Wisconsin Reactor’s Demise Shows Nuclear Towns’ Plight

The best jobs and the biggest employer are disappearing from the town of Carlton, Wisconsin, leaving behind a site that should be ready for a new employer to move in, perhaps a half-century from now.

That’s the legacy of the 2013 shutdown of the Kewaunee Power Station, which generated nuclear energy for 39 years along the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The plant is being dismantled, or decommissioned, a potentially decades-long clean-up that could remove as much as 900 acres from the economic development base of rural Kewaunee County.