By John Stang
Duke Energy has requested that the federal government release 3,854 acres of its 4,738 acres at its retired Crystal River nuclear plant site for unrestricted use.
The Charlotte, N.C.-based power company wants to find still-to-be-determined uses for the acreage at the Crystal River Energy Complex on Florida’s Gulf Coast, about 85 miles north of Tampa.
Much of the land being sought for unrestricted use currently holds a new natural gas plant, two operating coal power plants, two retired coal plants, and a mariculture center that grows fish to release into the Gulf of Mexico. Twenty acres of the still-to-be-restricted 884 acres hold the 2,609-megawatt pressurized light-water reactor.
Duke Energy formally retired Crystal River in 2013 rather than try to fix its containment building. In 2015, the reactor went into SAFSTOR – the decommissioning mode in which the facility is largely untouched while radiation levels drop and funding is built up for the active cleanup. Under SAFSTOR, nuclear utilities have up to six decades to complete decommissioning. Duke expects to finish the job in 2074. The site finished transferring its reactor fuel to an on-site dry storage facility in January 2018.
“Duke Energy is still considering beginning active decommissioning,” said an attachment to a Jan. 22 letter from Terry Hobbs, Duke’s general manager for decommissioning and SAFSTOR at Crystal River, to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That sentence was in a background section of the attachment, and information on its context was not available late this week.
Hobbs’ letter is Duke’s request for the NRC to consider releasing the 3,854 acres for unrestricted use. Duke hopes the nuclear industry regulator will approve releasing the property by Sept. 30, Hobbs wrote.
“The NRC will carefully review the request. Among other things, the company needs to demonstrate that any land proposed for unrestricted release would not expose a member of the public to more than 25 millirems of radiation (from plant operations) in any year. For perspective, the average American is exposed to about 620 millirems of radiation on an annual basis from natural and manmade sources,” NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said by email.
He noted that the NRC has in the past signed off on a large number of partial site releases.
Duke has conducted radiological surveys of the targeted land and has concluded they don’t exceed the 25-millirem limit. The corporation had a subcontractor collect hundreds of soil samples and readings from August to October 2018 on the targeted land and elsewhere in Florida.
“Experts confirmed the levels of radiation are consistent with levels that are naturally occurring — meaning levels not elevated due to the nuclear plant’s 32-year operation,” Duke spokeswoman Heather Danenhower said by email.
The targeted land has never been used for nuclear operations; never been used to store radioactive materials or wastes; and never had any spills, leaks, or uncontrolled radioactive releases, Hobbs wrote to the NRC.
