A possibility that the Badger Institute reported on last fall moved a little closer to reality this week as the owner of a now-shuttered nuclear power plant near Kewaunee announced it was seeking a license that could let it reopen the plant.
The Utah-based Energy Solutions, which bought the Kewaunee Power Station in 2022 with plans to decommission the plant, said Tuesday that it would start planning and studies needed for a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that could let it reopen the 566-megawatt plant. The company, which said it is working with the parent of utilities We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service, cited “rising energy demand driven by data centers” as driving “the need for reliable, carbon-free power.”
The plant closed in 2013, leaving the Point Beach Nuclear Plant as Wisconsin’s only operating nuclear power station.
The Kewaunee site was among those mentioned in a study last year by the Biden administration’s Energy Department of locations where new nuclear power technology — either improved “advanced nuclear” reactors already being deployed around the world or “small modular reactors” now in development — could be sited.
The study was driven by projected demand from planned data centers, including in Wisconsin. The expected increase in demand comes even as — as a consortium of large-scale Wisconsin electricity customers told regulators last year — “Wisconsin utilities are dramatically reducing electricity capacity through the voluntary, premature retirement of baseload generation,” and they are replacing them with intermittent sources of electricity, generally plantations of wind turbines and solar panels.
Nuclear power plants are consistently more reliable producers of electricity than plants using other fuels.
Wisconsin legislators praised the latest development. “Kewaunee is the perfect first place to bring next generation nuclear,” state Rep. Dave Steffen (R-Howard) told Wisconsin Public Radio, citing its existing infrastructure and connections to power lines, considerations cited by the 2024 Energy Department report.
Steffen is one of the authors, along with state Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin), of a resolution putting Wisconsin’s government on-record as supporting nuclear power.
The Badger Institute supports the resolution.
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