The company in charge of decommissioning Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power station accused a nuclear watchdog of serious process fouls after the group’s latest attempt to halt the plant’s license transfer, according to a regulatory filing.
NRC should no longer allow Three Mile Island Alert to “blatantly ignore” reasonable requirements of public participation in agency proceedings, EnergySolutions subsidiary TMI-2 Solutions said in a Monday filing opposing the watchdog’s June 30 request to halt the sale of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 2 reactor to TMI-2 Solutions from FirstEnergy.
“[R]esponding to these frequent, improper motions incurs significant legal costs on the parties and takes attention away from the actual work at hand of decommissioning TMI-2 – and the historic achievement that would be for the public and local community,” the company said.
TMI-2 Solutions argued that Three Mile Island Alert’s June 30 filing failed on procedural grounds. The watchdog didn’t bring new or convincing evidence to the table in its June 30 filing to support the claim that the Dauphin County, Pa. plant’s sale violated water quality certification requirements in the Clean Water Act, the company said.
Watchdog president Eric Epstein said in his June 30 filing that the emails, retrieved via open records request from interstate regulator Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), constituted “clear and unambiguous” proof that TMI-2 Solutions didn’t have the necessary certifications to decommission the Unit 2 reactor.
Ultimately, TMI-2 Solutions asked NRC to toss the watchdog’s petition. The agency hadn’t ruled on the issue by deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor.
The commission’s last ruling on the issue was on June 22, when it denied Three Mile Island Alert’s initial petition to reconsider the plant’s sale on procedural grounds. The agency said it lacked jurisdiction to rule on the request because proceedings had already closed.
Epstein, who first raised his concerns about a possible Clean Water Act violation in February, has said that he is planning to challenge Three Mile Island’s sale in court. At deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor the watchdog hadn’t filed suit.
TMI-2 Solutions announced its intention to buy Three Mile Island Unit 2 from FirstEnergy in 2019. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal. The reactor has been offline since 1979, when a partial core meltdown occurred causing one of the worst radiological releases in American history.
