For decades, Xcel Energy’s sprawling Comanche Station coal facility near Pueblo has generated power for customers across the utility’s service territory in Colorado — and has generated thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue for local governments, schools and special districts.

As part of the state’s transition to powering the electric grid with mostly renewable energy, Xcel will close the third unit on the roughly 700-acre Comanche campus by 2031, shuttering all the company’s coal facilities in Colorado. Xcel, the state’s largest electric utility, has filed a proposal to replace the coal-fired power with wind and solar energy as well as natural gas.

Pueblo-area residents are bracing for their own transition. An advisory committee of labor, business and civic leaders has recommended that Xcel consider replacing the coal plant with small, modular nuclear reactors advanced by the Department of Energy as a zero-emission energy source. A gas plant or more renewables won’t make Pueblo “whole” when it comes to employment and tax revenue, the committee says.

Community activists and other residents counter that the advanced nuclear technology touted as a means to a just transition for Pueblo isn’t ready for prime time. They say results of a recent poll show that area residents prefer wind and solar farms over nuclear or gas plants as a replacement for the facility that has had operational problems since it opened in 2010.

Pueblo resident Jamie Valdez, a member of Nuclear-Free Colorado, said his community could wind up as a guinea pig for an unproven technology while Xcel customers in the Denver area could wind up bearing the costs of a still-developing generation source.

Pueblo gets its electricity from Black Hills Energy.

Xcel Energy-Colorado President Robert Kenney agreed the nuclear technology is still evolving and commercial versions likely won’t be available when the company starts taking bids on projects in the plan’s first phase. But in a recent interview, he said the option isn’t “off the table.”

The company operates nuclear reactors in Minnesota. Xcel Energy’s Fort St Vrain power plant in Platteville was nuclear, but was decommissioned in 1989 and later converted to natural gas.

Xcel calls its proposal, which includes the coal facility in Pueblo, a just transition plan. In 2019, the legislature approved creation of the Office of Just Transition to help workers and communities as coal plants and mines close to meet state and utilities’ carbon-reduction goals and address climate change.

Kenney said in October that Xcel is committed to making payments to help compensate for property tax revenue lost when power plants and mines shut down. The transition plan outlines 10 years of payments of $16.2 million annually for Pueblo County.

Holy Cross Energy and CORE Electric Cooperative, co-owners of the Comanche plant, will also make payments in lieu of taxes.

“The (Colorado) General Assembly has put next to no money into just transition. If the utility isn’t going to do it, who’s going to do it? Or do you just close down all of these communities and tell them to sell their houses at a loss and move to Denver and Boulder?” asked Frances Koncilja, an attorney and former member of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.

Lawmakers approved a total of $30 million for the office in 2021 and 2022, said Wade Buchanan, the director of the Office of Just Transition. The office also receives money from changes to state coal severance laws, expected to total $10 million by 2030.

Koncilja is from Pueblo and was co-chair of the advisory committee that recommended replacing Comanche 3 with advanced nuclear reactors or a gas plant with carbon capture technology, meant to capture and reuse or store carbon dioxide emissions. Xcel formed the Pueblo Innovative Energy Solutions Advisory Committee to help map what comes next when Comanche closes.

The report cites a study by Michael Wakefield, a professor and director of the Thomas V. Healy Center for Business and Economic Research and Services at Colorado State University-Pueblo. He said the coal plant is “one of the most economically impactful industries in the Pueblo community,” generating more than $196 million in benefits a year.

The kinds of power that will be available to replace the coal plant by its closure in 2031 would provide few jobs and pay just a fraction of current tax payments, according to the advisory committee’s report. “Of all of the technologies that we studied, only advanced nuclear generation will make Pueblo whole and also provide a path to prosperity,” the report said.

Mapping the energy future

Labor unions support the recommendations for a gas plant and, in the longer term, the compact modular reactors being developed and that DOE says could be deployed later this decade or by the early 2030s. About 120 people work at Comanche Station. One coal unit was closed in 2022 and another will be shut down in 2025, leaving only Unit 3.

Denver Pipefitters Local 208 in Denver wholeheartedly agrees with the advisory committee’s recommendations for replacing the coal plants, said Gary Arnold, the local’s business manager.

Building small nuclear reactors would get close to making Pueblo whole on the number and quality of jobs and property tax revenue that would otherwise be lost, Arnold said. They would also provide the kind of capacity that will be needed as demand grows for electricity, he added.

Workers don’t want to see jobs that pay $80,000 to $100,000 a year replaced with lower-paying jobs, Arnold said. “That is not a just transition, in my humble opinion.”

Proponents see nuclear power as providing a zero-emission energy source that can back up renewable sources when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

Jerry Bellah, a member of the advisory committee, is a vice president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’ Eighth District, which includes Colorado. He said the union supports renewables and understands that climate change requires moving from fossil fuels to other forms of energy.

“But you can’t do it with a flick of a switch,” Bellah said. “And the human cost, there’s a lot of people who just don’t pay attention to that part.”

Community activist Valdez believes the cost to the Pueblo area could be high if Xcel pursues nuclear technology that he considers still experimental. “When we’re talking about the small modular reactors, the main company that’s been brought up is NuScale, and they don’t even have a working model yet.”

The DOE said the advantages of the advanced reactors is their small physical footprints, lower capital investment and the ability to make incremental additions for more power. They might use a gas, liquid metal or molten salt as a coolant rather than water. The federal agency has teamed up with NuScale Power Corp. to develop the reactor technology at the Idaho National Laboratory.

A group of municipal power systems in Utah and NuScale ended a project in 2023 because it appeared there would not be enough subscriptions to be viable. The Deseret News reported that subscribers started dropping out after the permitting process dragged on and costs became uncertain.

“There are no small modular reactors up and running (in the U.S.) and none under construction. It’s hype on hype,” said David Schlissel, an engineer and an analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Schlissel spoke in Pueblo in September at a meeting organized by the county commissioners on the Comanche coal plant. He said the cost of small reactors built in China and Russia a few years ago were at least three to four times the original estimates and another in Argentina has been under construction for 15 years.

“People in Pueblo fear for the loss of jobs and the loss of property taxes and that’s completely understandable,” Schlissel said.

But nuclear reactors aren’t a quick or surefire solution, Schlissel said. There’s still no permanent depository for the waste from the reactors. “The proponents don’t talk about it that much, or the uranium miners.”

Nearly 19% of the nation’s electricity came from nuclear power in 2023. Renewable sources produced 21.4% of the electricity. Fossil fuels, largely natural gas, accounted for 60%.

For people who believe nuclear power is the wrong path to a carbon-free energy future, Koncilja said, “What I suggest is they get Bill Gates’ phone number and call him up and tell him he’s an idiot for putting a half billion dollars into TerraPower and all the work he’s doing up in Wyoming.”

Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, started TerraPower, which designs and is developing advanced reactors to combat climate change. The company broke ground in August at a site in southwest Wyoming where it plans to build a reactor when it receives a permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Valdez said some people view nuclear power or natural gas with technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions as bridges to a 100% renewable electric grid.

“I say bringing in any gas or nuclear with those kinds of intentions is really a bridge to nowhere. When you bring in those technologies, you’re kind of stuck with them. Xcel is going to resist closing them down,” Valdez said.

Renewable energy is showing that it’s viable, Valdez said. Most of the electricity to run the Evraz steel mill in Pueblo, an Xcel customer, comes from a solar array, he said. A 23-acre solar farm produces more electricity for the Colorado State-Pueblo campus than the school uses.

“Not only are renewables proving they can power our future, but they’re proving they can provide the jobs and economic stability that Pueblo has needed for so long,” Valdez said.

Originally Published: November 25, 2024 at 6:00 AM MST