The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office has asked a federal appeals court to order a stay on the already-completed transfer of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses for the retired Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.
Monday’s action, plus two related measures by the federal regulator, should be frozen while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit considers the commonwealth’s September lawsuit on the matter, according to the petition. That lawsuit asks the court to vacate the NRC’s approval of the license transfers, and other steps, that allowed owner Entergy to sell its 47-year-old, one-reactor plant on Cape Cod to Holtec International.
Entergy closed Pilgrim in May. The NRC signed off on transfer of the site’s operations and spent-fuel storage licenses on Aug. 22, and the companies completed the deal a few days later. Holtec, an energy technology company based in New Jersey, then assumed all responsibility for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management on the property.
The commonwealth of Massachusetts and local advocacy group Pilgrim Watch in February both filed for adjudicatory hearings in the license transfer. The NRC said earlier this month it is still considering the requests even after approving the license transfer.
In their petition Monday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and other attorneys for the commonwealth said the NRC stated more than four decades ago that public participation in adjudicatory proceedings is key to “the sound discharge” of its responsibilities.
“Casting this ‘vital ingredient’ aside, the NRC unlawfully rendered a final determination that it could,” without accepting input from Massachusetts, “approve the transfer of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s (Pilgrim) license to new owners that lack the technical and financial qualifications to hold it, (ii) strip from the license a $50 million financial assurance condition that protected the Commonwealth and its citizens against safety and environmental hazards, and (iii) exempt the new licensee from a NRC regulation that would otherwise have categorically prohibited the licensee from using a Massachusetts electric-ratepayer-funded trust in the requested manner,” the petition says.
