Nuclear services company EnergySolutions is adding another decommissioning project to its portfolio with the purchase of a long-shuttered nuclear power plant in Wisconsin, according to a press release this week.
Dominion Energy, the current owner of Kewaunee Power Station in Carlton, Wisc., signed a definitive agreement to sell the plant to EnergySolutions, according to the Wednesday morning press release. Next up in the process is a formal license transfer application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. At deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor no such application was publicly available.
The estimated value of the decommissioning project is $750 million, a spokesperson for EnergySolutions said via email Wednesday.
EnergySolutions will oversee “complete dismantlement of the facility and removal of all radioactive waste,” the press release said. The Kewaunee plant’s entire spent fuel inventory of 38 dry cask canisters have already been moved to an onsite storage pad. Dominion completed that process in 2017.
This isn’t the first time a company set its sights on Kewaunee, which shuttered in 2013. Illinois-based firm RGA Labs, Inc. tried to buy the plant from Dominion in 2014 in hopes of restarting its reactors. That plan never materialized.
If its license transfer application is approved by NRC, EnergySolutions will have four current decommissioning projects under its belt. The company is already in the process of dismantling Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California and the Fort Calhoun plant in Nebraska. They’ve also recently completed decommissioning Zion Nuclear Power Station in Illinois and the La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor, also in Wisconsin.
