By John Stang
The New York state Attorney General’s Office and three other parties this week filed petitions for hearings with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the proposed license transfer and sale of the Indian Point Energy Center.
Along with the Attorney General’s Office, the petitioners are: jointly the town of Cortlandt, village of Buchanan, and Hendrick Hudson School District; the Safe Energy Rights Group, a Peekskill-based organization that opposes what it believes are harmful energy infrastructures; and Riverkeeper, an Ossining-based organization focused on environmental issues for the Hudson River. The deadline for filing was Wednesday.
While there are some differences in the petitions, they cover the same topics in broad strokes: concerns about whether prospective plant owner Holtec International would be able to fully fund decommissioning and whether the project’s corporate family tree shields Holtec from responsibility if the cleanup money falls short.
Power company Entergy owns the Indian Point complex in Buchanan, planning to retire reactor Unit 2 by April 30, 2020, and Unit 3 by April 30, 2021. Reactor Unit 1 has been closed since 1974. Last April, Entergy announced plans to sell the complex to Holtec, which would assume ownership of the decommissioning trust funds for the reactors and all responsibility for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management. However, the NRC must first approve the transfer of the plant’s reactor and spent fuel storage licenses.
The petitioners want to be recognized as intervenors in the NRC’s consideration of the license transfer applications — which would give them standing to argue their case in hearings.
“It is essential that the decommissioning of Indian Point be safe, rapid, and complete,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a press release. “Putting the decommissioning of Indian Point in the hands of a company with no experience and uncertain financial resources is very risky. I am committed to ensuring that New York is granted full participation in this application proceeding and all other decision-making related to Indian Point’s decommissioning.”
To be authorized to intervene in a license proceeding, outside parties must prove legal standing and admissible contentions. The NRC does not have a set timeline to rule on the petitions and to hold hearings, if needed. Hearings would be conducted by the NRC commissioners.
The Attorney General’s Office case for standing is straightforward: it represents the state and Indian Point is in the state. The other petitioners note they are headquartered a few miles from Indian Point — a significant argument for legal standing.
“Stakeholder participation is an important – and expected – part of the regulatory approval process. We look forward to an opportunity to further discuss with local officials and others Holtec’s plan for the safe, efficient and prompt decommissioning of Indian Point, which can be completed decades sooner than if Entergy performed the work,” Holtec spokesman Joe Delmar said by email. “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has previously determined that Holtec has the financial and technical qualifications to perform decommissioning safely, and has approved license transactions at other US nuclear power plants.”
Holtec has estimated it can complete decommissioning of the three reactors within 15 years of the close of the sale. The company has projected a $2.3 billion price tag for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management for the three reactors. Entergy’s decommissioning funds for the reactors held $2.1 billion in October 2019, which the three petitions argue is $200 million short of what is needed. The petitioners argue the licenses should not be transferred until the shortfall is addressed. They also questioned the financial assumptions behind Holtec’s calculations — contending that the $2.3 billion project estimate could be too low.
The petition from the Attorney General’s Office contends that Holtec’s cost estimate does not account for discovery of unexpected extra amounts of radioactive materials. Holtec also assumes the NRC will allow it to use some portion of the trusts to pay for spent fuel management and site restoration— an exemption from federal regulations Holtec has not yet sought. James’ office added that Holtec’s financial calculations assume that spent fuel will begin to be removed from Indian Point in 2030 under federal control, which the state contends is questionable given the delays in building a federal repository for used nuclear fuel.
All four petitions voice concerns about the network of limited liability companies separating Holtec International from its subsidiaries that will handle the actual decommissioning. They argued that arrangement will shield Holtec International from its financial obligations if decommissioning has problems.
The attorney general’s filing describes Holtec’s corporate setup at Indian Point as an “apparent effort to shield itself for financial liability for decommissioning costs that exceed the amount of money in the decommissioning trust fund.”
The petitions and other documents described the proposed corporation setup at Indian Point as follows: Holtec International subsidiary Holtec Decommissioning International (HDI) plans to hire Comprehensive Decommissioning International, a joint corporation owned by HDI and Kentz, which is a subsidiary of Canadian engineering megacorporation SNC-Lavalin. Comprehensive Decommissioning International will manage decommissioning.
Founded in 1986, Holtec has a long history in management of spent fuel from nuclear power plants, but it is new to managing a full decommissioning project.
In 2019, following NRC approval of license transfers, the company acquired two newly shuttered facilities: the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey from power company Exelon and the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts from Entergy. It also plans to buy Entergy’s Palisades Power Plant in Michigan, which is scheduled for retirement in 2022.
In each case, Holtec expects to retain some of the site’s decommissioning trust funding as profit. Comprehensive Decommissioning International is expected to manage cleanup at each property.
While the Oyster Creek deal went through smoothly and quietly, the commonwealth of Massachusetts has challenged the license transfer and sale of Pilgrim at the NRC and in federal court. The commission has still note ruled on intervention petitions from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office and advocacy group Pilgrim Watch, even after staff last August approved the license transfer and the sale went through.
Riverkeeper and Safe Energy also pointed to some skeletons in the closet at both Holtec and SNC-Lavalin.
These include the New Jersey Economic Development Authority last year freezing a $260 million tax break for Holtec because the company falsely stated it had never been barred from doing business with a state or federal agency. That statement ignored a temporary prohibition in 2010 from doing business with the Tennessee Valley Authority following indications it had paid an employee of the federally owned corporation $54,000 to help secure a contract.
Meanwhile, Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin was caught up in a bribery scandal at home focused on prior construction contracts in Libya. In December, it agreed to plead guilty to a single count of fraud, paying a $213.5 million fine over five years and avoiding the ban on Canadian government contracts, according to the Engineering News-Record.
Safe Energy and Riverkeeper also pointed out that Holtec’s post-shutdown decommissioning activities report for Indian Point does not the address a giant high-pressure gas pipeline 105 feet from the site. The environmental organizations believe that digging during decommissioning could run into the pipeline.
