By John Stang
Holtec International said Tuesday it aims to buy a fourth nuclear power plant that nearing retirement, the Indian Point Energy Center in upstate New York.
The announcement came less than a month after the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission asked Holtec to show it is not spread too thin to handle multiple nuclear decommissioning projects.
The New Jersey energy technology company and Indian Point owner Entergy announced the planned deal in largely identical press releases Tuesday morning. If the sale goes through, Holtec would assume ownership and responsibility for decommissioning of the three reactors at the Buchanan, N.Y., plant, along with their respective decommissioning trusts. The companies hope to complete the deal in the third quarter of 2021, after the retirement of the last two operational reactors at Indian Point.
Reactor Unit 2 is scheduled to close by April 2020, followed by Unit 3 by April 2021. Unit 1 has been shuttered since 1974 and is now in safe-storage mode.
“With its deep experience and technological innovations, Holtec’s ability to decommission Indian Point will benefit stakeholders in the surrounding community,” Entergy Chairman and CEO Leo Denault said in the release.
The NRC will have to approve transfer of Indian Point’s reactor licenses for the deal to proceed. Some forms of regulatory approval will also be required from the New York state Public Service Commission (PSC) and the New York Department of Environment Conservation.
The PSC oversees New York’s public utilities, and its task is to ensure the proposed sale is in the public’s best interest. That means collecting public feedback on the proposal, said PSC spokesman James Denn. The proposal will be first publicly discussed at an April 25 meeting in Cortlandt in New York’s Westchester County.
Holtec also plans to create a decommissioning advisory aoard of industry experts to review its plans.
Upon closure and taking ownership, Holtec would begin decommissioning Indian Point decades earlier than Entergy had planned, according to the press release. That is in line with its approach for the other nuclear plants, which it says would also be significantly less expensive than the decommissioning methods previously planned by the power companies.
Holtec expects to lay out a detailed cleanup schedule for all three reactors in the fourth quarter of this year when it files a decommissioning cost estimate and post-shutdown decommissioning activities report with the NRC. The companies did not say when the license transfer application would be filed.
When Indian Point closes, Holtec expects 54 canisters of spent fuel will be in dry storage, with 990 fuel assemblies remaining in Unit 2 and 1,280 in Unit 3. All the fuel is expected to be in on-site dry storage by 2024.
Holtec hopes by July 1 to acquire the license for Exelon’s Oyster Creek Generating Station in New Jersey, which closed last September, according to the release. If everything goes to plan, the NRC would six weeks later complete the license transfer for Entergy’s Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, scheduled for closure by June 1. The company further intends to buy Entergy’s Palisades Power Plant in Michigan after its retirement in 2022. Holtec would also take ownership of the property of Entergy’s decommissioned Big Rock Point nuclear power plant in Michigan, which still holds a spent fuel storage pad.
In all cases, the sale price has not been released. In a similar deal completed in January, New York City-based NorthStar Group Services bought Entergy’s retired Vermont Yankee reactor for a nominal $1,000. The anticipated profit would come from money left in the decommissioning trust once work is finished.
The sales of the three Entergy facilities would complete the divestment of its merchant nuclear fleet.
As with the other nuclear plants, decommissioning at Indian Point would be carried out by Comprehensive Decommissioning International, a joint venture of Holtec and Montreal-based engineering company SNC-Lavalin. Holtec would own Indian Point and contract the decommissioning work to CDI.
In a March 21 email, the NRC requested additional information about the license transfer for the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station – a standard step in licensing proceedings. In the message, Scott Wall, a senior project manager in the agency’s Office of Nuclear Regulation, noted that Holtec subsidiary Holtec Decommissioning International could soon assume responsibility for concurrent licensing operations at Pilgrim and Oyster Creek, covering management of radioactive material, maintenance to ensure the plants remain safe, decommissioning and decontamination of the reactors, and spent fuel storage operations until the material is removed from the property.
“Provide additional information that justifies that HDI’s management and technical support organization will have sufficient resources (i.e. corporate structure, management and technical support organization staff capacities, internal procedures, etc.) to conduct licensed activities at multiple sites,” Wall wrote.
His message notably did not cover Holtec’s future work at Palisades and Indian Point. It was not immediately known whether Holtec had yet responded to the request.
Some state and local governments, along with nongovernmental groups, have already expressed concerns about Holtec’s ability to complete decommissioning of the nuclear plants within their borders. Leading concerns have been Holtec’s ability to pay for all the work and its partnership with legally troubled SNC-Lavalin.
The commonwealth of Massachusetts, led by its Attorney General’s Office, has petitioned the NRC for authorization to intervene in the license transfer application for Pilgrim. Lacey Township in New Jersey, where the Oyster Creek plant is located, has made the same request in that proceeding.
As of Friday, the state of New York did not appear to have issued a public statement about the Indian Point announcement. However, the environmental organization Riverkeeper voiced concern about the proposed sale. It cited SNC-Lavalin’s legal problems in Canada, which include charges of bribing Libyan officials to obtain work and accusations that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has run interference for the company during its courtroom woes.
“First, Entergy should offer financial guarantees so that New Yorkers are not left holding the bag if there is an accident during decommissioning or if Holtec spends all the money in the decommissioning fund without completing the job,” Riverkeeper said. “Second, Holtec and its partners must also show that they have the financial strength to weather an accident and to backstop the decommissioning fund. They must also undertake not use the decommissioning fund for other purposes, such as spent fuel management.”
In the Vermont Yankee license transfer, the NRC required Entergy and NorthStar Group Services to provide additional financial backup to ensure decommissioning would be funded.
As of Dec. 31, 2018, Indian Point had $1.85 billion in the combined trust funds for all three reactors.
