Comprehensive Decommissioning International (CDI) has secured the contract for decommissioning the retired Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, one of the company’s owners said Monday.
The deal is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin stated in a press release. It was signed Friday, CDI spokesman Pat O’Brien said by email. The specific value is business-sensitive information that is not being released, he added.
The announcement was expected. New Jersey energy technology firm Holtec International bought the single-reactor Pilgrim property on Cape Cod in August and is the other owner of Comprehensive Decommissioning International. Holtec formed CDI with SNC-Lavalin with the express purpose of decommissioning Pilgrim and other retired nuclear power plants it has acquired or plans to buy.
This is CDI’s second decommissioning contract, behind the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey. Holtec bought that shuttered facility last July. It also intends in coming years to acquire the Indian Point Energy Center in New York state and the Palisades Power Plant in Michigan.
Then-owner Entergy permanently power down Pilgrim’s boiling water reactor on May 31, 2019. In August, staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission authorized the transfer of the site’s reactor and spent-fuel storage licenses from Entergy to Holtec. The companies completed the sale just a few days later.
Decommissioning is expected to be largely complete by 2027, starting with construction of an additional storage pad for Pilgrim’s spent nuclear fuel.
The commonwealth of Massachusetts is still waiting for an NRC ruling on its petition for intervenor status and a hearing in the transfer of Pilgrim’s licenses. In the interim, it has asked a federal court to roll back the license transfer and other NRC actions that allowed the sale to proceed. The commission itself has the power to reverse the staff decision on the license transfer.
