Drive about 20 miles north of Omaha, Nebraska, and you'll hit a spot on the Missouri River that looks, well, kinda quiet now. It wasn't always like that. For decades, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station was a massive part of the region's identity, providing a huge chunk of power to the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) grid. It was unique. Not just because it was a nuclear plant in the middle of a cornfield, but because it was tiny.
In the world of nuclear energy, size usually equals survival. Fort Calhoun bucked that trend until it just couldn't anymore.
Most people think nuclear plants are these invincible concrete fortresses that only shut down because of some catastrophic disaster. That's not what happened here. It was a slow burn of economics, a record-breaking flood, and the brutal reality of being the smallest "single-unit" reactor in the United States. Honestly, if you want to understand why the US energy grid looks the way it does today, you have to look at what went down at Fort Calhoun.
The Floods That Changed Everything
In 2011, the Missouri River decided it didn't want to stay in its banks. This wasn't just a "don't go fishing today" kind of flood. It was a massive, sustained rise in water levels that turned the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station into an island. You've probably seen the photos—a circle of AquaDams trying to keep a literal river away from a nuclear reactor.
It worked, mostly. But the optics were terrible.
While the plant was already in a planned refueling outage, the flood kept it offline for way longer than anyone expected. It stayed down for nearly three years. During that time, the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) basically moved in. They found issues with electrical circuitry and flood protection protocols that needed fixing before the lights could come back on.
The plant did eventually restart in late 2013. But the damage wasn't just to the equipment; it was to the balance sheet. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fix a plant that only produces 478 megawatts starts to look like a bad bet when natural gas prices are bottoming out.
Why Small Wasn't Beautiful at Fort Calhoun
Economics. It always comes back to the money.
The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station was a pressurized water reactor. It was rated at roughly 480 MW. To put that in perspective, many modern reactors are 1,000 MW or even 1,200 MW. The problem is that a small plant needs almost as many people to run it as a big one. You still need security. You still need nuclear engineers. You still need a massive compliance department to deal with federal regulators.
- The fixed costs of nuclear are staggering.
- OPPD realized they were paying a premium for every megawatt produced at Calhoun compared to their coal plants or buying wind power.
- There’s no "economy of scale" when you only have one small reactor.
By 2016, the board at OPPD had enough. They voted to shut it down. It wasn't a safety decision—the plant was running fine by then—it was a "we can't make the math work" decision. They estimated that closing the plant would save the utility between $735 million and $994 million over the next two decades. When you’re a public power district, those numbers are impossible to ignore.
The Decommissioning: A 60-Year Process?
You don't just "turn off" a nuclear plant like a light switch. You can't. The fuel is still hot—radioactively speaking—and it needs a place to go.
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Initially, OPPD looked at the SAFSTOR method. This is basically a "wait and see" approach where you let the radiation levels drop naturally over 60 years before you tear the building down. It sounds lazy, but it's actually a standard industry practice. However, things shifted. They eventually moved toward the DECON strategy, which is more aggressive. They wanted the site cleaned up sooner.
Walking around the site today is eerie. Most of the high-profile work involves moving spent fuel from the cooling pools into "dry casks." These are massive concrete and steel cylinders that sit on a pad on-site.
- Spent fuel is currently stored in 32 horizontal storage modules.
- The containment building, that iconic concrete dome, is still there, but it's a shell of its former self.
- The turbine hall, where the steam actually made the electricity, has been largely gutted.
One of the coolest (and slightly nerdy) things about the decommissioning of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station is how they used 3D modeling to plan the demolition. Because everything is radioactive, you can't just send a guy in with a sledgehammer. They used digital twins to map out exactly where to cut and how to move pieces to minimize exposure to the workers.
The Human Impact in Washington County
We often talk about plants in terms of megawatts and NRC filings. We forget about the people. Fort Calhoun was the biggest taxpayer in Washington County. It employed about 700 people at its peak. When those jobs go, the local economy feels it. The schools feel it. The grocery stores feel it.
A lot of those workers were highly specialized. Some stayed on for the decommissioning process, which requires a skeleton crew for decades. Others moved to Cooper Nuclear Station, the only other nuclear plant in Nebraska, located further south near Brownville. But a lot of them just left the industry or the state.
It’s a cautionary tale for other "single-unit" towns. If your town relies on one aging reactor, you’re always one board meeting away from an economic crater.
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What Most People Get Wrong About the Shutdown
There’s a conspiracy theory that the 2011 fire and flood "broke" the plant and it was never safe again. That's just not true. The NRC gave them the green light to restart because the plant met the safety standards. The reality is much more boring: it was just too expensive to compete with cheap fracked gas and subsidized wind turbines.
Another misconception? That the land will be "glowing" forever. Once the fuel is moved to dry storage and the buildings are remediated, the goal is "greenfield" status. This means the land should eventually be safe enough for a park or a warehouse. We aren't there yet, but that’s the plan.
Lessons for the Future of Energy
The story of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station is being studied by energy analysts right now. Why? Because we are seeing a "nuclear renaissance" with Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
It’s ironic. We shut down Fort Calhoun because it was too small to be efficient, and now the industry is trying to build new plants that are even smaller. The difference is that the new ones are designed to be manufactured in factories and operated with much lower overhead. Fort Calhoun was a 1960s design trying to survive in a 2010s market. It was a bridge too far.
Actionable Takeaways and Next Steps
If you live in a region powered by nuclear or you're interested in the future of the grid, here is how you can stay informed:
- Track the Casks: You can actually monitor the status of spent fuel storage through the NRC’s public records. It’s the most important part of the post-closure phase.
- Watch the "Power Mix": Check your local utility's annual report. Since Fort Calhoun closed, Nebraska has seen a massive surge in wind energy. See how that shift has affected your local rates.
- Visit the Site (From a Distance): You can't go inside, but the Missouri River is public. Boating past the site gives you a scale of the engineering that goes into these facilities.
- Support Local Budgets: If you live in Washington County, stay involved in local tax discussions. The transition away from nuclear tax revenue is a multi-year process that requires smart budgeting.
The era of the small, standalone nuclear plant is basically over in America. Fort Calhoun was a workhorse for 43 years. It survived floods and fires, but it couldn't survive the market.
Resources for further reading:
- OPPD's Decommissioning Updates
- NRC Plant Status Reports for Fort Calhoun
- Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy annual reviews