By John Stang
Executives with power company Entergy said Tuesday bringing the struggling Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts up to operational snuff will not affect its scheduled closure by June 1, 2019.
During a briefing of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Commissioner David Wright asked Entergy officials to rate the likelihood of the boiling-water reactor being ready for final closure by that date on a scale of 1 to 10.
“I put it at a 10,” said Christopher Bakken, Entergy Nuclear executive vice president of nuclear operations and chief nuclear officer.
Pilgrim is listed in “Column 4” of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s safety rating system, the lowest ranking allowed for an operational reactor. Pilgrim and the two Arkansas Nuclear One reactors are the only three reactors listed under Column 4. Entergy operates all three.
The NRC put Pilgrim in Column 4 in September 2015 following a series of safety problems and unplanned shutdowns. That led to heightened oversight of the plant and forced Entergy to establish and implement an extensive recovery plan.
In October 2015, the company said it would close the Cape Cod facility in 2019 due to falling wholesale energy prices and other financial challenges.
The NRC completed its special inspection of Pilgrim and is now conducting five follow-up inspections to determine whether the facility can be removed from Column 4. Two of the inspections have been completed. The others are planned for June, September, and December of this year. Consequently, Pilgrim expects to leave Column 4 status in early 2019.
David Lew, the NRC’s acting regional administrator overseeing Pilgrim, said plant management now makes decisions more conservatively, has improved operator procedures, and has provided more margins to deal with problems for planning to improve performances at the reactor. Procedures, operations, and safety matters will still be reviewed in the future inspections, he said.
The NRC has approved Entergy’s recovery plan. The agency will also keep heightened monitoring and increased staff in place, and is prepared to adjust its oversight measures as the shutdown date draws closer, Lew said.
Brian Sullivan, Entergy’s site vice president for Pilgrim, said the plant’s workforce is doing better in tackling several remedial projects simultaneously rather than dealing with the fix-it list one project at a time. “We’re working more efficiently,” he said.
Entergy is also working on keeping up employee morale with surveys, and figuring out which employees want to stay at Pilgrim and which want to move elsewhere during decommissioning, he said.
