The commonwealth of Massachusetts on Thursday asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to place a 90-day stay on its consideration of the license transfer application for the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.
The hold is needed to allow officials from Massachusetts and the plant’s owner and prospective buyer to reach a potential settlement addressing concerns the commonwealth has raised in the proceeding, according to a motion filed by Attorney General Maura Healey and other attorneys.
“The resolution of the settlement negotiations could resolve the Commonwealth’s Petition and prove valuable to the NRC’s own decision-making process,” states the motion, which was filed Friday to the NRC website.
Agency approval of the transfer of the licenses for Pilgrim’s retired reactor and its spent fuel storage pad is a mandatory step in Entergy’s plan to sell the plant to Holtec International. A ruling had at one point been anticipated in July, but did not materialize.
In August 2018, the New Orleans-based power company announced its plans to sell the single-reactor plant on Cape Cod, which ceased operations on May 31 of this year. Following federal regulatory approval and completion of the sale, Holtec would take ownership of Pilgrim’s decommissioning trust fund and all responsibility for decomissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management on the property.
The New Jersey energy technology company has said it can complete decommissioning within eight years, decades earlier than Entergy’s previous schedule. That has drawn skepticism from some quarters, and both the commonwealth of Massachusetts and the local advocacy group Pilgrim Watch in February filed petitions for intervention and hearings on the license transfer application. If they can prove standing to intervene and admissable contentions against the license transfer, the organizations would be able to formally make their case to the federal regulator.
The Massachusetts and Pilgrim Watch arguments are broadly similar: Holtec and Entergy have not proven that there is enough money to pay for decommissioning, as demanded by law, and the companies have not performed the necessary environmental evaluations. Earlier this month, Pilgrim Watch filed a request with the NRC to file a new contention: That the license transfer should not be allowed until Holtec and affiliated companies in the acquisition are found “trustworthy and reliable and otherwise possesses the character prerequisite” for decommissioning, and that the license transfer would not undermine common defense and security or the public health.
The agency has not yet ruled on the hearing petitions, which the companies have opposed.
Officials from Massachusetts have been in discussions with Holtec and Entergy executives since late last year, including an in-person meeting in February and “phone calls and email exchanges … in the following months,” the motion says. The parties are now considering a draft settlement prepared in June that is intended to address concerns raised by the commonwealth and other stakeholders.
“To preserve the current positions of the parties and in light of the benefits to the NRC if the Negotiating Parties are able to reach an agreement, we ask that the NRC take no action on any of the pending requests for 90 days, or until the Negotiating Parties jointly inform the NRC either that they have reached a settlement and the Commonwealth is
withdrawing its Petition or that an agreement cannot be reached and the Commission should proceed to rule on the Commonwealth’s Petition, whichever occurs sooner,” according to this week’s motion.
The NRC on Friday said only that the motion is before the commission as part of the overall adjudication of the license transfer application.
Entergy and Holtec plan to soon file a formal notice of opposition to the Massachusetts stay request, which would delay completion of their deal.
“The transfer of Pilgrim to Holtec is in the best interests of the town of Plymouth and surrounding communities, the employees, and the Commonwealth,” the companies said in a joint statement Friday. “If the NRC staff determines that Holtec meets the required technical and financial qualifications, then the transfer of the plant should proceed. A delay would leave nearly 270 people from the community who work at Pilgrim in limbo.”
Healey and her legal team said a temporary stay would not damage decommissioning at Pilgrim. “Entergy is the current license holder and operator and will remain as such during the pendency of the stay. Further, Entergy recently received an exemption from the NRC to use the Pilgrim Decommissioning Trust Fund for certain non-decommissioning activities.”
The NRC on July 22 issued a regulatory exemption allowing Entergy Nuclear Operations to use money in the Pilgrim plant’s decommissioning trust fund for spent fuel management and site restoration activities. The power company might not need the exemption for long, if it can wrap up the sale to Holtec.
Entergy requested the exemption in November 2018. On July 1, the NRC staff issued an environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact for the application. The final order was posted Monday to the agency website.
Without an exemption from the NRC, the trust funds can only be used for operations that meet the regulatory definition of decommissioning: removing a facility safely from service, with residual radioactivity sufficiently reduced to allow for license termination and either restricted or unrestricted use of the property.
Entergy had intended to put Pilgrim into SAFSTOR mode upon closure, under which final decommissioning can be delayed for up to six decades. By the time of the exemption application, Entergy had announced plans to sell the facility to Holtec International for expedited decommissioning.
Holtec filed a corresponding exemption request for the Pilgrim decommissioning trust as part of the license transfer application, but that is considered secondary until the proceeding is complete.
The NRC noted that the Pilgrim decommissioning trust fund had $1.05 billion as of Oct. 31, 2018. Entergy estimated that radiological decommissioning under SAFSTOR would cost nearly $1.19 billion in 2018 dollars and long-term spent fuel management $420 million.
“The NRC staff confirmed that the current funds in the DTF and projected earnings provide reasonable assurance of adequate funding to complete all NRC-required radiological decommissioning activities, and also to pay for spent fuel management and site restoration activities,” according to the NRC exemption order.
Holtec has estimated decommissioning will cost $1.134 billion and can be largely finished by 2027. That breaks down to $592.5 million for the decommissioning through 2027, $501.4 million for handling and storing the spent fuel, and $40.1 million for site restoration at the end of the project.
A Holtec executive in June said the company expected an NRC ruling on the license transfer application by July. An agency spokesman at the time said that schedule appeared likely, “barring unforeseen events.”
“The NRC staff is still working on its review of the license transfer application for the Pilgrim nuclear power plant,” agency spokesman Neil Sheehan said by email Friday. “We do not have a firm timeframe at this point on when our decision will be issued. The staff is continuing to exercise due diligence in carefully evaluating all aspects of the proposal.”
On July 26, the NRC requested that Entergy explain a discrepancy in its estimate for radiological decommissioning at Pilgrim and an earlier figure from Holtec.
In a March update on the status of decommissioning funding for the plant, Entergy cited $633.3 million as the minimum amount needed to “demonstrate reasonable assurance of funds for decommissioning” under federal regulations, according to a request for additional information submitted by Scott Wall, an NRC senior project manager in the Division of Operating Reactor Licensing. However, Holtec had estimated in November 2018 that complete radiological decommissioning at Pilgrim would cost $592.6 million in 2018 dollars.
The NRC received a response on Wednesday, but the document did not appear to have been posted to the agency website as of Friday afternoon.
