Dive Summary:

• Entergy Corp.’s Indian Point plant in New York and Exelon Corp.’s Clinton unit in Illinois face the highest risk of closure due to financial and political pressure.
• Obama’s new climate plans could be a competitive advantage for nuclear generators over coal, but emissions restrictions won’t kick in for another few years. This leaves nuclear to fend against the lower price of coal and gas and higher operational expenses. As many as five nuclear plants will close by 2020, forecasts research firm UBS Securities LLC.
• “Any major unexpected operational problem or costs for some of these plants could serve to be a trip to the morgue,” Paul Patterson, a utility analyst for Glenrock Associates LLC in New York, tells Bloomberg. Entergy and Exelon project $900 million in added costs to prevent a Fukushima-like disaster but both companies plan to keep the units humming.

From the article:

“Exelon, the largest competitive U.S. nuclear power producer, and Entergy, the second largest, have both underperformed the S&P 500 Utility Index in the past five years. Chicago-based Exelon and New Orleans-based Entergy have seen their stock prices fall since July 2008 by 62 percent and 35 percent, respectively.”