Duke Energy has asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to rule by the end of this year on its application to transfer licenses for its shuttered Crystal River nuclear plant to another company for decommissioning.
Duke filed the license transfer application on June 14, about two weeks after it announced it had hired Accelerated Decommissioning Partners (ADP) to manage cleanup at the Citrus County facility. With regulatory approval, ADP would become the licensed operator for the reactor facility and the licensed owner of its spent fuel storage pad.
“The Applicants respectfully request that the NRC review and complete action expeditiously on the enclosed Application and consent to the proposed transfers,” attorneys for Duke and ADP wrote in a letter attached to the application. “Applicants request that the NRC issue an Order by December 31, 2019 approving the amendments to the Facility License and authorizing the transfers to take place at any time through December 31, 2020.”
On Tuesday, the NRC said it would aim to meet Duke’s schedule, but that would depend on the quality of the original application and the responses to follow-up requests for information from agency staff.
The regulator expects to complete its acceptance review of the license transfer application by late this month or early August, spokesman David McIntyre said by email. That would be followed by a full technical review addressing environmental, safety, and security aspects of the license transfer.
Duke permanently retired the 36-year-old Crystal River reactor in 2013 rather than repairing its damaged containment building. It placed the reactor into safe-storage mode, expecting to hold off on full decommissioning until 2074. But the company changed course in favor of expedited decontamination, disassembly, and demolition by ADP by 2027.
Accelerated Decommissioning Partners has a $540 million fixed-price contract for this work, which does not cover its planned ownership of Crystal River’s independent spent fuel storage installation.
