A New Jersey district court judge signed a settlement last week ending a legal feud between Holtec International and Lacey Township, N.J., over fuel from the Oyster Creek Generating Station, according to court papers.
Judge Michael A. Shipp signed the order Feb. 9, setting the stage for Holtec to move forward with the decommissioning of Oyster Creek, which the company bought from Exelon in 2019.
According to the settlement, which both parties agreed to in December, Holtec has to honor a consent agreement with the township from last July, and pledge that they will only store spent fuel from Oyster Creek on their storage pads. The company must also include Lacey Township’s planning commission on all safety evaluations and correspondence with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and they must provide daily updates to the township on weekdays, the settlement said.
Further, Holtec agreed in the settlement to keep a spare storage cask worth $10 million at its facility in Camden, N.J. The company will use this extra cask as overflow storage as needed, the settlement said.
Holtec is preparing to start the transfer of Oyster Creek’s spent fuel to the site’s storage pad. The company asked the NRC Jan. 29 to update the plant’s fuel storage guidelines, as they expect to finish transferring all spent fuel to dry storage from the site’s spent fuel pools by November. A Holtec spokesman told RadWaste Monitor in an email Tuesday morning that the company planned to load the seventh of 34 dry storage casks this week.
Holtec has said that it expects decommissioning Oyster Creek, which closed in 2018, to wrap up by 2025.
