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FirstEnergy’s Bruce Mansfield coal-fired power plant, located in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, shut down in November 2019.
FirstEnergy’s Bruce Mansfield coal-fired power plant, located in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, shut down in November 2019. [Brittany Patterson | Ohio Valley ReSource]

Climate bill: Could coal communities shift to nuclear?

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PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) — A major economic bill headed to the president has “game-changing” incentives for the nuclear energy industry, experts say, and those tax credits are even more substantial if a facility is sited in a community with a coal plant that’s closing.

Among the many things the transformative bill could do, nuclear energy experts say, is spur more nuclear reactor projects like one Bill Gates is planning in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Companies designing and building the next generation of nuclear reactors could pick one of two new tax credits available to carbon-free electricity generators. Both include a 10-percentage point bonus for facilities sited in fossil fuel communities.