After months of public dispute and consternation, Lacey Township has reached a settlement with Holtec to allow the company to add more storage casks to its fuel storage pad at the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in New Jersey.
The township approved the deal at a planning board meeting on Dec. 14, and the settlement was submitted by both parties to Judge Douglas Arpert in the U.S. District Court in New Jersey on Dec. 17.
The settlement allows Holtec to install 20 new steel and concrete storage casks to its independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI), which already holds 48, according to the settlement. The Lacey Township Planning Board rejected Holtec’s application to expand the pad in September. Holtec sued, and Arpert granted the township a stay in October, further delaying Holtec’s work.
In return, Holtec, among other things, must: follow a July consent order with the township; copy the township planning board on all sampling, testing and spill reports sent to the NRC; provide daily updates to the township each weekday; agree that only spent fuel from Oyster Creek be sent to the storage facility; provide the township with copies of spill reports from the Oyster Creek site and maintain a spare $10-million cask off-site “designated for use at the Oyster Creek facility if needed,” according to the settlement.
The settlement “ensures transparency throughout the fuel loading campaign as well as the overall decommissioning project at Oyster Creek,” said Holtec spokesman Joseph Delmar in a statement. “With the fuel loading campaign now allowed to proceed, the safe and efficient decommissioning of Oyster Creek can continue as scheduled.”
Holtec and Lacey Township have squabbled over Holtec’s decommissioning plans for most of the year. In June, the township obtained a stop work order from the Superior Court of New Jersey in Ocean County. Township officials said Holtec didn’t have the proper construction permits to begin decommissioning work.
In July, the parties signed a consent order directing Holtec to submit a plan to the township’s planning board that describes the intended dry storage pad expansion, the numbers and types of casks to be used and explanations of how the fuel would be transferred from a pool to dry storage.
But in September, the township rejected the plan Holtec submitted, prompting the company’s lawsuit.
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 itself had plans to take the plant down over the course of 60 years.
Movement of the fuel from the plant to the storage pad is scheduled to begin in early 2021.
