The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering allowing the company that owns Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 1 reactor to dip into plant funds set aside for decommissioning to cover costs incurred after the plant has been fully dismantled, the agency said Monday.
In a finding of no significant impact (FONSI) notice published on the Federal Register Monday, NRC said that Constellation Energy’s May 20 request for a regulatory exemption allowing it to use Three Mile Island Unit 1’s (TMI-1) decommissioning trust fund for spent fuel management and site remediation activities, would cause no major environmental or safety problems.
Constellation, the former Exelon spin-off that currently owns TMI-1, also asked NRC to exempt it from regulations requiring the company to notify the agency 30 days before taking cash out of the trust fund for such activities.
The environmental review is only one part of the process of granting Constellation’s exemption requests, which as of Friday the NRC had not done. A spokesperson for the agency told RadWaste Monitor via email Wednesday that its review is in “the final steps of the process,” but did not say when it could be finished.
TMI-1 went offline in September 2019. NRC has estimated that the Harrisburg, Pa., plant’s spent fuel inventory should be completely moved to dry storage this summer. Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 reactor, which shuttered in 1979 following a partial meltdown, is currently being decommissioned by nuclear services company EnergySolutions.
Meanwhile, the NRC has already allowed other nuclear plant operators to ignore its decommissioning trust fund regulations — most recently in November, when it granted a similar exemption to Holtec International at Michigan’s Palisades Nuclear Generating Station. That accommodation was a topic of contention for opponents of the plant’s sale, including state Attorney General Dana Nessel (D), who told the commission in February that Holtec couldn’t afford to safely dismantle Palisades without a trust fund exemption.
