Developers are seeking approval to bring a shuttered nuclear power plant in Kewaunee County back online.
Many in the community support bringing nuclear power back to the town of Carlton, but their bigger concern is about other projects that might come with it.
The Kewaunee Power Station closed in 2013 after nearly 40 years in operation. Carlton Town Board Chair David Hardtke told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that the town ran its annual budget off of the utility taxes it brought in. Its closure was a significant blow to the local economy.
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In 2022, the shuttered plant was sold to the Utah-based company EnergySolutions, which is now seeking approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to bring the plant back online.
The town of about 1,000 people held a public meeting about the project, and Hardtke said he heard nearly universal support.
“Residents of the town of Carlton are in favor of it because we have nuclear waste sitting there, so we can’t do anything else with the property,” Hardtke said. “So the best use for it would be to produce more power.”
He described the town as an agricultural community. Hundreds of acres of land around the nuclear plant is rented out to local farmers, who grow soybean, corn and alfalfa crops.
That’s where the real concern lies for the town of Carlton, which Hardtke said has more cattle than people.
The town board has heard from data center companies and solar projects that want to build near the nuclear site to take advantage of the energy infrastructure nearby.
“They’re just crawling out of the woodwork right now, trying to eat up the farmland,” Hardtke said. “Right now, not too many people are willing to sell. I think they see what the future is in it, and they enjoy being agriculture-based. They like the quiet community.”
Data center connection
The pairing of nuclear power plants and data centers is becoming more common, said University of Wisconsin-Madison nuclear engineering professor Ben Lindley.
He’s seen data center operators “co-locating” with nuclear developers to make a “behind-the-meter” arrangement to provide them energy without going through the grid.
Even without those specific deals, Lindley still sees the energy demand of data centers driving more interest in nuclear energy.
“Energy needs from data centers can motivate new generation assets,” he said. “Especially firm sources of power like nuclear energy that have a very high reliability and also as a clean, secure source of electricity.”
This makes the area around the town of Carlton an attractive location for these projects.
About 5 miles to the south sits Wisconsin’s only active nuclear site, the Point Beach Nuclear Plant near Two Rivers.
Last month, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a renewal of the plant’s licenses through 2050.
“It shows that the operators of the plant thought it was economically viable to keep running that unit and do the work required to extend its license,” Lindley said. “This reflects a good deal of work that’s been done on a number of reactors around the United States to understand how they age and good management of continuing to maintain them in a way that they can keep going for these longer periods of operation.”
Long periods of operation are a big factor in the economics of bringing the Kewaunee Power Station back online.
Lindley said engineering projects like these can cost upward of $10 billion and are vulnerable to cost overruns.
EnergySolutions told Hardtke and the town of Carlton that it could take three or four years for the company to get the proper licenses and approvals. Then construction could take another eight to 10 years from there.
