EnergySolutions on Sunday said a seeming $15.2 million shortfall in the decommissioning trust fund for the Zion Nuclear Power Station in Illinois was the result solely of a documentation error.
“There was an error in the original submission of the [trust fund] balance to the” Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” the Salt Lake City, Utah-based nuclear services firm said in a statement to Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. “We have made the correction and resubmitted to the NRC clearly indicating there is no funding issue with the Zion Decommissioning Project.”
The document was resubmitted to the NRC last week. It was not immediately available at deadline Momday.
Through its ZionSolutions subsidiary, EnergySolutions is decommissioning the two-reactor Zion plant, which was retired in February 1998. Decommissioning is scheduled to be complete by Sept. 1, 2020, after which ZionSolutions would return the property to plant owner Exelon Generation Corp.
ZionSolutions initially submitted its latest decommissioning funding status update to the NRC in March. That document indicated the aggregate trust for decommissioning both reactors had an $8.5 million negative balance, and that another $6.7 million was expected to be needed for completion of cleanup.
That appeared to represent a total 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.
