that are proven, scalable, and affordable — qualities that nuclear power, in any form, has never delivered.
After half a century in the nuclear trenches, I can say this with certainty: the latest SMR campaign is not a revolution but a rerun (relapse?). It’s an expensive distraction from the real work of decarbonizing our energy system. The climate crisis demands solutions that are proven, scalable, and affordable — qualities that nuclear power, in any form, has never delivered.
SMRs will never be built
Here’s the final irony: despite all the headlines and billions in taxpayer subsidies, an SMR will never be built — not in time to matter, and not at a price that makes sense. But that won’t stop the industry from burning through billions more in public money, chasing a fantasy that distracts and diverts resources from real, proven solutions. As Yogi Berra said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” And as someone who’s lived through every act of this atomic opera, I can only add: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a third time? Well, that’s just nuclear insanity.
Arnie Gundersen is a former nuclear industry executive and Chief Engineer at Fairewinds Energy Education. He has testified as an expert on nuclear safety and reliability worldwide.
Featured photo: Full-scale mock-up of NuScale SMR. Source: science.org
Written by Arnie Gundersen Arnie Gundersen has more than 50 years of nuclear power oversight and engineering experience. He has two nuclear engineering degrees, a Reactor Operator’s license, was a corporate Senior Vice President for an atomic licensee, has a nuclear safety patent, three peer-reviewed papers on radiation, and authored a best-selling book in Japanese about the Fukushima meltdown in Japan. In addition to teaching reactor physics to graduate students and undergrads, Mr. Gundersen has given presentations at universities and government agencies and testified as an expert witness worldwide. He is also a founding director of the board of Fairewinds Energy Education Nonprofit [www.fairewinds.org].
Schrödinger’s reactor: Excitement over SMRs is fine, but it's unproven and costly The Journal Gazette Editorial Board 10 hrs ago [Nov 11, 2025]
Before Indiana rushes into the nuclear future, we ought to ask a basic question: Who carries the cost if it doesn’t work?
At a two-day summit at Purdue University last week, Indiana signaled it wants to be seen as an early leader in the SMR push. AES Indiana announced it will study whether small modular reactors could be built at its Eagle Valley and Petersburg generating sites. Indiana Energy and Natural Resources Secretary Suzanne Jaworowski reinforced the message from the stage, declaring the state “ready and willing” to deploy nuclear power. Purdue, for its part, positioned itself as a hub for nuclear research and investment. Given the nascent state of small reactor development, Indiana would quite literally be on the leading edge.
It sounds exciting. Yet enthusiasm on a stage is very different from affordable energy in a home or business. With Hoosiers already having to navigate the rising cost of everything, they deserve answers before commitments are made.
As Kerwin Olson of the Citizens Action Coalition noted in a Journal Gazette op-ed earlier this year, SMRs come with a familiar complication: “shifting the enormous risks and costs on to captive ratepayers.”
“Hoosiers, many of whom are already struggling with escalating utility bills, will bear the financial burden of unproven technology,” he wrote in February. “The financial risks are staggering … and there is no guarantee these investments will ever pay off.”
That’s not a theoretical warning. It’s speculation with other people’s bills.
The recent record on SMR development should give Indiana pause. Nu-Scale — long held up as the leading U.S. SMR project based in Idaho — collapsed last year when projected costs ballooned from a $4 billion initial estimate to more than $9 billion, forcing municipal utility providers to walk away. And as the clean energy journal Canary Media reported, only two commercial SMRs operate anywhere in the world despite more than 70 designs in development across 15 countries. Momentum, the report noted, “is not the same as deployment.”
In the meantime, we have tools that work now. Community solar, restored net metering, battery storage, energy efficiency and localized microgrids can lower emissions, strengthen the grid and give residents a stake in their energy future. Yes, SMRs are cleaner than coal, but the waste they create is still lethal, and that fact can’t be swept aside.
Indiana needs to protect ratepayers, build resilience and invest where results are already measurable. If small modular reactors one day prove affordable, scalable and safe, they can earn their place. Until then, caution isn’t reluctance — it’s responsibility.
The state’s energy strategy should not hinge on whether a cutting-edge technology eventually pans out. It should center on whether decisions are grounded in public interest, affordability and transparency. Nuclear power may earn its place in time. But for now, Indiana’s job is to protect Hoosiers from carrying the financial weight of an overpromised energy breakthrough.
The Price-Anderson Act provides compensation for offsite damages from a nuclear plant release of radioactivity. Kinda. Sorta.
When a nuclear plant is operating, up to nearly $16 billion is available for harm caused by radioactivity released from a reactor core, its spent fuel pool, or an onsite ISFSI.
This liability protection consists of private insurance (currently at $500 million) purchased by the plant owner supplemented, if necessary, by funds collected from the owners of other operating nuclear plants.
When a nuclear plant permanently shuts down, the NRC approves exemptions from the Price-Anderson insurance coverages. In November 2023, the NRC approved an exemption for Indian Point reducing its private insurance level to $100 million and dropping the site from the supplemental pool.
The NRC's "logic" for the exemptions is that the risk of an accident at an ISFSI is very, very, very low. Perhaps. But is the risk of a terrorist act at an ISFSI of a permanently shut down plant equally low? The NRC's "analysis" did not consider terrorist acts. And the force-on-force tests of security at operating plants is terminated once a plant permanently shuts down.
To be fair, nuclear security is quite good. No nuclear plant or dry cask has ever been stolen (as far as we know).
But a terrorist act at the Indian Point ISFSI were to cause more than $100 million in offsite damages, who would provide the compensation? Who? And how?
Perhaps the Stafford Act would fill in for the AWOL Price-Anderson Act. All it would take is an act by the federal government (you know, the folks who have been shut down the past few weeks because of their inability to reach agreement on a budget) to invoke the act.
The NRC's assumption that a terrorist attack on an ISFSI at a permanently shut down nuclear plant should be backed, at least, by their conducting force-on-force tests of the untested security they are relying so much on to protect Americans.
In the force-on-force tests conducted at operating reactors, the mock bad guys "win" a small percentage of the time (about 4 to 5 percent.) That's good. It shows the tests don't ask simply questions like "Who's buried in Grant's Tomb" and accept "Dead people" as a correct answer. The losses allow security weaknesses to be remedied before real bad guys can exploit them. Force-on-force tests are essential in determining that security is sufficient and identifying gaps needing to be closed.
We hope you all are staying safe in these times. Our community has spent the weekend honoring our ancestors and beloved dead as many cultures and cultures pause at this time of year to remember our beloveds. Sending up love and prayers for our community members who have lost friends and family this year in particular.
There are some exciting announcements in this month's newsletter so read on to learn more!
Ypsilanti Says NO to a Data Center
The Ypsilanti City Council unanimously approved a resolution in opposition to the University of Michigan in partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory’s planned massive data center in Ypsilanti Township. A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings, used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. This data center was intended for AI research, but both UofM and Los Alamos have a history of nuclear weapons research as well. Ypsi is a member of Mayors for Peace, an international organization working against nuclear weapons and for world peace. Interestingly, Ann Arbor is also a member while simultaneously the home base for the University of Michigan, which has a Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences (NERS) program.
Holtec Int'l Stopped in New Mexico
On Indigenous Peoples Day, Holtec International and Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance’s plan to build the world’s largest nuclear waste dump in New Mexico has been stopped after a decade long struggle by a coalition of Indigenous, environmental, state governments, and public interest allies! The planned site would have contained fifty canisters of spent nuclear fuel for 40 years, as a temporary storage site, which is laughable as Holtec planned to scale up to 10,000 canisters eventually. Holtec is also responsible for the revival of the Palisades nuclear power plant and CRAFT is one of many orgs working together to oppose Holtec here in the Midwest.
Nuclear Waste 101
We’re always educating about the threat of nuclear power and the dangers of power plants and waste storage facilities. But what exactly are the problems? We are including a resource from Beyond Nuclear explaining what nuclear waste is and why it’s dangerous, on both the personal and national scale. For instance: did you know that indirect exposure to radiation can damage your DNA, resulting in inheritable mutations? The nuclear industry is a threat here and now, as well as to future generations of our communities and our environments.
Citizen's Resistance At Fermi Two (CRAFT) is an Indigenous-led, grassroots, organization, committed to an accessible, fair, and just energy future for all! CRAFT originally formed after the Christmas Day 1993 incident at the Fermi2 nuclear reactor that dumped 1.5 million gallons of untreated toxic, radioactive water into Lake Erie. We will continue to push for the closing of Fermi2, and for a safer world powered by renewables.
The Susquehanna Steam Electric Station is part of the Allegheny Electric Cooperative Inc. (Photo via U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission)
One of two nuclear reactors at the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station in Luzerne County shut down automatically Tuesday night at the same time firefighters were dispatched to the plant, its owner Talen Energy reported to federal regulators.
A spokesperson for the company said an incident occurred when workers were filling a hydrogen tank and a cloud of the flammable gas unexpectedly ignited, triggering the shutdown. Hydrogen is normally vented when the tank is filled to ensure proper storage, Talen’s director of communications Taryne Williams said in a statement.
“Out of an abundance of caution, plant personnel contacted EMS. First responders were dispatched, but no emergency actions were necessary as there was no remaining fire and no injuries,” Williams said.
“The plant responded as designed and as part of its built-in safety mechanisms, Susquehanna Unit 2 went offline without incident,” Williams added. “It is currently stable, and operators are in the process of returning the unit to service. The station remains in a safe condition and there are no injuries or risk to employees or the public.”
Video captured by a firefighter driving near the plant at the time of the shutdown and posted on Facebook shows a prolonged bright flash that illuminated a cloud of smoke or vapor above the ground.
According to Talen’s report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the plant’s Unit 2 reactor was operating at 100% power around 7 p.m. when it shut down in a safety procedure known as a SCRAM. The NRC defines a SCRAMas the sudden shut down of a reactor by the rapid insertion of control rods that halt the nuclear reaction. Talen said all systems performed as expected.
SCRAM events occur when a nuclear power plant’s control systems sense conditions outside of normal parameters. It triggers an automatic process to stop the reactor and other systems to safely shut down the plant, Dave Lochbaum, former director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said.
Lochbaum, who worked as a consultant at the Susquehanna plant, said it’s not unusual for the cause of a SCRAM to be unknown immediately after the event. Talen has 60 days to investigate and report its findings to the NRC along with steps taken to correct the issue.
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“The owner wants to make sure that they fix the problem too. They’re trying to make money,” he said.
The Unit 2 reactor may resume operation before the follow-up report is submitted, Lochbaum said, but the NRC has inspectors assigned to the plant who will verify that it is safe to restart.
The Susquehanna Steam Electric Station reactors have had eight SCRAM events since 2020, according to the NRC, which has recorded 29 SCRAM shutdowns at nuclear plants across the country so far this year.
“The local fire department responded to the site with lights and sirens active which caused heightened public concern on social media. An event of potential public interest notification was made to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA),” the report said.
Talen said in the report filed Tuesday night that it was investigating the event.
“The NRC is satisfied the plant responded appropriately to the situation, and the plant and community remain safe,” the agency said in a statement.
PEMA did not immediately respond to inquiries by the Capital-Star.
The 2,400 megawatt nuclear power plant in Salem Township is one of several Pennsylvania power plants that have attracted interest from data center operators.
Amazon Web Services announced in March that it had purchased a 1,200 acre site adjacent to the plantfrom Houston-based Talen. The company expects to build out the site with data centers. In June, Talen and Amazon entered a power purchase agreement in which the plant would supply more than 1,900 megawatts of electricity to power the data centers.
Despite their considerable allure in the eyes of many, and despite being put forth as the cure to the energy crisis, nuclear reactors are not green.
Air pollution, global warming, and energy security are three of the biggest problems facing the world. Many have suggested that new nuclear reactors can help solve these problems. However, due to the long time from planning to operation alone, new reactors are useless for solving any of these problems. This is just one of seven issues with nuclear electricity that illustrate why it can’t be classified as “green.” Developing more clean, renewable energy is a viable solution.
Long Planning-to-Operation (PTO) Time The planning-to-operation (PTO) time of a nuclear reactor includes the time to identify a site, obtain a site permit, purchase or lease the land, obtain a construction permit, finance and insure the construction, install transmission, negotiate a power purchase agreement, obtain permits, build the plant, connect it to transmission, and obtain an operating license.
New reactors now require PTO times of seventeen to twenty-three years in North America and Europe and twelve to twenty-three years worldwide. The only two reactors built from scratch in the United States since 1996 were two in Georgia. They had PTO times of seventeen and eighteen years (construction times of ten and eleven years). The Olkiluoto 3 reactor in Finland began operating in 2023 after a PTO time of twenty-three years. A French reactor began operating in 2024 after a PTO time of twenty years. Hinkley Point C in the UK is estimated to have a PTO time of up to twenty-three years. Four UAE reactors had PTO times of twelve to fifteen years (construction times of nine years). A Chinese reactor in Shidao Bay had a PTO time of seventeen years. China’s Haiyang 1 and 2 had PTO times of thirteen and fourteen years. No reactor in history has had a PTO time of less than ten years. Today, that number is twelve years.
Cost The 2025 cost of electricity for the new Vogtle nuclear reactors is $199 (169 to 228) per megawatt-hour. This compares with $61.5 (thirty-seven to eighty-six) for onshore wind and $58 (thirty-eight to seventy-eight) for utility-scale solar PV. Thus, new nuclear costs three (two to 6.2) times as much as new solar and wind. But nuclear’s cost does not include the cost to clean up the three Fukushima Dai-ichi reactor meltdowns, estimated at $460 to $640 billion, or ten to 18.5 percent of the capital cost of every reactor worldwide. Also, the cost of storingnuclear waste for 200,000 years is ignored. About $500 million is spent yearly in the United States to safeguard waste.
Air Pollution and Global Warming From Nuclear There is no such thing as a close-to-zero-emission nuclear power plant. Carbon-equivalent emissions per unit of electricity from new nuclear power plants are nine to thirty-seven times those of onshore wind. Higher nuclear emissions are due to emissions from the background electric grid during the long PTO time of nuclear as compared with that of wind, emissions from mining and refining uranium, emissions from constructing and decommissioning a reactor, and heat and water-vapor emissions during reactor operations.
Weapons Proliferation Risk The growth of nuclear electricity has historically increased the ability of several nations, most recently Iran, to enrich uranium or harvest plutonium to build or attempt to build nuclear weapons. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states, with “robust evidence and high agreement,” that “barriers to and risks associated with an increasing use of nuclear energy include…nuclear weapons proliferation concerns…” Building a reactor allows a country to import and secretly enrich uranium and harvest plutonium from uranium fuel rods to help develop nuclear weapons. This does not mean every country will, but some have. Small modular reactors (SMRs) increase this risk, because SMRs can be sold more readily to and transported to countries without nuclear power.
Meltdown Risk To date, 1.5 percent of all nuclear power plants built have melted down to some degree. Meltdowns have been either catastrophic (Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986; three reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi, Japan, in 2011) or damaging (Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979; Saint-Laurent, France, in 1980). The nuclear industry claims that new reactor designs are safe. But new designs are generally untested, and there is no guarantee that a new reactor will survive a disaster.
Waste Risk Consumed fuel rods from nuclear reactors are radioactive waste. Most rods are stored near the reactor that used them. This has given rise to hundreds of radioactive waste sites that must be maintained for at least 200,000 years. The more nuclear waste that accumulates, the greater the risk of a leak that damages water supply, crops, animals, and/or humans.
Mining Lung Cancer Risk Underground uranium mining, which is about half of all uranium mining, causes lung cancer in miners because uranium mines contain radon gas, some of whose decay products are carcinogenic. Wind and solar do not have this risk because they do not require continuous fuel mining, only one-time mining to produce the infrastructure, and such mining does not involve radon.
In sum, new nuclear takes seven to twenty-one years longer, costs two to 6.2 times as much, and emits nine to thirty-seven times the pollution per unit of electricity as new wind or solar. Beyond simply not being “green,” nuclear energy also has weapons proliferation risks, meltdown risks, waste risks, and mining lung cancer risks, which clean renewables avoid. SMRs will continue most of these problems and increase the risk of proliferation. In 2024, China added 378 gigawatts of wind, solar, and hydropower, ninety-five times the nuclear power it finished. Thus, even where nuclear is growing fastest, renewables are beating it by two orders of magnitude.
Finally, many existing reactors are so costly, their owners are demanding subsidies to stay open. But subsidizing existing nuclear may increase carbon emissions and costs versus replacing the plants with wind or solar.
About the Author: Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson Dr. Mark Z. Jacobsonis a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and the Author of “No Miracles Needed: How Today’s Technology can Save our Climate and Clean our Air.” He has also developed and applied three-dimensional atmosphere-biosphere-ocean computer models and solvers to simulate and understand air pollution, weather, climate, and renewable energy systems. Further, he has developed roadmaps to transition countries, states, cities, and towns to 100% clean, renewable energy for all purposes and computer models to examine grid stability in the presence of 100% renewable energy. He has a B.S. in Civil Engineering, a B.A. in Economics, and a M.S. in Environmental Engineering (1988) from Stanford University, and an M.S. (1991) and Ph.D. (1994) in Atmospheric Science from University of California at Los Angele
Holtec International in Camden, N.J. May 10, 2019. JOE LAMBERTI/COURIER POST-USA TODAY NETWORK Adrian Hedden Carlsbad Current-Argus achedden@currentargus.com
Local officials in southeast New Mexico are searching for a new path to see a nuclear facility built and operated near the border between Eddy and Lea counties, after a company planning to do so terminated the project.
In canceling its plans, New Jersey-based Holtec International pointed to a tide of opposition from state officials – despite local support in Carlsbad and Hobbs – to its proposal to store spent nuclear fuel rods brought in from power plants around the country.
Holtec first applied for a federal license for the facility in 2017, touching off a controversial licensing process that was delayed by litigation and plagued by opposition from the state administration, New Mexico’s congressional delegation and environmental advocates.
The company was recruited to the location by the Eddy Lea Energy Alliance, a consortium of local officials from the two counties and the cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs. The Alliance owns the 1,000-acre plot of land where the facility would have operated.
Company officials wrote in a July 28 letter to the Alliance that the project “was impossible” amid strong opposition from state lawmakers and current agreements in place with local leaders, stating the company was terminating an agreement to buy the land from the Alliance once the facility was operational.
Holtec spokesperson Patrick O’Brien confirmed Wednesday, Oct. 8, that the company and the Alliance agreed to part ways, allowing the Alliance to seek other companies to develop the site and Holtec to pursue projects in other states amid recent efforts by the U.S. Department of Energy to facilitate state consent.
“After discussions with our longtime partner in the HI-STORE project, the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, and due to the untenable path forward for used fuel storage in New Mexico, we mutually agreed upon canceling the agreement,” O’Brien wrote in an email.
“This allows for (the Alliance) to work to redevelop the property in a manner that fits their needs and allows Holtec to work with other states who are amenable to used fuel storage based on the recent DOE work on public education and outreach.”
During a Wednesday, Oct. 8, meeting of the Alliance held in a Carlsbad, Chair John Heaton said the Alliance offered to dissolve a noncompete clause, which would allow Holtec to pursue other projects in Colorado and Utah, while continuing to pursue the site in New Mexico.
He said the company’s president, Krishna Singh, responded that he “would not put another penny” into New Mexico after heavy state opposition was voiced and the project delayed.
The Alliance’s board voted unanimously to accept the letter and termination of the project.
“He is just so frustrated with the constant roadblocks from the state of New Mexico,” Heaton said of Singh. “They just said they’re through. They want to cancel it.”
Supreme Court favors nuclear storage
The company appeared ready to build the facility which would hold up to 100,000 metric tons of the refuse after a U.S. Supreme Court verdict in June reinstated a federal license to build and operate the site.
Justices ruled the project’s opponents who initially challenged the license for the site had no legal standing to enter the licensing process in the first place.
That left Holtec and its supporters claiming victory and expecting the project to move forward, after more than a decade of debate, public hearings, and negotiations between the company and the Alliance.
But Senate Bill 53, passed by state lawmakers in 2023 barred any state agency from issuing permits Holtec would need to operate the site, a problem noted in Holtec’s letter along with the overall “political climate” in New Mexico.
“Unfortunately, the passage of state legislation that effectively prohibits the construction of the (consolidated interim storage facility), combined with the continued public opposition expressed by New Mexico’s current administration, has made the project impossible in the near future,” read the letter signed by William F. Gill, Holtec vice president and senior counsel.
During the Wednesday meeting, Heaton made a motion for the Alliance to accept the July 28 letter from Holtec canceling the land sale and a revenue sharing agreement. The motion was supported by a unanimous vote.
Other nuclear options considered
Heaton said the site could still be used for a nuclear project developed by a different company to either store or repurpose the spent fuel, but that such a move would require a new license application process.
“Any other entity that would want to create an interim storage facility at the site would need to go through the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). It (the license) is not assignable,” Heaton said.
Hobbs Mayor Sam Cobb said that if Holtec officially terminates its role in the project, the Alliance must seek another company to build and bring the facility into service.
He argued that the commission, the U.S. government’s main approval arm for nuclear facilities, already approved the project federally, meaning it could be viable with another willing participant.
“I think it’s incumbent on us to explain any possible forward movement at the site which the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) has deemed suitable,” he said. “The nuclear industry is resurging and it’s going to keep expanding.”
But Heaton countered that the project as approved involved “proprietary” technology owned by Holtec, meaning a new company would need to pay Holtec for its use or seek approval for a new design.
He said Holtec has built but not operated storage facilities in other areas and could be open to doing so for a new operator of the facility with new federal approval.
“They will still have to go through the process,” Heaton said. “That is the big barrier.”
He did say Wisconsin-based Shine Technologies might be ideal for a different project at the site in lieu of Holtec’s participation.
In February, Shine Technologies announced it was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy to receive funding through its Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program to aid in developing technology to reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
That could involve the Alliance’s site, Heaton said. He said the fuel rods initially planned to be stored at Holtec’s facility could instead be reprocessed at the location, potentially by Shine Technologies or a similar company.
“Reprocessing has much more economic benefit than storage,” Cobb said. “We probably need to put together a plan to make those presentations.”
An aerial view shows a natural gas processing plant under construction in Pennsylvania’s Washington County on Oct. 26, 2017. Credit: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
First in a series about rising electricity prices in Pennsylvania.Read the second story here.
In 2013, when the Appalachian fracking rush was still in its early days, then President Barack Obama extolled its benefits in his State of the Union address. Not only had natural gas already helped to lower America’s carbon emissions, it could protect Americans from the fluctuations of the global oil market, Obama said. And there was one more important benefit: “Nearly everyone’s energy bill is lower because of it.”
Obama’s words echoed fracking’s champions in politics, business and government, who boasted that natural gas would save Americans money—perhaps nowhere more fervently than in Pennsylvania, the epicenter of the boom.
“Having that kind of a resource and that kind of production of energy right in our own backyard does help to keep the price of natural gas down for customers and the price of electricity down too,” the former chairman of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, Terry Fitzpatrick, told television viewers in 2011. “So it’s very important to the people of Pennsylvania.”
But the savings Obama and others touted were short-lived for many Pennsylvanians, followed by punishing increases that are on track to balloon even further as forecasts for demand skyrocket in the age of AI. The result is a growing energy affordability crisis, a nightmare collision of higher utility bills, climate change and shrinking federal aid.
After state Republicans fielded “distressed calls from Pennsylvanians asking for an inquiry into rising energy prices,” the Pennsylvania House Republican Policy Committee held a hearing in 2023 to learn more about the reasons for a “dramatic increase in energy costs for residents and businesses.”
“With our immense resources, and our status as a net-energy exporter, one would think the People of PA would receive lower energy prices,” the committee wrote. “But this is not the case.”
David Callahan, then the president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry trade group for companies fracking in the Marcellus formation, said natural gas was “a solution to poverty” that is “most beneficial to lower income individuals and communities of color.” He testified that the state Department of Environmental Protection was to blame for rising prices because permitting delays held up fracking projects.
That argument didn’t address a fundamental contradiction: If Pennsylvania is producing so much more gas, why are prices going up? Why aren’t its residents benefiting more from the resource beneath their feet?
An aerial view of a fracking pad in Westmoreland County, Pa. Credit: Ted Auch/FracTracker Alliance
Impossible Choices
Natural gas production in Pennsylvania more than doubled between 2013 and 2024, and consumption rose faster than in any other state. The rise in natural gas consumption in Pennsylvania has largely been driven by electricity as coal power plants went offline. Now close to 60 percent of the state’s electricity comes from gas, far above the national average. Pennsylvania is awash in excess power, sending more electricity outside its borders than any other state and exporting, domestically and internationally, three-quarters of the gas it produces.
These shifts have not translated to lower costs for Pennsylvanians. Comparing average household electricity prices from 2010 to 2024, residents here haven’t fared better than consumers in many states with little or no natural gas production.
After a period of stability, Pennsylvania electricity rates have soared since 2020. The average household electricity bill in the state has risen 31 percent in that time, according to the Energy Information Administration, faster than the national average by six percentage points.
Some of the highest increases in Pennsylvania are in the southwest, the heart of fracking country, where residents often live in close proximity to wells and bear the heaviest health and environmental burdens caused by drilling.
Gas industry advocates say increases in the past few years are blips due to price shocks from the Ukraine war and other factors that affected the global economy, not a reason to question Pennsylvania’s resource decisions.
But the long-term record is more difficult to defend.
A review of federal electricity data since 2005—a year selected because it preceded the development of the Marcellus, the shale gas deposit under Pennsylvania—shows that the period when abundant gas contributed to stable electricity costs didn’t last long.
The state’s household electricity prices were the 14th highest in the country in 2005. In 2024, they were also 14th. Pennsylvania’s prices were above the national average in 2005 and remain so now.
Gas costs aren’t the only driver. Utilities spent significantly more on wires and other grid infrastructure that were little noticed when fuel costs were flat.
Still, the state’s dependence on a single energy source is a significant part of the story.
Twenty-four percent of Pennsylvanians struggled to pay their energy bills in 2024, according to census data, up from 19 percent in 2021, and disconnection rates are rising.
Data from utilities shows a 25 percent increase in electricity terminations between 2023 and 2024 alone.
Elected officials, activists and utility lawyers who help people with their energy bills have watched the reverberations ripple across the state. A suddenly higher bill for a person on a tight budget means impossible choices, between food and heat or between medicine and air conditioning. Terminations can lead to debt, eviction and family separations. In heat waves and cold snaps, and for people who rely on electricity to power medical equipment, they can be life-threatening.
“More and more people cannot afford to keep energy on,” said Elizabeth Marx, the executive director at the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, a legal advocacy group that assists people with their bills.
When people can’t keep up with their utility bills, they try to make do with less electricity, she said, which often has serious consequences for their health.
“In the wintertime, I’m usually not turning on the heat because I don’t want the electric bill to go up,” said Amber Gale, a resident of Clearfield County in central Pennsylvania. “We unfortunately don’t have any air conditioning. We can’t afford to get it, but we do have some fans.” She tries to avoid turning the fans on in the summer, even as the temperature soars.
In all seasons, she constantly watches how much electricity she uses, trying to avoid spikes in her bills.
The Pennsylvania Gas Discount
For almost 20 years, the gas industry sold fracking to Pennsylvanians as a revolutionary economic engine that would bring jobs, infrastructure investment, energy security, tax revenue for local governments—and lower energy bills.
“Abundant natural gas in the Marcellus not only means lower heating bills for families and small businesses, but lower electricity rates as well, as they are tied to prices for natural gas,” a 2011 fact sheet from the Marcellus Shale Coalition said. In the early 2010s, the industry paid for economic studies carried out by researchers at Penn State University that estimated that Pennsylvanians had already saved millions of dollars in energy bills because of fracking, $27.7 million on electricity alone.
“Electricity prices for all Pennsylvanians are down nearly 40 percent since the onset of the shale gas revolution, thanks to the increased use of natural gas for electric generation,” David Spigelmyer, then the coalition’s president, wrote in 2016.
In 2017, the University of Pennsylvania released a study reflecting on more than 10 years of shale gas development. As things stood then, the fracking revolution had delivered a “clear win for consumers” in Pennsylvania, said Christina Simeone, the researcher who authored the study and now works for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Simeone’s study showed a “Pennsylvania Gas Discount” from fracking that lowered gas and electricity commodity prices, though residential consumers were still paying more than national averages. From 2007 t0 2016, consumers in the state experienced fewer service terminations and less energy debt.
But Simeone warned that the discount could disappear, especially as companies exported more gas out of state. “It is also important to understand that erosion of the PA Gas Discount has the potential to also increase electric power prices,” she wrote.
Her prediction was prescient. Earlier in the fracking boom, lack of pipeline infrastructure meant that the gas was essentially stranded in the state, sold at lower prices than would be available elsewhere.
Today, with additional infrastructure in place, the local cost benefit has been undercut by the state’s role as a major supplier to much of the country and abroad.
This is a boon for companies that produce gas, but it does little for the state’s consumers.
“Pennsylvanians are competing for their own gas with other countries that are willing to pay a lot of money for it,” said Marx, with the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project. “There’s no requirement, like, ’You shall provide this amount of gas to the people whose backyards it’s pumped out of,’ right? If you have people willing to pay more to ship it out of state, as long as the infrastructure exists to ship it out of state, you’re going to ship it out of state.”
Because Pennsylvania’s electricity grid is now so reliant on natural gas, when gas prices spike, utility bills go up, too. More service disconnections follow. Marx said there is a “direct line” between rising gas prices and more people losing access to heating and cooling in their homes.
These factors are magnified as the country enters a period in which electricity demand is rising to serve the growth of data centers and AI. Rising demand for electricity contributes to rising prices for gas, which is Pennsylvania’s and the country’s leading fuel for power plants.
“People Are Struggling”
Before Elizabeth Marx specialized in utility law, she was an attorney at the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence. In that role, she handled a case where custody was transferred to an abusive parent because the other parent had lost electricity service.
“The judge thought it was safer for that child to be with the batterer than it was to be in a home without electricity,” she said. That case gave her insight into the unexpected ways that energy precarity can unravel lives, compromising safety, housing, health, education and stability.
Marx’s work is deeply personal for her. When she was a child, she and her mother and siblings escaped from domestic violence, leading to a period of upheaval. After leaving a shelter, the family lived in a 19th century farmhouse with nearly original windows and extremely high costs for heating.
“It’s not an academic exercise for me,” she said. “I lived poverty.” She and her family experienced energy insecurity, though it didn’t have a name then.
Today, she’s increasingly alarmed by the situation in her home state. She has a bird’s-eye view via the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project’s emergency hotline for people seeking help with their utility bills. These days, the calls are coming from across the state, Marx said.
“You’d find energy insecurity everywhere you go. There’s certainly high concentrations in Philadelphia, and increasingly high concentrations in Pittsburgh. But we’ve got clients in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania, and Erie, Pennsylvania, and everywhere in between,” Marx said. That’s why promising Pennsylvanians lower energy prices was a winning political strategy in the 2024 election: “It resonates with people, because there’s not a single person that’s going to tell you their energy prices haven’t gone up.”
Between 2006 and 2025, western Pennsylvania’s Duquesne Light Co. and West Penn Power, and Penelec in northern and central Pennsylvania all increased rates more than 110 percent, according to an annual rate survey from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission that started in 2006. Met-Ed, in the southeast, increased rates 95 percent. These increases far outpaced the rate of inflation in this period. (The percentages are based on comparisons of the total electricity bill for households using 500 kilowatt-hours per month.)
“In my office, we see so many people, young people living in their first apartments, seniors who are on fixed incomes, parents with really hungry kids who are holding their breath when they get their electric bill every month, because it could be a big shock,” state Rep. Mandy Steele, a Democrat representing an area just north of Pittsburgh, said during a virtual discussion in April about rising electricity costs.
Jessica Shirley, secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection, shared her own experience in that meeting of opening a bill in the dead of the prior winter. “I was like, ’We’re just gonna be cold, guys.’”
For Amber Gale, who moved from Pittsburgh to Clearfield County in 2020, increases have meant shortchanging her budget for food and clothing and going without heat whenever possible. “When we first moved, our average electric bill was anywhere from $50 to $60. Now, this past winter, it was about $120 to $170,” she said. She still can’t figure out why the bill for her small apartment, which uses electric heat, is so high.
Gale has experienced what it’s like to survive without electricity at home: walking to the library to charge her phone, going to the laundromat to wash clothes, relying on friends or family for other essential needs. She fears that increasing utility bills will land her in the same situation again.
“Not being able to afford anything, having our electricity turned off right now, getting sick and dying from the heat: That’s what I’m really worried about,” said Gale, who has diabetes, one of many chronic conditions exacerbated by high temperatures. “I’ve never been able to handle the heat well, so it makes me really sick.” There are no cooling centers close to where she lives and few options for public transportation.
In Braddock, a steel town south of Pittsburgh, seniors on fixed incomes are struggling the most with utility bills, said Chardaé Jones, the former mayor of Braddock and a regional organizer for the Pennsylvania Policy Center. “There’s only so far that they can stretch their budget,” she said. “It’s not like they’re using more electricity. They’re just getting charged more.” Braddock is served by Duquesne Light.
When intense storms tore through the Pittsburgh region in April, an example of extreme weather increasing as the climate changes, people in Braddock were left without power for days. Duquesne and other Pennsylvania utilities have increased investment in infrastructure updates, in part to contend with the climate-fueled storms that the state’s natural-gas use contributes to, but data shows little or even no improvement in several indicators of grid reliability.
As climate change fuels more frequent heat waves and extreme weather events, and prices are likely to keep rising, summers in Pennsylvania will be increasingly dangerous.
“I’m worried about seniors. I’m worried about newborns. I’m worried about medically vulnerable households not being able to keep their homes at adequate temperatures in the summer,” said Joline Price at Community Legal Services, a nonprofit that provides legal help to low-income Philadelphia residents. “The only thing we’re going to see with increasing prices is increasing shut-off notices.”
She’s watched the number of Philadelphia households needing help with their utility bills rise for the past five years.
“The assistance that’s available has been going down,” added Price, a divisional supervising attorney specializing in energy. “People are struggling.”
Philadelphia’s aging housing stock, higher levels of poverty, urban heat islands and warmer climate compared to the rest of the state mean that the city is particularly vulnerable. “I’m concerned about not being able to pay for my electric,” said Carol Foy, a Philadelphian who tries to keep her usage down, a difficult task. Her husband needs electricity to power a medical machine for his heart, she said.
Like Gale, she worries about what the future will bring. She’s seen what can happen when someone is unable to get help with their utility bills. “I had a friend that passed away like 10 to 15 years ago, because she didn’t want to turn on her heat. She froze to death because she was scared that she couldn’t afford to pay her electric bill,” Foy said.
Cuts to federal funding that used to be a lifeline for people like Gale and Foy are making a bad situation worse. Earlier this year, the Trump administration laid off the entire staff overseeing the national Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps Americans with heating and cooling costs. The program provided aid to hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians every year, keeping families out of debt and their power and heat turned on.
In Pennsylvania, the funding had also been used to pay for air conditioners for residents, one possible avenue of help for Gale now potentially closed off, though even before staff was cut, need far exceeded supply. The Trump administration has proposed eliminating funding for the energy assistance program entirely, though so far Congress has rejected this proposal.
“There’s no help,” Gale said. “Anytime you try to get help or ask someone or call a government agency, they just tell you to call another one, and then they tell you to call another one.”
The Resource “Right in Our Backyard”
Inside Climate News asked the Marcellus Shale Coalition and the companies that own the state’s largest electricity utilities the same question: How do they explain the recent price surge?
Patrick Henderson, vice president of government affairs and communication for the coalition, took issue with using the rates people pay—retail electricity prices—to assess what’s happening because customers’ bills have many costs beyond fuel.
“I’d find the nearest window, open it and throw out comparisons of retail prices,” he said.
He prefers to use figures that separate the regulated portion of the retail price, which mainly includes delivery charges, and the unregulated portion, which includes the electricity supply and is closely tied to the price of gas.
The Public Utility Commission’s rate survey makes it easy to analyze changes to different parts of the bill over time. Looking at the survey from 2006 to 2016, the regulated and unrelated parts of the bill for most Pennsylvania utilities was close to a 50-50 split.
From 2017 to 2022, the ratio shifted to roughly a 55-45 split, regulated charges exceeding the unregulated ones. Delivery charges grew while gas prices were close to flat.
From 2023 to 2025, a substantial growth in the unregulated charges as gas prices rose helped return bills to about a 50-50 split.
But this attempt to summarize the pricing belies some big differences between utilities. For example, Duquesne Light has been an outlier for much of the last decade in having a large share of its overall bill taken up by regulated delivery charges and a small share—as low as 31 percent in 2021—taken up by unregulated charges.
Henderson listed several factors that he thinks should be part of the conversation about rising electricity rates.
First, he points to the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard, a state requirement that utilities get a certain percentage of their electricity from solar, wind, hydropower and natural gas captured from coal mines and landfills, along with other qualifying sources. Utilities spent $702 million complying with the law in 2024, which gets passed on to customers. This was equivalent to 3.9 percent of Pennsylvania consumers’ total spending on electricity that year.
Second, he said the 2019 proposal for Pennsylvania to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, has led power plant owners and others in the electricity market to shift their spending in ways that lead to higher costs. So far, the state has not joined the carbon-trading initiative due to legal challenges, and it’s difficult to distinguish between investments companies might have made in anticipation of RGGI membership and decisions that would have happened anyway.
Henderson’s third point is that increases in gas prices in the last few years were tied to global events such as the Ukraine war, and some of the more recent increases reflect rising electricity demand to serve data centers and other large users.
While acknowledging that the price increases have happened, Henderson thinks shale gas producers deserve credit for the years of stable prices.
Prices would “be a hell of a lot higher if they weren’t being mitigated by a cheap, abundant resource right in our backyard,” he added.
Consumer and environmental advocates strongly disagree with Henderson’s points about the alternative energy standard and RGGI. They note that some of these arguments may have currency when talking to elected officials or people affiliated with the oil and gas industry, but they are off base as part of any serious attempt to explain the major factors behind the state’s pricing trends.
How could RGGI be driving price increases when it has not become policy in Pennsylvania? “Utilities are creatures of stability,” said Marx. “They don’t respond to potentials.”
The problem, she said, is that the oil and gas industry is exaggerating the effects of small factors, such as the alternative energy standard, while downplaying huge factors, such as the harm of relying so heavily on one fuel.
“The most recent jump that we have seen post-pandemic is nearly entirely driven by the gas export market,” she said. “I would point to the substantial increase in LNG exports that have Pennsylvanians competing in the world market for gas the way they do for oil.”
Pennsylvania’s utility companies explained rate increases as largely driven by the need to make investments in equipment to improve reliability, along with increases in the market price of gas.
“PECO’s rate trend remained relatively stable for many years, with more noticeable changes beginning in 2021,” said Candice Womer, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia-area utility. “These adjustments reflect the company’s ongoing commitment to strengthening the energy grid, enhancing service reliability, and supporting the region’s transition to cleaner energy.”
Other utilities had similar comments. For example, Matt Neistein, director of communications for Duquesne Light, said recent rate increases are because the company is “investing in the replacement and modernization of our grid infrastructure.”
Todd Meyers, a spokesman for the four FirstEnergy utilities in Pennsylvania, said the company’s customers pay rates comparable to those of other investor-owned utilities in the state. He said any differences can largely be explained by contrasts in population density and topography. “Some have large rural territories while others have a more urban footprint, with each requiring different electrical equipment, infrastructure and staffing levels,” he said.
Some of the people who predicted the current affordability crisis are incredulous about what they see as weak excuses from the companies that have benefited.
“What has happened over the last 20 to 25 years is that these utilities have essentially boiled the frog,” said Patrick Cicero, who was head of the Pennsylvania Office of Consumer Advocate until January. “They’ve had increases over increases over increases.”
He had a reputation for being an aggressive defender of utility consumers’ interests. Now he is working on the legal staff at the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project, alongside Marx.
The low price of natural gas in the late 2010s, he said, meant that utilities could increase their delivery charges without having much of an effect on overall bills.
Then delivery charges kept going up as gas prices spiked in the last few years.
Cicero doesn’t blame gas companies for trying to increase demand for their product and he doesn’t blame utilities for proposing rate increases. He places most of the blame on the Public Utility Commission for not being skeptical enough of utilities’ spending.
“Utilities are acting in their rational self interest all the time, and it is a shame that our system has not held them more accountable,” he said.
When asked for an explanation for rising rates, the commission said that it only has oversight for part of the electricity bill, and that the process for setting the regulated portion of rates is transparent.
“We do not set or control generation prices,” said Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, the Public Utility Commission’s press secretary, in an email. “Those are based on wholesale market forces and supplier pricing decisions. However, we understand consumer frustration when energy costs rise, regardless of the cause.”
Asked if the Marcellus is a net benefit to electricity ratepayers, he said this:
“The advent of Marcellus Shale production in Pennsylvania, beginning in the late 2000s, contributed to a lengthy period of relatively low and stable energy prices. But market dynamics have changed dramatically over the past several years, leading to increasing and more volatile energy prices.”
Energy Dependence
When Obama gave an important speech on American energy policy in March 2011, the “enormous” potential of natural gas played a starring role. The U.S. needed to reduce its reliance on foreign oil, Obama said, to protect consumers from “being a victim to shifts in the oil market.” Natural gas could help ensure America’s security and prosperity, he said.
Obama’s vision for American energy independence has not come to pass. The rise in natural gas exports is creating the same challenges for consumers that he had hoped to avoid by weaning the country off oil imports.
President Donald Trump wants to accelerate that trend: He has made expanding liquified natural gas exports a priority of his second administration. One of Trump’s first acts in his second term as president was to end a pause on additional export terminal permits that was put in place under President Joe Biden. The Marcellus Shale Coalition has supported Trump’s LNG policy; its then-president said in December that LNG exports “promote jobs” and “deliver energy savings for consumers.”
“The facts are clear: expanding America’s LNG exports is good for Americans and good for the world,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in May.
Although the Trump administration has said that providing affordable energy for Americans is a priority, the president’s emphasis on increasing LNG exports is likely to have the opposite effect, experts warn.
Pennsylvania could pay as much as $16 billion in additional costs between 2035 and 2050 because of higher natural gas prices if proposed LNG export projects move forward, according to a November report from Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization.
“Trump doesn’t seem to realize that the more LNG you export, the higher people’s home energy bills are going to be. The more we export, the more we expose ourselves to these wild swings in the market,” said Alan Zibel, research director at Public Citizen. “The Trump administration has pretty clearly sold out the future of rural communities in Pennsylvania.”
Over the past 20 years, Pennsylvania has locked itself into a future where its fate is tied to the volatilities of the global price of natural gas, and the people paying the highest price are the same ones that fracking companies promised to help.
After months spent trying to find government resources to assist with paying her climbing energy bills, Gale sees community support as the only real option for help, and she encourages people to look out for each other when they can.
But she acknowledged there were limits. She had realized recently that she was not alone in navigating this new, more expensive reality.
“It’s not just me. It’s everyone,” she said. “Everybody’s struggling.”
