An anti-nuclear watchdog group pressed Pennsylvania’s utility regulator this week for more information about its ongoing investigation into water use at the shuttered Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station.
The Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission (PUC) will give Three Mile Island Alert a response to a sweeping records request on the agency’s investigation into water use at Three Mile Island by Nov. 18, according to an email sent to watchdog chair Eric Epstein Friday and viewed by RadWaste Monitor.
The PUC needs to conduct “a legal review” to determine whether the trove of documents in Epstein’s Tuesday request — including docketed records, communications and work notes — fall under the state’s open records law, the email said.
It’s been a few months since the PUC said in July that its enforcement office would investigate “certain uses of water” at Three Mile Island’s shuttered Unit 2 reactor (TMI-2). If the state agency finds any action is necessary, they’ll make a recommendation to the commission’s executive body, which will decide whether to enforce it, the PUC said in a July email to Three Mile Island Alert.
A PUC representative declined to comment via email Wednesday about the status of its investigation.
Epstein and Three Mile Island Alert have claimed that TMI-2’s sale to an EnergySolutions subsidiary from FirstEnergy didn’t get required water quality certifications from interstate regulators as required by the federal Clean Water Act. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees such transactions, has repeatedly torpedoed Three Mile Island Alert’s attempts to halt the sale on those grounds.
Other regulatory agencies have also called the watchdog’s accusation into question. The Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) told RadWaste Monitor in July that its own investigation into water use at TMI-2 hadn’t turned up any evidence of illegality.
Epstein has said that he is preparing to challenge the TMI-2 license transfer in federal court, but at deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor, a lawsuit had yet to materialize.
EnergySolutions bought TMI-2 in 2019. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The reactor shut down in 1979 after a partial core meltdown which resulted in one of the worst radiological releases in U.S. history.
