For decades, Xcel Energy’s sprawling Comanche Station coal plant near Pueblo has generated power for customers across the utility’s Colorado service area — generating thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue for local governments, schools and special districts.

As part of the state’s transition to powering the grid with mostly renewable energy, Xcel will shut down the third unit at the roughly 700-acre Comanche campus by 2031, closing all of the company’s coal facilities in Colorado. Xcel, the state’s largest electric utility, has filed a proposal to replace coal-fired power with wind, solar, and natural gas.

Pueblo area residents are preparing for their own transition. An advisory committee of labor, business and civic leaders has recommended that Xcel consider replacing the coal plant with small, modular nuclear reactors advanced by the Department of Energy as a zero-emission energy source. A gas plant or more renewable energy won’t make Pueblo “whole” when it comes to employment and tax revenue, the committee says.

Community activists and other residents counter that the advanced nuclear technology touted as a means of a just transition for the Pueblo is not ready for prime time. They say the results of a recent poll show that area residents prefer wind and solar farms to nuclear or gas plants to replace the plant, which has had operational problems since it opened in 2010.

Pueblo resident Jamie Valdez, a member of Nuclear-Free Colorado, said his community could end up as a guinea pig for an unproven technology, while Xcel customers in the Denver area could end up bearing the cost of a still-developing generation source.

Pueblo gets its electricity from Black Hills Energy.

Xcel Energy-Colorado President Robert Kenney agreed that nuclear technology is still developing and commercial versions likely won’t be available when the company begins bidding on projects in the plan’s first phase. But in a recent interview, he said the option is not “off the table.”

The company operates nuclear reactors in Minnesota. Xcel Energy’s Fort St. The Vrain power plant in Platteville was nuclear but was decommissioned in 1989 and later converted to natural gas.

Xcel calls its proposal, which includes the Pueblo coal plant, a fair transition plan. In 2019, the Legislature approved the creation of the Office of Just Transition to help workers and communities like coal plants and mines move closer to meeting state and utility carbon reduction goals and addressing climate change.

Kenney said in October that Xcel is required to make payments to help offset lost property tax revenue when power plants and mines shut down. The transition plan outlines 10 years of payments of $16.2 million annually for Pueblo County.

“The (Colorado) General Assembly has spent virtually no money on just the transition. If the utility won’t do it, who will? Or do you just close all these communities and tell them to sell their houses at a loss and move to Denver and Boulder?” asked Frances Koncilja, an attorney and former member of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission.

Lawmakers approved a total of $30 million for the office in 2021 and 2022, said Wade Buchanan, the director of the Office of Just Transition. The office also receives money from changes to state coal sequester laws that are expected to total $10 million by 2030.

Koncilja is from Pueblo and co-chaired the advisory committee that recommended replacing Comanche 3 with advanced nuclear reactors or a gas plant with carbon capture technology, designed to capture and recycle or store carbon dioxide emissions. Xcel formed the Pueblo Innovative Energy Solutions Advisory Committee to help map out what comes next when Comanche closes.

The report cites a study by Michael Wakefield, a professor and director of the Thomas V. Healy Center for Business and Economic Research and Services at Colorado State University-Pueblo. He said the coal plant is “one of the most economically influential industries in the Pueblo community,” generating more than $196 million in benefits a year.

The kind of power that will be available to replace the coal plant when it closes in 2031 would provide few jobs and pay only a fraction of current tax payments, according to the advisory committee’s report. “Of all the technologies that we have studied, only advanced nuclear generation will make the Pueblo whole and also provide a path to prosperity,” the report said.

Mapping the energy future

Unions support the recommendations for a gas plant and, in the longer term, the compact modular reactors under development, which the DOE says could be deployed later this decade or in the early 2030s. About 120 people work at Comanche Station. One coal unit was closed in 2022 and another will be shut down in 2025, leaving only Unit 3.

Denver Pipefitters Local 208 in Denver wholeheartedly agrees with the advisory committee’s recommendations to replace the coal plants, said Gary Arnold, local business manager.

Building small nuclear reactors would come close to making Pueblo whole in terms of the number and quality of jobs and property tax revenue that would otherwise be lost, Arnold said. They would also provide the kind of capacity that will be needed as demand for electricity grows, he added.

Workers don’t want to see jobs that pay $80,000 to $100,000 a year replaced with lower-paying jobs, Arnold said. “It’s not a fair transition, in my humble opinion.”

Proponents see nuclear power as a zero-emission energy source that can back up renewables when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

Jerry Bellah, a member of the advisory committee, is vice president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’ Eighth District, which includes Colorado. He said the union supports renewable energy and understands that climate change requires moving from fossil fuels to other forms of energy.

“But you can’t do that with the flip of a switch,” Bellah said. “And the human cost, there are a lot of people who just don’t pay attention to that part.”

Community activist Valdez believes the cost to the Pueblo area could be high if Xcel pursues nuclear technology, which he considers still experimental. “When we talk about the small modular reactors, the main company that’s been brought up is NuScale, and they don’t even have a working model yet.”

The DOE said the advantages of the advanced reactors are their small physical footprints, lower capital investment and the ability to make incremental additions for more power. They can use a gas, liquid metal or molten salt as a coolant instead of water. The federal agency has teamed up with NuScale Power Corp. to develop the reactor technology at the Idaho National Laboratory.

A group of Utah municipal power systems and NuScale ended a project in 2023 because it appeared there would not be enough subscriptions to be viable. The Deseret News reported that subscribers began dropping out after the permitting process dragged on and costs became uncertain.

“There are no small modular reactors running (in the US) and none under construction. It’s hype on hype,” said David Schlissel, an engineer and analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Schlissel spoke in Pueblo in September at a meeting organized by the county commissioners about the Comanche coal plant. He said the cost of small reactors built in China and Russia a few years ago were at least three to four times original estimates, and another in Argentina has been under construction for 15 years.

“People in Pueblo fear the loss of jobs and the loss of property taxes, and that’s understandable,” Schlissel said.

But nuclear reactors are not a quick or safe solution, Schlissel said. There is still no permanent repository for the waste from the reactors. “The advocates don’t talk about it that much, or the uranium miners.”

Almost 19% of the country’s electricity came from nuclear power in 2023. Renewable sources produced 21.4% of electricity. Fossil fuels, mainly natural gas, accounted for 60%.

For people who think nuclear power is the wrong path to a carbon-free energy future, Koncilja said: “What I suggest is that they get Bill Gates’ phone number and call him and tell him he’s an idiot for put half a billion dollars into TerraPower and all the work he’s doing up in Wyoming.”

Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, started TerraPower, which designs and develops advanced reactors to combat climate change. The company broke ground in August on a site in southwestern Wyoming where it plans to build a reactor once it receives a permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Valdez said some people view nuclear power or natural gas with technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions as bridges to a 100% renewable power grid.

“I’m saying that bringing in any gas or nuclear with those kinds of intentions is really a bridge to nowhere. When you bring these technologies in, you’re kind of stuck with them. Xcel will resist shutting them down,” Valdez said.

Renewable energy shows it’s viable, Valdez said. Most of the electricity to power the Evraz steel mill in Pueblo, an Xcel customer, comes from a solar array, he said. A 23-acre solar farm produces more electricity for the Colorado State-Pueblo campus than the school uses.