This blog was written by Sara Barczak, former Regional Advocacy Director with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

Guest Blog | January 27, 2015 | Energy Policy, Nuclear, Wind

Update #2: Pilgrim ended up being down for twelve days! Juno caused problems for the plant but ultimately, it appears that this nuclear plant just generally has problems and isn’t the “poster child” for reliability…read this article in “Cape Cod Today” for more.

Update #1: Pilgrim, which creates enough power for up to 550,000 homes,  is still down two days after Juno blew through the region and InsideClimate News highlighted this in their 1/29/15 article, “Winter storm exposes vulnerability of nuclear power plants.” Though the plant operators are working to get the reactor back online, there is no estimate yet as to when that will be…

Once again nuclear power is proven unreliable here in the U.S. This time the culprit is Juno, the Blizzard of 2015, and the victim is the Pilgrim nuclear plant in Plymouth, Mass., which is now relying on its back up diesel generators. Once again, the nuclear industry’s cheerleading team over at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) expressed confidence that this would not happen given their tweet yesterday, which we can now all consider an epic social media fail.

In marked contrast, during the last polar vortex wind power performed stunningly well (and affordably). Take that for a lesson in what real reliability means dear nuclear power industry!