⚠ Four of Six Licences Expire Inside Twenty-Two YearsModerate threat

Beaver Valley Unit 1's licence expires in 2036, Davis-Besse's in 2037, Perry's in 2046 and Beaver Valley Unit 2's in 2047¹. Only the two Comanche Peak units run past 2050.

Licence renewal for American reactors has become routine, and routine is not the same as certain. Each renewal is a regulatory proceeding with an evidentiary record, a public comment period and a possibility of intervention, and each one arrives attached to a capital decision: what does it cost to keep a plant that started up in the 1970s running for another twenty years, and is that better than retiring it?

The economics of that question have improved enormously, which is the good news and also the reason to watch it. When power prices were low, several American reactors were retired early because the operating cost exceeded the revenue — that is how Energy Harbor's predecessor came to be in bankruptcy in the first place. High prices and long data-centre contracts have reversed the calculation. If prices revert, the calculation reverts with them, and a plant with a licence expiring in eleven years does not get a twenty-year extension on hope.

The specific thing to watch is the sequence of renewal applications and the capital estimates attached to them. A subsequent licence renewal filed early, quietly and cheaply says the fleet has decades left. A renewal deferred while the company studies its options is the first sign of the opposite.