The Nuclear Plant That Sold Itself: How a Wisconsin Utility Built, Ran, and Then Cashed Out of Atomic Power

On November 6, 1970, four days after achieving a self-sustaining chain reaction, the Point Beach Nuclear Plant sent its first electrons onto the Wisconsin grid. The event passed with little fanfare — no protesters at the gates, no intervention from the newly minted Environmental Protection Agency. In fact, at multiple public hearings before construction began, not a single opponent testified. The plant, perched on the Lake Michigan shore near Two Creeks, 30 miles southeast of Green Bay, had been welcomed like a new factory.

The Atomic Gamble

Wisconsin Electric Power Company had been flirting with nuclear power since 1952, when it joined a consortium backing Fermi 1, an experimental breeder reactor south of Detroit. Fermi 1 proved the concept but never became a commercial success. Undeterred, Wisconsin Electric began planning its own plant in the mid-1960s. The utility chose a pressurized water design from Westinghouse. An attractive offer from the manufacturer convinced the company to build two units instead of one, doubling the planned capacity to roughly 1,000 megawatts.

Construction started in 1967, just before the National Environmental Policy Act would mandate cooling towers for new plants. Point Beach would use Lake Michigan water directly. The project moved with unusual speed. Unit 1 entered commercial operation on December 21, 1970; Unit 2 followed in October 1972. The total bill: $114.9 million — a fraction of what later nuclear plants would cost.

World-Class Performance

The plant quickly earned a reputation for reliability. From 1935 to 1948, Wisconsin Electric's Port Washington coal plant had held the world record for thermal efficiency. Point Beach brought that same engineering culture to nuclear power. During the energy crises of the 1970s, when oil and coal prices spiked, Point Beach's steady, low-cost output vindicated the investment. In the 12 months ending June 2006, Unit 2 produced 106.5 percent of its design rating — a figure that still stands as a benchmark for nuclear performance.

By 2022, the two-unit station generated 10,077 gigawatt-hours, supplying 16.5 percent of all electricity produced in Wisconsin. It had become the quiet workhorse of the state's grid.

Steam Generator Surgery

The plant was not without problems. In 1979, tube degradation in Unit 1's steam generators forced the unit to run at reduced power. For four years, Wisconsin Electric operated the reactor at partial output while replacement generators were fabricated and installed. Unit 2 underwent a similar overhaul in 1996–1997. The repairs were expensive but effective; both units returned to full power and ran reliably for decades more.

Spent fuel, meanwhile, accumulated in dry casks on site — a temporary solution that became permanent as the federal government failed to open a national repository. The casks sit on a concrete pad near the reactor buildings, monitored and guarded, waiting for a journey that may never come.

The Exit Strategy

In December 2005, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission extended Point Beach's licenses by 20 years, to 2030 and 2033. The plant had regulatory clearance to run for decades. Yet one year later, Wisconsin Energy Corporation — by then operating as We Energies — announced it would sell.

The buyer was FPL Energy, soon to be renamed NextEra Energy Resources, a Florida-based company building a national fleet of nuclear plants. The price: approximately $924 million, including the plant, nuclear fuel, inventory, and spare parts. The deal closed on October 1, 2007.

The structure of the sale was as deliberate as the plant's construction. We Energies did not simply walk away. It signed a long-term power purchase agreement obligating it to buy 100 percent of Point Beach's output through the extended license terms. The electricity would keep flowing to Wisconsin customers; only the owner would change.

Crucially, FPL assumed responsibility for decommissioning. Approximately $390 million from the plant's decommissioning trust fund transferred to the buyer. If future cleanup costs exceeded that amount, they would be FPL's problem, not Wisconsin ratepayers'. The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin approved the transaction in September 2007, directing that net proceeds benefit customers.

Aftermath

Point Beach continues to operate today, its output still feeding the Wisconsin grid under the power purchase agreement. NextEra has managed the station with the same operational discipline, and the plant remains one of the most productive in the U.S. nuclear fleet.

For Wisconsin Energy, the sale was a strategic pivot. The company transferred the complex, specialized risks of nuclear ownership — regulatory surprises, aging-materials surprises, decommissioning liability — to a firm whose core business was managing exactly those risks. In return, it locked in a predictable supply of carbon-free power and freed capital for the massive fossil and renewable investments that would follow under its "Power the Future" plan.

The plant that began as an atomic ambition in the 1960s became, by the 2000s, a financial asset best owned by someone else. The electrons never noticed the difference.

This is one episode in a much longer story. For the full account of the history of Wisconsin Energy Corporation, read “Wisconsin Energy Corporation” by Gerald Snyder on MixCache.com.