The James A. FitzPatrick (JAF) Nuclear Power Plant is located in the Town of Scriba, near

Oswego, New York Oswego () is a city in Oswego County, New York, United States. The population was 16,921 at the 2020 census. Oswego is located on Lake Ontario in Upstate New York, about 35 miles (55km) northwest of Syracuse. It promotes itself as "The Port C ...

, on the southeast shore of

Lake Ontario Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York. The Canada–United States border sp ...

. The

nuclear power plant A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a electric generator, generato ...

has one

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

boiling water reactor A boiling water reactor (BWR) is a type of light water nuclear reactor used for the generation of electrical power. It is a design different from a Soviet graphite-moderated RBMK. It is the second most common type of electricity-generating nu ...

. The site is also the location of two other units at the

Nine Mile Point Nuclear Generating Station Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station is a nuclear power plant with two nuclear reactors located in the town of Scriba, approximately five miles northeast of Oswego, New York, on the shore of Lake Ontario. The site is also occupied by the James A. F ...

. The power plant was originally built by

Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation was a New York State utility company, which was acquired in 2000 by National Grid plc. The Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation designation was retired, using variations of NationalGridUS (such as National Grid Buffa ...

. FitzPatrick and half of the Nine Mile Point site were transferred to the Power Authority of the State of New York (PASNY), now called the

New York Power Authority The New York Power Authority (NYPA), officially the Power Authority of the State of New York, is a New York State public-benefit corporation. It is the largest state public power utility in the United States. NYPA provides some of the lowest-co ...

(NYPA). It was named after Power Authority Chairman

James A. FitzPatrick James Anthony FitzPatrick (February 26, 1894 – June 12, 1980) was an American producer, director, writer, and narrator, known from the early 1930s as "The Voice of the Globe" from his ''Fitzpatrick's Traveltalks''. Biography James Anthony Fi ...

. On November 2, 2015, Entergy Corp. announced its plans to shut down FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in Oswego County after the reactor runs out of fuel in 2016. To avoid closure, Exelon Generation agreed to purchase the plant from Entergy at the price of $110 million. On April 1, 2017,

Exelon Exelon Corporation is an American Fortune 100 energy company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois and incorporated in Pennsylvania. It generates revenues of approximately $33.5 billion and employs approximately 33,400 people. Exelon is the larges ...

assumed ownership and operation of the plant. Following separation from Exelon in 2022, Constellation Energy assumed ownership and operation.

Surrounding population

The

Nuclear Regulatory Commission The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the NRC began operat ...

defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of , concerned primarily with exposure to, and inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, and an ingestion pathway zone of about , concerned primarily with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity. The 2010 U.S. population within of FitzPatrick was 35,136, an increase of 17.0 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U.S. population within was 909,798, an increase of 3.2 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Syracuse (36 miles to city center). Canadian population is not included in these figures, such as

Kingston, Ontario Kingston is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is located on the north-eastern end of Lake Ontario, at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River and at the mouth of the Cataraqui River (south end of the Rideau Canal). The city is midway between Toro ...

, 49 miles to the city center.

Seismic risk

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...

intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at FitzPatrick was 1 in 163,934, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.

Announced closure

On November 2, 2015, Entergy Corporation announced that it intends to close the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant because it is becoming too costly to operate. The nuclear industry's profits have been squeezed out by utilities who are buying cheaper energy from natural gas power plants. “Given the financial challenges our merchant power plants face from sustained wholesale power price declines and other unfavorable market conditions, we have been assessing each asset,” Chief Executive Officer Leo Denault said in the statement. “Market conditions require us to also close the FitzPatrick nuclear plant.” In 2016, Cuomo directed the Public Service Commission to consider ratepayer-financed subsidies similar to those for renewable sources to keep nuclear power stations profitable in the competition against natural gas. In August 2016, Exelon agreed to buy the plant pending regulatory approval. Exelon formally acquired ownership and operation of James A. Fitzpatrick Nuclear Power Plant on March 31, 2017.

Surrounding population

Seismic risk

Announced closure

See also

Notes

Further reading