By John Stang
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday it intends by the end of 2020 to finish its evaluation of the application to transfer the licenses for the Indian Point Energy Center in New York state from owner Entergy to prospective buyer Holtec International.
“Our review could be completed later this year,” according to Bruce Watson, chief of the NRC’s Reactor Decommissioning Branch
However, agency officials told participants on a webinar addressing Indian Point’s future decommissioning that a date cannot be pinned down yet for the decision.
The NRC is evaluating Holtec’s technical and financial qualifications to safely and properly decommission the plant’s three reactors. That includes the ability to clean up any remaining radiological contamination to meet the criteria for release of the property for unrestricted use, agency spokesman Neil Sheehan said by email.
In an April 16 letter to Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki said the industry regulator would hold a public meeting on the proposed license transfer as soon as such events are allowed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “There will be an opportunity at the meeting for interested stakeholders to ask questions and provide comments to the NRC,” Svinicki wrote.
Entergy owns the three-reactor facility in the village of Buchanan, 24 miles from New York City. Reactor Unit 1 operated from 1962 to 1974. The company plans to retire Reactor Unit 2 on April 30 and Unit 3 by April 30, 2021.
There are about 900 employees at Indian Point. Roughly 90 of them will leave Entergy or transfer to another location after Unit 2 is retired, company spokesman Jerry Nappi said by email Tuesday. Upward of 350 will stay on after the site’s full closure to perform decommissioning.
The New Orleans-based power provider plans to sell the complex to New Jersey-based energy technology firm Holtec, which would assume ownership of the decommissioning trust funds for the reactors and all responsibility for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management. However, the NRC must first approve the transfer of the plant’s reactor and spent fuel storage licenses.
While no target dates have yet been set, Indian Point will have to obtain NRC certificates for cessation of operations and for permeant removal of the reactors’ spent nuclear fuel.
Holtec submitted a post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR) to the NRC in December. However, the federal agency won’t start reviewing it until the license transfer issue is resolved. Public meetings will be held on the PSDAR, which is essentially an outline of a decommissioning project’s overall budget, timetable, and scope.
A prior PSDAR from Entergy called for Units 1, 2, and 3 to be decommissioned in sequence through 2077, at which time their NRC licenses would be terminated.
Decommissioning the three reactors is projected to cost $2.3 billion. Holtec says it can complete the job in 15 years. Holtec’s PSDAR says decommissioning and site restoration would be conducted from 2024 to 2036, at which time licensing would be reduced to solely cover the spent fuel storage pad. That license would remain in effect until the used fuel is removed for off-site storage or disposal – potentially at the centralized, interim site Holtec wants to build in southeastern New Mexico.
Actual decommissioning cannot begin until the license transfers are approved and the third reactor shuts down in 2021, Watson said. The NRC hopes to have all of the site’s spent fuel in dry storage by 2024.
Roughly 4,000 used fuel assemblies would be placed in dry storage. Those are currently split between dry-fuel casks, two spent fuel pools, and active use in Units 2 and 3.
On the site’s decommissioning trust funds, Watson said reactor Unit 1 has accumulated $471 million of a targeted $598 million; Unit 2 has collected $598 million of a targeted $702 million; and Unit 3 has $780 million out of a targeted $1 billion. The latest decommissioning trust fund figures are dated to the end of 2018.
In response to a question raised at the webinar, Watson said Holtec’s past history will be considered in the license transfer review. He did not elaborate.
Established in 1986, Holtec has a long history in moving and storing spent nuclear fuel. But it has just entered the field of decommissioning commercial reactors. In 2019, it acquired and began decommissioning Entergy’s Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts and Exelon’s Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey. It hopes to acquire Entergy’s Palisades Power Plant in Michigan, which is scheduled to close in 2022.
The company’s history has raised concerns among some state leaders and advocacy groups, particularly in Massachusetts and New York state.
The New Jersey Economic Development Authority last year froze a $260 million tax break previously issued to Holtec after the company said it had never been barred from doing business with a state or federal agency. That statement left out a temporary prohibition in 2010 from doing business with the Tennessee Valley Authority in the wake of a bribery case over a contract. At the beginning of this month, Holtec sued the state agency in an effort to unlock the tax break.
Holtec is also partnered with Canadian engineering company SNC-Lavalin in the joint venture that will manage decommissioning of the plants, Comprehensive Decommissioning International. SNC-Lavalin was caught up in a bribery scandal focused on prior construction contracts in Libya. In December, it agreed to plead guilty to a single count of fraud, paying a $280 million CAD fine over five years and avoiding the ban on Canadian government contracts.
The New York state Attorney General’s Office and three nongovernmental groups have filed petitions for Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearings on the proposed license transfer for Indian Point. The agency had not ruled on the petitions at deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor.
Similar petitions remain outstanding from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office and advocacy organization Pilgrim Watch, even though the commission approved the Pilgrim license transfer last August. The commonwealth of Massachusetts also sued the NRC in September 2019 in an effort to roll back the license transfer.
New York Won’t Keep Nuclear Plant Alive During Pandemic
Meanwhile, the state of New York this week dismissed calls to prevent the Indian Point Energy Center from closing in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an open letter to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), the pro-nuclear Climate Coalition said using executive authority to keep Indian Point alive, “and preventing a surge of new, toxic fossil fuel pollutants from spewing into the air while people are perishing from respiratory failure, is probably the most critical, preventative thing you can do to ease suffering and additional deaths.” The letter cites research from Harvard University that found a connection between air pollution and deaths from the novel coronavirus 2019.
The New York Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities in the state, was not convinced by the plea.
“There is no reason nor need to allow Indian Point to remain open because of the pandemic,” spokesman James Denn said by email. “Electricity demand across New York State has fallen nearly 8 percent during the last two weeks of March and into the first week of April due to pandemic’s impact on the economy, according to the NYISO. Once the economy returns to normal, we will continue to see a decline in the State’s energy load thanks in part to our aggressive energy efficiency measures.”
Unit 2 was already down to 75% maximum power output as of Tuesday, and expected to drop to 67% on April 30, according to Nappi.
Denn also noted that Entergy would need an 18-month lead to refuel if it were to remain operational, “and there is no fuel for the reactor. Given these facts, Indian Point 2 will have to shut down in the coming weeks.”
