Entergy Corporation (ETR)

[Timothy Smith]

Entergy (ETR +0.7%) says it will permanently shut its 728 MW Pilgrim nuclear reactor in Massachusetts in May 2019, following a final refueling in spring 2017.

ETR had announced earlier that it was considering shutting the unit as early as spring 2017, because the unit is losing ~$40M/year with little chance its economics will improve in the foreseeable future.

The company says the decision to close the plant at the back end of the two-year window was made to fulfill its contractual obligations to supply the region's power grid.

ETR permanently shut the 635 MW Vermont Yankee reactor in 2014, and said in February that it would permanently shut the 849 MW FitzPatrick plant in New York in January 2017.