EnergySolutions on Tuesday said it had sealed the deal for acquisition of reactor Unit 2 (TMI-2) at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, which famously partially melted down 40 years ago.
The Salt Lake City-based nuclear services firm will buy TMI-2’s assets and obtain its licenses from reactor owner FirstEnergy Corp. It would then be in charge of decommissioning the reactor via a subsidiary, TMI-2 Solutions.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and New Jersey Board of Public Utilities will have to sign off on the ownership transfer, according to an EnergySolutions press release.
The sale should be complete in the second half of 2020, FirstEnergy Corp. said in its own release.
The companies first announced the pending deal in July. Terms of the sale, along with the anticipated schedule for decommissioning, were not immediately made public.
“We are excited for the opportunity to safely decommission Unit-2 at Three Mile Island and restore the area to the natural state,” EnergySolutions President and CEO Ken Robuck said in the company’s press statement.
Unit 2 at the Harrisburg-area plant never resumed operations following its partial meltdown in 1979 after a few months of operations. Ninety-nine percent of its nuclear fuel was shopped to the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory in the 1980s, EnergySolutions said. The reactor itself has been in post-defueling monitored storage mode for 26 years.
Reactor Unit 1 at Three Mile Island continued to provide power until Sept. 20, when it was retired by owner Exelon.
This is EnergySolutions’ first foray into an increasingly popular model for decommissioning U.S. nuclear power plants, in which the owners sell them to specialized companies for expedited cleanup. EnergySolutions will partner with New Jersey construction company Jingoli for decommissioning, under the ES/Jingoli Decommissioning joint venture.
