Prohibitively expensive cost of safety repairs leads nuclear utilities to instead permanently close age-degraded atomic reactors
June 12, 2013 
"Burning money" image by Gene Case, Avenging Angels2013's 4 atomic reactor closures are the most of any single year in U.S. history. Bloomberg has reported:
"The last wave of U.S. [atomic] plant closures was in the late 1990s, when falling gas prices helped tilt economics in favor of retiring rather than attempting large-scale repairs...
“The decision to shut down rather than retrofit the San Onofre nuclear plant shows the changing economics of the power market,” Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, a Chicago-based advocate of cleaner energy, said in a telephone interview. “We suspect other nuclear plant owners may start reaching the same decision.”
In fact, Dominion Nuclear made just such a decision, to permanently shutdown its Kewaunee atomic reactor on the Lake Michigan shoreline of Wisconsin last month.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on October 22, 2012 that Dominion, referring to its losing battle to remain competitive in a deregulated electricity market, could not afford the needed safety repairs at Kewaunee:
'We looked at all alternatives to keep the unit operating, but we could not make the reductions in the cost without it affecting safety,' [Dominion spokesman Richard] Zuercher said."
As Howard Learner stated above, such market realities begs the question, which reactors will close next? On Feb. 8th, Entergy's brand new CEO, Leo Denault, when asked why several reactors in his fleet were so financially strapped, admitted in an interveiw with Reuters that:
"...some plants are in the more challenging economic situations for a variety of reasons, including 'the market for both energy and capacity, their size, their contracting positions and the investment required to maintain the safety and integrity of the plants.'" (emphases added)