Holtec International has issued its first major contract for decommissioning of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey.
The contract went, as anticipated, to Comprehensive Decommissioning International, a joint venture of Holtec and Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin formed specifically for cleanup of retired nuclear power plants.
The contract is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a press release Tuesday. A specific dollar amount was not made public. It was issued on July 1.
Comprehensive Decommissioning International “will manage site activities as the Decommissioning General Contractor,” company spokesman Jeremy Parriott said by email. “The contract covers management of decommissioning activities through Partial Site Release – which we define as the point at which there is only the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) and the NRC has approved the remainder of the site to be released from its nuclear license.”
Then-owner Exelon in September 2018 retired the boiling-water reactor in Lacey Township after nearly 50 years of operation. It had already announced plans to sell the plant to Holtec, an energy technology company based in Camden, N.J. The deal was finalized on July 1, following approval of the transfer of the site’s operations and spent fuel storage licenses by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Holtec now owns the property, along with all responsibility for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management. It has also acquired the decommissioning trust for Oyster Creek.
Holtec plans to use CDI to manage decommissioning at Oyster Creek and several other nuclear power plants it aims to acquire.
“The site is currently focusing on site characterization, reactor segmentation pre-planning and daily activities associated with monitoring fuel in the spent fuel pool,” according to Parriott. “The first major campaign will be the safe removal of the spent nuclear fuel to its storage location on the ISFSI. Holtec anticipates this campaign to begin in early 2021.”
Decommissioning at Oyster Creek is scheduled for completion within eight years.
