Wow, I just learned we're in the "renewable energy" era.

[Finishline42]

10. There has been a push to support coal fired power plants as baseline

At the expense of nuclear plants. That needs to change.

Exelon Generation announced Thursday it is retiring its Byron and Dresden generating stations in fall of 2021.

The Byron location will close in September of next year, and Dresden, in Morris, will close in November of next year.

Together, the units provide energy to more than four million homes.

Dresden is licensed to operate for another decade and Byron for another 20 years, Exelon said. Together, they employ more than 1,500 full-time employees and 2,000 supplemental workers during refueling outages.

"Although we know in our heads that shutting down the uneconomic Illinois plants is necessary to preserve even more jobs elsewhere, our hearts ache today for the thousands of talented women and men that have served Illinois families for more than a generation and will lose their jobs because of poorly conceived energy policies," said Christopher Crane, president and CEO of Exelon. "But we are only about a year away from shutdown and we need to give our people, the host communities, and regulators time to prepare."

Dresden and Byron face revenue shortfalls in the hundreds of millions of dollars because of declining energy prices and market rules that allow fossil fuel plants to underbid clean resources, Exelon said.

https://abc7chicago.com/exelon-nuclear-plants-illinois-dresden-plant-byron/6393383/#:~:text=Exelon%20Generation%20is%20closing%20two,in%20November%20of%20next%20year.

I don't see us building any new nuclear plants but I think we should use the existing plants as long as possible.