Construction continued on an expanded fuel storage facility at New York’s shuttered Indian Point Energy center, where a subcontractor started building a vehicle barrier system to protect 127 casks of spent fuel, decommissioning lead Holtec International said last week.
Holtec International, Jupiter, Fla., briefed the local Decommissioning Oversight Board about the development April 26 at the board’s latest meeting. The next board meeting was scheduled for June 15.
Holtec has been in the crossfires of locals, both near Indian Point in New York and the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, who are concerned about discharges of irradiated water from spent fuel storage pools during plant decommissioning.
The practice is routine for operating and shuttered plants and Holtec has maintained that at Indian Point, a discharge of wastewater into the Hudson River “poses the least public risk,” according to the presentation to the board.
Holtec in April postponed a plan to discharge irradiated water from the spent fuel pool of Indian Point’s Unit 2 reactor into the Hudson. The discharge had been scheduled for Thursday.
The company is meanwhile in negotiations with the state of New York about “improvements” to environmental sampling it helps pay for at and near Indian Point as part of the plant’s decommissioning. The company and the state last met on April 20. There will be “more to follow,” Holtec told the board Thusday. Holtec has meanwhile agreed temporarily not to proceed with a planned wastewater discharge that was scheduled for May.
Holtec took over Indian Point after the plant’s third reactor shut down in April 2021. The company has said it could finish decommissioning the facility by 2027.
All of the spent fuel from Indian Point’s Unit 2 and Unit 3 reactors should be transferred to the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation pads and fully fenced in by the end of December, Holtec said in its presentation to the board.
