Just like a lot of Military base closings, It's all politics, it's the rule of reciprocity and what makes modern society even possible. Favors owed are favors to be repaid, without reciprocity your money would be useless, because basically all your money is worth is what it can buy and at the end of the day you can't eat gold. About the power grid, it's brittle, Northeast blackout of 2003 was one tree brushing against one transmission line and one software bug. Everything effects everything, taking out a power plant reduces redundancy in the system, You should watch Great Britian to see whats likely to happen this year because they don't have enough reserve capacity in their power grid and are depending on renewables for a significant portion of the power supply.