Skip to main content

Why Nuclear Plant Closures Are a Crisis for Small Town USA

Nuclear plants occupy an unusual spot in the towns where they operate: integral but so much in the background that they may seem almost invisible. But when they close, it can be like the earth shifting underfoot.

Lohud.com, the Gannett newspaper that covers the Lower Hudson Valley in New York, took a look around at the experience of towns where reactors have closed, because the Indian Point reactors in Buchanan are scheduled to be shut down under an agreement with Gov. Mario Cuomo.

atty O’Donnell, chairwoman of the Vernon, Vermont, select board, had to drastically cut the town’s budget in the wake of the closure of Vermont Yankee. Photo courtesy of LoHud.com.
Patty O’Donnell, chairwoman of the Vernon, Vermont, select board, had to drastically cut the town’s budget in the wake of the closure of Vermont Yankee. Photo courtesy of LoHud.com.

From sea to shining sea, it was dismal. It wasn’t just the plant employees who were hurt. The losses of hundreds of jobs, tens of millions of dollars in payrolls and millions in property taxes depressed whole towns and surrounding areas. For example:

  • Vernon, Vermont, home to Vermont Yankee for more than 40 years, had to cut its municipal budget in half. The town closed its police department and let the county take over; the youth sports teams lost their volunteer coaches, and Vernon Elementary School lost the plant employees who used to cross the street from the plant’s gate to help pupils with their math homework.
  • The town of Zion, Illinois, north of Chicago, saw property tax revenues from the twin-unit reactor there drop to $1.6 million from $20 million. Taxes on a typical $300,000 house jumped to $20,000 from $8,000. With the loss of jobs and higher taxes, property values dropped sharply.
  • Crystal River, on the Florida Gulf Coast, took 600 jobs with it when it shut down. The average single-family home has dropped more than 25 percent in value between 2008 and 2016.
  • Kewaunee County in Wisconsin had to raise its sales tax half a percent to make up for lost income when the Kewaunee Power Station closed. Local people desperate for jobs are hoping for a state prison to be built.
  • When San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station shut down north of San Clemente, California, 1,000 jobs disappeared at the plant, and more followed at the local hotels and restaurants where people doing temporary work at the plant used to stay.
The pain of those places will spread to others if plants continue to close. At Indian Point, the newspaper reported, the village of Buchanan expects to lose nearly half its tax revenue, and the local school district will lose $20 million—more than 25 percent—of its budget.

People may not notice so much when the plants are running, but reactors make good industrial neighbors. They are almost silent. Apart from a tendency to cause a mild traffic backup at intersections during shift changes, they don’t have a lot of local impact beyond providing steady, year-round employment and lots of tax revenues. They don’t need mile-long trains rumbling through town, or convoys of trucks bringing in raw materials. And the reactors’ product goes out the door as a hum on the wires.

They are subtle when they run, and painfully obvious when they close. Policymakers concerned with the fate of small towns like Vernon, Vermont, Zion, Illinois and many others ought to take note.

The above is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should