Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
1/16/2015
EnergySolutions is closing in on another decommissioning “license stewardship” agreement with the La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor in Genoa, Wis., the company announced this week. Under the proposed agreement, EnergySolutions would temporarily take over responsibility for the license and decommissioning responsibility from the Dairyland Power Cooperative, the owner of the site. The arrangement would be similar to the one in place with Exelon in which EnergySolutions has taken over responsibility for the decommissioning of the Zion Power Plant, and eventually, Exelon will take back the license for the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation after the decommissioning is completed.
According to EnergySolutions CEO David Lockwood, the proposed agreement is another way to leverage the company’s decommissioning experience. “EnergySolutions has been supporting Dairyland’s decommissioning efforts to date,” Lockwood said in a statement. “This agreement will allow us to leverage the resources and expertise we have gained from the Zion project with our logistics and disposal capability to accelerate the decommissioning of the LACBWR site.”
Dairyland has already transferred fuel to an ISFSI, and with the help of EnergySolutions, it removed and disposed of the Reactor Pressure Vessel and other low-level, non-fuel waste in 2007. “Dairyland employees have already safely completed many significant steps towards decommissioning of the LACBWR plant,” Dairyland Vice President of Generation Rob Palmberg said in a statement. “We thank our employees and team who have focused diligently on performing this decommissioning work safely and successfully. We have now reached a point where it makes sense to work with a partner with demonstrated expertise to finish decommissioning the LACBWR site.”
Zion Reaches Fuel Removal Milestone
ZionSolutions, meanwhile, announced this week the successful completion of its campaign to move the spent nuclear fuel at the Zion Power Station to dry cask storage. The EnergySolutions subsidiary loaded 61 dry cask storage containers in less than 52 weeks, ahead of the estimated timeline, the company said. “We are extremely proud of our employees for the safe and efficient job they have done in transferring the spent nuclear fuel from the fuel pool to the ISFSI pad,” EnergySolutions CEO David Lockwood said in a statement. “In completing this portion of the decommissioning project, we have successfully established the largest fuel transfer campaign to date in the United States, a major milestone for the project and for the nuclear industry.”
Lockwood added that the campaign completion ahead of schedule should help the company’s profitability at the site, a stark contrast from reports last week. A Chicago Tribune report last week said cost overruns threaten the company’s funding to complete the cleanup. EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker, however, said the report contained misinformation and maintained this week that the project was ahead of schedule and should ultimately be profitable—a sentiment echoed by Lockwood. “The completion of the fuel transfer in less than a year positions the project to be completed ahead of schedule. In addition, an earlier project completion date will further increase the profitability of the project for our Company,” Lockwood said.
According to Walker, cost overruns resulted from the acceleration of the pool to pad transfer of spent fuel and the identification of more Class B and C waste than previously expected. “As we have mentioned this project is ahead of schedule,” Walker said in an email. “The re-baseline resulted in costs that were three to five percent over previous estimates due to the acceleration of the pool-to-pad spent fuel transfer and the identification of more B and C waste than previously estimated. All B and C waste has now been quantified and will be shipped by mid-April. Our current projections indicate we will be profitable.”
