Holtec International’s hopes of taking over government payouts for spent fuel storage at a Massachusetts nuclear plant under decommissioning were dashed this week when a federal judge ruled in favor of the site’s former owner, according to a new court filing.
Although Holtec currently owns Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, the plant’s former owner Boston Edison is entitled to an around $56 million damages claim from the Department of Energy used to cover spent fuel storage costs at the site, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled in a filing Monday. Holtec asked the court in September to allow it to take over the claim from the utility, a subsidiary company of New England-based utility Eversource.
Since DOE has not met its Nuclear Waste Policy Act-mandated obligation to take title to spent fuel stored at nuclear power plants, it regularly pays out multi-million dollar settlements to plant operators to cover waste management costs. There’s currently no national repository for spent nuclear fuel — the only congressionally authorized location for such a site, Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, has yet to receive a license and won’t, President Joe Biden has said.
In its judgement, the court said that Holtec’s request “seek[s] to revisit and recast the legal landscape” of decades of litigation over DOE’s spent fuel settlement.
Boston Edison argued in its original complaint that when it sold Pilgrim to Entergy in 1999, it funded the plant’s decommissioning trust fund, which Holtec took over when it bought Pilgrim from Entergy in late 2018. Since Boston Edison fronted the original cash for the trust fund, it should get the DOE payout, the utility said.
Holtec argued that it instead owned both current and future spent fuel claims because Boston Edison wasn’t a party to Pilgrim’s sale to the company from Entergy.
A spokesperson for Holtec didn’t respond to a request for comment by deadline Friday.
Meanwhile, Holtec is in the process of moving Pilgrim’s spent fuel inventory into dry storage as it decommissions the site. The Camden, N.J., nuclear services company has said that it could finish dismantling the plant by 2027 or so.
