A nuclear watchdog aiming to halt the sale and decommissioning of the power plant at the epicenter of one of the nation’s worst nuclear disasters is again asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reconsider its challenge, according to a new motion filed with the agency last week.
NRC erred when it tossed Three Mile Island Alert’s March request to hold the sale of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 2 reactor (TMI-2) citing a lack of jurisdiction, the watchdog’s chair Eric Epstein said in a motion to reconsider dated July 1.
The watchdog’s argument leaned on commissioner Jeff Baran’s dissent from NRC’s June 22 decision, in which he disagreed with his colleagues’ view that the agency couldn’t rule on the motion to hold TMI-2’s sale on procedural grounds. The commission retains that authority even though proceedings on the license transfer have closed, Baran argued. Epstein agreed.
NRC “has a responsibility to make sure that regulations, mandated by federal agencies in the licensing and relicensing of nuclear power plants, are enforced,” Epstein said.
The July 1 motion also argued that neither NRC, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PDEP) nor the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) “have addressed or refuted the merit or substance” of the watchdog’s February accusation that the Dauphin County, Pa. plant’s sale violated a water quality certification requirement under section 401 of the Clean Water Act.
A spokesperson for SRBC told RadWaste Monitor via email Thursday that the interstate agency had asked the NRC and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for advice about the water quality requirement, had not “learned of anything” that would require them to step in. In NRC’s June 22 decision, the commission noted that since there would be “no new discharges” associated with the plant’s decommissioning, no certification was necessary.
At deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor the commission hadn’t responded to the watchdog’s motion.
TMI-2, which EnergySolutions subsidiary TMI-2 Solutions announced it would purchase from FirstEnergy in 2019, has been offline since 1979 after a partial core meltdown caused a radiation leak.
