In a scathing court filing this week, Holtec International slammed Lacey Township’s reasoning for rejecting a key part of the company’s plan to expand spent fuel storage space for the shuttered Oyster Creek power plant in New Jersey.
The Florida-based company sued the township and its planning board in the U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Trenton in September after a summer of headbutting, during which the township voted to strike down part of Holtec’s decommissioning plan for the shuttered single-reactor plant.
The township and the board denied allegations in Holtec’s complaint that the vote was motivated solely by fear of radioactive contamination — something the municipality has no jurisdiction over — and said instead they denied needed permits in part because Holtec mischaracterized the storage space as “temporary.”
In a blistering filing Wednesday, Holtec said that defense was “a failed confluence of distorted facts and misplaced legal arguments” and called on the court to reject them.
“Defendants’ naiveté is troubling, and precisely why Congress and our Courts have chosen not to permit state and local authorities to interfere with the construction and operation of nuclear facilities, and the storage of spent nuclear fuel in the name of radiological safety — they are not qualified,” Holtec wrote.
Atomic energy law professor Larry Brown said he is not familiar with any allowance to sub-delegate regulatory authority over nuclear plants to municipalities.
“Unless an agreement state officially adopts a municipality’s standard, and it is permitted under the agreement with [the Nuclear Regulatory Commission], and does not involve a commercial nuclear power plant (which includes the decommissioning process) then Holtec’s claim will be sustained,” Brown wrote in an email Wednesday. “Local zoning boards have no such regulatory authority.”
Holtec’s suit seeks a preliminary and permanent injunction blocking the commission from incorporating radiological safety into their decision over whether the plan meets local zoning codes — something outside their governing powers. Holtec is also looking for legal relief to start conducting practice demonstrations for their spent fuel campaign as soon as possible.
“It is essential that [Holtec Decommissioning International] HDI be able to proceed with the dry run, scheduled to begin in late September, and with the spent fuel campaign which are of the utmost importance and urgency to ensure the safe and timely storage of spent nuclear fuel from the decommissioned reactor,” Holtec wrote in its complaint.
Holtec filed a similar suit against the township in state court on Sept. 16 alleging the township exhibited “bias” when denying the plan.
Holtec acquired the Oyster Creek nuclear plant from Exelon last summer. It was one of the country’s oldest plants before closing in September 2018. Before Holtec’s offer to decommission the facility, Exelon had plans to take the plant down over the course of 60 years.
