New Year, New... Nuclear?

Comanche 3 Coal Power Plant in Pueblo, CO. (Photo: Mike Sweeney for The Colorado Sun)

As a Coloradan who works in renewable energy, I'm always doubly curious when industry news happens closer to home. Pueblo, a Colorado city a couple of hours' drive south of Denver, has been home to a problematic coal power plant for over a decade and is now on the cusp of deciding what may come next to replace it.

Aside from more typical concerns about carbon emissions and local air quality, the Comanche 3 facility has been plagued by numerous problems since it was completed in 2010, averaging per the Colorado Public Utility Commission over 90 days of downtime every year.

Enter the Pueblo Innovative Energy Solutions Advisory Committee, a set of leaders representing diverse community interests tasked with evaluating the status quo and determining what might replace the troubled coal plant (including its impact on the local economy, not least of which would be jobs lost or gained with a new facility).

The Committee, which wrapped up this phase of its work last month, offered various pathways forward, the top recommendation being building a new modular nuclear power plant in its place. However, in spite of not only being a zero-carbon-emitting means of power generation but also having made tremendous advances in reactor design, safety, and waste reduction in recent decades, nuclear remains a hard sell in the United States.

Enormous, chronic cost overruns and NIMBYism are typical challenges to new nuclear, which is inherently complex to build, if not nearly as much of an environmental risk as it was, say, 50 years ago.

Nonetheless, both carbon reduction mandates by utilities and also increasing consumer pressure on companies to clean up their carbon footprints mean nuclear as a key part of the global energy transition isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

It will be super interesting to see what happens next in Pueblo.

---

Further reading:

Xcel Energy agrees to close Pueblo’s Comanche 3 coal plant by 2031
https://coloradosun.com/2022/04/26/comanche-plant-xcel-coal/

Advisory group recommends converting Colorado coal plant to nuclear power
https://www.denverpost.com/2024/01/06/xcel-energy-nuclear-power-pueblo-coal-plant/

New Nuclear Projects Remain a Challenge for Public Power
https://www.fitchratings.com/research/us-public-finance/new-nuclear-projects-remain-challenge-for-public-power-29-11-2023

The Caron-Free Power Project
https://www.cfppllc.com/