Power company Exelon preliminarily favors putting three nuclear power plants into SAFSTOR when they close in coming years rather than moving directly into decommissioning, a senior manager said this week. That means it could be decades before the facilities begin the process.
“I would say we’re probably going to be leaning towards SAFSTOR,” an Exelon decommissioning manager said Tuesday during a teleconference between company officials and Nuclear Regulatory Commission representatives. “But we’ll go through that process and we’ll transmit it officially through the [post-shutdown decommissioning activities report] and reflect it through the decommissioning cost estimate.”
Exelon had already indicated its intention to put the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey into SAFSTOR after announcing in 2010 that the plant would close by the end of 2019. However, the company only in June affirmed its intention to shut down the Clinton Power Station and Quad Cities Generating Station, both in Illinois, respectively by June 1, 2017, and June 1, 2018, citing their combined $800 million in losses over the last seven years.
That means there is little public information about the decommissioning plans for those two sites. The hourlong meeting Wednesday did not add much, focusing instead on Exelon’s schedule for submitting licensing action requests and licensing amendments for the three facilities as they approach closure.
The company, though, acknowledged a current shortfall in the decommissioning trust fund for the Clinton Power Station, but did not discuss details and pledged to meet its obligation to pay for the post-closure cleanup.
“Exelon is in the very early stages of planning for shutdown and decommissioning for Clinton and Quad Cities. The schedule for decommissioning will be developed during the planning stages and described in the Post Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report [PSDAR] as required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC),” company spokesman Paul Dempsey said by email Thursday. “Since this planning has not yet occurred, the decommissioning strategy, time table and cost projections cannot be provided at this time.”
Facility operators can select among three decommissioning strategies for shuttered nuclear plants: DECON, SAFSTOR, and ENTOMB. The first involves rapid advancement to decommissioning, including dismantlement and decontamination to the point that the NRC license can be terminated and the property released. SAFSTOR, a designation that can be sustained for up to six decades, allows operators to maintain and oversee sites while radioactivity decays and (if needed) funds are accrued to pay for decommissioning. ENTOMB involves encasing radioactive contaminants in concrete or another “structurally sound material” during radioactive decay; it has never been used by a facility licensed by the NRC.
Key to the decommissioning process is the PSDAR, which lays out the planned decommissioning operations, schedule, and cost. The report for Clinton is expected to be submitted to the NRC on Jan. 31, 2017, followed by the Quad Cities PSDAR on Jan. 31, 2018, and the Oyster Creek document on Dec. 14 of that year, according to Exelon’s presentation Wednesday. The spent fuel management plan for Clinton should be sent to the NRC on Jan. 31, 2017, and the Quad Cities document a year later.
Exelon submitted the spent fuel management plan for Oyster Creek at the end of 2014. At the time, the facility’s decommissioning trust fund held about $870 million, which was expected to increase to over $960 million by November 2019, minus any decommissioning expenses. That amount would be sufficient to complete decommissioning under a SAFSTOR strategy, the company said in a preliminary decommissioning cost projection to the NRC.
