2021 Issue 1: Power Plant Age Chat

HNY everyone! Quick on something I hope to see more chatter about in 2021.

How do we think about the aging fleets for our zero carbon, extremely high failure consequence twins: nuclear & hydro?

(Watts Bar, with both)

In models we kind of assume these fleets can run indefinitely, and we're pushing nuclear op licenses to new heights -- 80 years in some cases. Our hydro fleet (capacity weighted) is 60 years old.

It's true these facilities have tended to be kept online. They retire at much lower rates than fossil plants (tho, FTR, avg retirement age for the past 2 decades is ~40 for nukes and ~70 for hydro -- they are actually old!).

But: what does that actually mean? Hazard, cost, etc.

We can't run these facilities to failure (see pic, St. Francis Dam disaster, me). And it's not great for the grid to run to shutdown, given how big these generators can be.

I'm looking forward to getting into what it physically means to keep these fleets around, or not. HNY!