A pre-pandemic report from the company set to decommission a New York nuclear power plant is available for public comment, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced last week.
Members of the public can submit comments on Holtec International’s Post-Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report (PSDAR) for Indian Point Energy Center through October 22, NRC said in a Federal Register notice published June 24. The PSDAR, initially sent to the agency in December 2019, details estimated costs and timelines for decommissioning and site remediation at the shuttered Buchanan, N.Y. nuclear plant.
Asked whether the COVID-19 pandemic had any effect on cost or timeline estimates for decommissioning Indian Point, a spokesperson for Holtec told RadWaste Monitor via email Monday that the 2019 PSDAR “represents the planned decommissioning process at the time.”
At the other two nuclear plants Holtec is currently decommissioning — Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts and Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey — some work and schedules changed “to enhance efficiency of resources or the needs of the project,” the spokesperson said.
“It is too early to say that will definitely happen with IPEC [Indian Point], but decommissioning is an evolving industry with lessons learned from other projects that can be incorporated at IPEC to provide safe, efficient cleanup and reuse of the site,” the spokesperson said.
Holtec reported in 2019 that it needed around $2.3 billion to complete all decommissioning and site remediation activities across Indian Point’s three reactors. That figure includes around $630 million for spent fuel management. The Camden, N.J.-based nuclear services company previously received a regulatory exemption from NRC to access around $2 billion sitting in Indian Point’s decommissioning trust fund for spent fuel management and site remediation purposes.
The PSDAR also estimates that all decommissioning and site remediation activities will be finished in 2062, assuming that the plant’s license transfer to Holtec from Entergy was finalized by May 31 of this year. Indeed, the transaction was finalized on May 28, ahead of schedule — Indian Point shut down for good April 30. The spokesperson said the company is “still in the initial stage of incorporating the former Entergy employees into the Holtec decommissioning team.”
Indian Point’s Unit 3 reactor was the last to go offline April 30. Unit 2 shut down late last year, and Unit 1 was shuttered back in 1974.
