Citing water use violations, a Pennsylvania-based environmental group this week asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider another challenge to decommissioning a shuttered nuclear power plant in the Keystone State, agency documents show.
In its Wednesday filing, Three Mile Island Alert (TMIA) told NRC that a 2021 license amendment request for Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 2 reactor “failed to consider” water use restrictions imposed by a regional water authority.
The Dauphin County, Pa., plant’s Unit 2 reactor is currently under decommissioning by EnergySolutions subsidiary TMI-2 Solutions. The company in February 2021 asked NRC to amend the facility’s license to reflect its status as a shuttered nuclear plant undergoing decommissioning.
According to TMIA’s petition, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission’s (SRBC) Dec. 15 order, which set water use limits at Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 reactor, specifically said that the commission “did not approve consumptive use” at Unit 2. Such approvals would require a separate review process, TMIA said.
The environmental group argued that Unit 2 owner EnergySolutions has provided “no publicly available document that sets forth the water requirements for decommissioning Unit 2,” including information about decontamination processes, the source of water required for decommissioning or where the water will be disposed of after use.
“These considerations are essential elements of a clean-up plan that TMI-2 should have addressed in its [license amendment request], as a lack of available water can delay the clean-up process,” the petition said.
The lack of water use information “casts doubt” on the rest of TMI-2 Solutions’ license amendment request, TMIA argued.
The environmental group asked NRC to admit its water use challenge as an administrative contention to the proposed license amendment. As of deadline Friday, the commission had yet to respond to that request.
TMIA has sounded the alarm about water use at Three Mile Island before. The environmental group in October 2021 lobbied the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to pressure the SRBC into setting water withdrawal limits at the facility.
Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 reactor was the site of one of the worst radiological accidents in U.S. history in 1979 when it suffered a partial core meltdown. The facility’s Unit 1 reactor is owned by Constellation Energy.
