Constellation seeks license renewal of Illinois clean energy center for 20 more years

Baltimore-based Constellation has filed a license renewal application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for its Clinton Clean Energy Center in Clinton, Illinois, marking the latest in a series of investments the company is making to help address the climate crisis and support the regional economy.

The filing begins a comprehensive review by the NRC to renew the station’s license, which would allow it to continue providing carbon-free energy to the region for another 20 years with adequate market or policy support.

Clinton, which produces enough baseload, carbon-free electricity to power the equivalent of 800,000 homes, is currently licensed to operate through April 2027. Illinois would need to site more than 1,000 new wind turbines to generate the same amount of electricity that Clinton will be able to provide under an extended license.

Polling in the U.S. and globally shows that public support for maintaining and expanding the use of nuclear energy has increased in recent years as concerns about climate change and energy reliability have grown. Nuclear energy plants are the only carbon-free energy resources that can operate 24/7 in all weather conditions.

Constellation’s clean energy centers not only help to power the grid with reliable, clean energy, but they can also play a key role in helping to reduce emissions in difficult-to-decarbonize industries that account for as much as quarter of all the world’s carbon pollution.

The continued operation of Clinton has been enabled by state legislation enacted in 2016 recognizing the unique environmental, economic and reliability benefits of nuclear energy. Enactment of the federal nuclear production tax credit in 2022 extended policy support through 2032. Renewing the NRC license for Clinton will give Constellation the ability to keep this plant operating through 2047, although future policy and market conditions will ultimately determine how long the plant operates.

Renewing the license of Clinton would provide the State of Illinois an estimated 179 terawatt hours of additional carbon-free electricity over the 20-year extended lifespan of the license. This is more clean energy than all of Illinois’ wind and solar facilities have produced to date. The Clinton site employs 532 employees and is DeWitt County’s largest employer. The facility’s workforce more than doubles during its scheduled refueling and maintenance outages, helping increase worker payrolls and improve the bottom lines of local businesses.

The Clinton license renewal application is the latest in a series of investments to accelerate clean-energy growth initiatives across the company. In 2023, Constellation announced the acquisition of a 44 percent ownership stake in the South Texas Project nuclear plant, an $800 million uprate project at the Braidwood and Byron clean energy centers in Illinois, and a $350 million uprate of its Criterion Wind Project in Maryland.

Later this year the company is scheduled to file a second license renewal for its two-unit Dresden Clean Energy Center in Morris, Illinois.