NRG Energy, with nine power plants in Connecticut, will write down its $481 million investment in two planned new nuclear reactors in South Texas, The Associated Press reports.
NRG Chief Executive David Crane said Tuesday that the nuclear crisis in Japan has reduced the probability that the two reactors could be completed in a timely fashion.
“The extraordinary challenges facing U.S. nuclear development in the present circumstance and the very considerable financial resources expended by NRG on the project over the past five years make it impossible for us to justify to our shareholders any further financial participation in the development of the STP project,” Crane said in a press release.
One of NRG’s partners on the project was to be TEPCO, the Japanese utility that owns the reactor complex crippled by last month’s earthquake and tsunami.
NRG, based in Princeton, N.J., hoped to build two new reactors at its South Texas Project nuclear station, which currently has two working reactors.
The project was in line for a loan guarantee from the federal government, but low electricity prices had clouded prospects for the plan even before the incident in Japan.
