Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
10/9/2015
CHARLOTTE, N.C.— Industry and state officials this week called for changes to the 60-year time frame utilities are granted under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s SAFSTOR reactor decommissioning option.
With a slew of utilities announcing the premature shutdown of some reactors in recent years, many in the cleanup community anticipated more work while communities expected a more active teardown of the plants. But with premature shutdown, the utilities found that their decommissioning trust funds had not accrued enough interest yet to cover all the costs of the cleanup and elected to enter SAFSTOR as a way to grow the fund over time.
Under the SAFSTOR regulation, reactor sites are mothballed for up to 60 years to enable radioactive materials to cool. The reduction in radioactivity results in a decreased dose to workers dismantling the plant, as well as a reduction in waste material needed for disposal. Currently, there are 11 sites with reactors in SAFSTOR.
AREVA Senior Vice President of Back End Business Development and Sales Tara Neider, though, argued utilities and communities would be better served if the plants went under a more active decommissioning sooner. “SAFSTOR, to me, is putting off work that could be done today,” Neider said during the Nuclear Decommissioning & Used Fuel Strategy Summit . “If we aren’t going to have nuclear plants up and running, I loved to rather see a beautiful park where our children could play.” She added, “Getting the site decommissioning and moving fuel off-site is better for the ratepayer and its better for the community.”
Part of Neider’s argument centered on the financial incentives of a timelier decommissioning, including the reduction in property taxes and fewer staff and security needed to maintain the plant while it remains shuttered. Neider also argued from a community relations standpoint that local stakeholders deserve a prompt remediation, particularly if they no longer are receiving benefits from the reactor.
Vermont Public Service Department Commissioner Chris Recchia represents one such community. Recchia and the state of Vermont have been battling Entergy over the pace of the Vermont Yankee cleanup, as well as the use of its trust fund. Vermont has long opposed the Vermont Yankee station, and during negotiations with site operator Entergy, the state received assurances that the decommissioning would take place as soon as the fund had enough money, putting an emphasis on trust fund growth.
“The NRC does a great job in everything related to safety,” Recchia said. “Everything is looked at through those lenses, but when the exemption requests come in, frankly, they are not looking at everything, like is that going to delay it, or speed it up? Because with the SAFSTOR option of 60 years, [NRC] looks at it and says it doesn’t really have to do with safety, so we don’t care, and then they grant the exemptions. That’s an oversimplification of it, but that’s how it feels. We feel like they should put more emphasis on what the communities want and how soon they want it as part of the decommissioning.”
The NRC, for its part, earlier this year initiated a rulemaking to address the decommissioning process, with part of the focus on the 60 year time frame. Currently, the NRC does not have regulations that reflect the decreased security and safety threat posed by a reactor undergoing decommissioning. Instead, a series of license amendments is needed to exempt the plants, a step that can prove costly and time-intensive for both utilities and the NRC.
According to the commission’s staff requirements memoranda, the staff should focus on a wide variety of issues in its rulemaking that affect decommissioning plants, including the appropriate amount of NRC involvement in the post-shutdown decommissioning activities report, the role of state and local government in the process, and the need for 60 years under SAFSTOR.
