CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Entergy is moving forward with decommissioning paperwork for its James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant, despite the tentative $110 million sale of the facility to Exelon, a senior executive said Monday.
“We submitted all the regulatory submittals that we need for the early items that you need for decommissioning: post-shutdown plan, the exemption plan,” Entergy Nuclear Decommissioning Director Paul Paradis said here Monday at Nuclear Energy Insider’s Nuclear Decommissioning and Used Fuel Strategy Summit. “All that is sitting with the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) right now, and they will do it but not approve it, pending what happens. Very little going on, but we still have to make sure if that doesn’t go through, as everybody knows deals like that fall through pretty quickly, that we have a plan to recover.”
Entergy agreed to the sale with Exelon in August, about a week after the New York Public Service Commission approved Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) Clean Energy Standard. Cuomo’s program is projected to pay upstate nuclear operators up to $1 billion in zero-emission energy credits through the next couple years, potentially staving off closures at FitzPatrick and Exelon’s R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant and Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station.
Paradis said Entergy’s decommissioning unit will move forward as if FitzPatrick is shutting down, though he said the company is “pretty optimistic” that the deal will close. The transaction is expected to be finalized in the second quarter of 2017, pending regulatory approvals.
