EnergySolutions last week acknowledged it is still running a multimillion-dollar shortfall in the trust fund to pay for decommissioning of the Zion Nuclear Power Station in Illinois, but affirmed it has the money needed to cover any gap.
The Salt Lake City, Utah-based nuclear services firm on June 13 provided the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission with a revised version of its March annual radiological decommissioning and irradiated fuel management funding assurance report as of Dec. 31, 2018.
The federal regulator had requested clarity on several details in the original document, which cited an $8.5 million negative balance in the trust fund against $6.7 million needed to complete decommissioning. The updated report shows an $8.7 million positive balance in the trust, but increases the projected cost to complete decommissioning by nearly fourfold to $24 million.
It also adds a new line item: a $44.5 million company letter of credit funding assurance as of the end of 2018. EnergySolutions, though, said it intends to use its own cash reserves for any costs not covered by the decommissioning trust.
“There was an error in the original submission of the [trust fund] balance to the” Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the company said in a statement to RadWaste Monitor. “We have made the correction and resubmitted to the NRC clearly indicating there is no funding issue with the Zion Decommissioning Project.”
Agency staff is reviewing the revised document “and hopes to make a determination of acceptability in a few months,” an NRC spokesman said by email Monday.
The two-reactor Zion plant shut down in 1998 after nearly 25 years in service. Owner Exelon Generation Corp. hired EnergySolutions subsidiary ZionSolutions to carry out decommissioning. The contractor assumed the operations and spent fuel storage licenses from facility owner Exelon Generation and began decommissioning in 2010. The cleanup job is scheduled to be complete by Sept. 1, 2020, primarily funded by the decommissioning trust passed over from Exelon. Afterward, ZionSolutions would return the property and its spent nuclear fuel storage facility to the Chicago-based power company.
The March decommissioning funding update appeared to show a total trust shortfall of $15.2 million, according to a request for additional information sent May 22 by John Hickman, project manager for the NRC’s Reactor Decommissioning Branch, to John Sauger, president and chief nuclear officer for EnergySolutions’ reactor decontamination and decommissioning business. That amount did not include another $4.5 million required for management of Zion’s spent fuel before the stored pad is turned back over to Exelon.
Hickman asked EnergySolutions to explain the cause of the shortfall; detail expenses paid from the fund since the 2018 report, including any use of radiological decommissioning funds for other activities; and show that funding was available to cover the costs of remaining decommissioning and spent fuel management.
The June 13 response, posted to the NRC website on Monday, puts the trust fund amount at the close of 2018 at $8.7 million in the black. The prior negative balance “was net of outstanding disbursements (accrued but unpaid costs), consistent with the way that the trust fund balance had previously been reported,” according to the updated filing from EnergySolutions.
From September 2010 to the end of 2018, ZionSolutions spent $651.5 million from the Zion decommissioning trust.
EnergySolutions now estimates the cost of completing decommissioning and spent fuel management at $24 million and $4.5 million, respectively, for a total of $28.5 million. Unlike the prior document, the $4.5 million is counted against the trust fund amount – creating an overall shortfall in that account of $19.8 million.
EnergySolutions attributed the continued shortfall to higher expenses for decommissioning, specifically for remediation and final status surveys of the site. “The project has had to remediate additional soils in areas around the powerblock,” according to a company statement Thursday. “Remediation includes removing soils, shipping them offsite for disposal, and bringing in clean fill to replace what was removed.”
The company said it did not use decommissioning trust money for any other purposes. It provided a table showing figures for labor, waste disposal, materials and equipment, and other expenses during 2018. The table is fully redacted in the public version of the new report.
“Although [ZionSolutions] intends to use EnergySolutions cash reserves to provide the additional funding for the Zion decommissioning project, the $44.5 million letter of credit is available as a means of demonstrating funding assurance,” it told the NRC.
