Sarah DeMattio
SS 242-308 Microeconomics
FALL 2015
Current Events Paper #1
Earlier this month, associate editor Sonal Patel of POWER Magazine reported on
the closing of a New England nuclear power plant that’s been providing energy to the
surrounding region for over 40 years. Entergy Corp., an integrated energy company
operating out of Louisiana, has been combatting repeated failures at its Plymouth,
Massachusetts’s plant for some time now (including at least three unplanned shutdowns
in 2015 just so far.) Entergy Corp. does not yet know the exact date of the 680 megawatt
Pilgrim nuclear power plant’s impending closure, but expects operations to conclude
entirely by spring 2019. When asked ‘why?’ after announcing the plant’s closure,
Entergy’s chairman and CEO Leo Denault did not comment on the reported failures
experienced at the Massachusetts location in recent years, but rather cited a series of
troubling market conditions and ever-increasing costs as the true culprits of the nuclear
power plant’s ‘reluctant’ closure. In a statement released on October 13, the CEO named
falling prices of natural gas in New England and a multitude of policy-related issues
including recent state agencies orders’ serving to further increase the region’s dependence
on natural gasses, as specific contributors to what will result in ‘an annual loss of over
$40 million in revenues’ for the Pilgrim location alone.
