Allowing utility Entergy to apply money designated for decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station to spent reactor fuel operations at the shuttered facility would create no significant environmental effect, Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff said in a recent draft finding.
This is the latest development in the battle between the state of Vermont and Entergy over use of the nearly $600 million trust fund, which is intended to pay for the tear-down and remediation of the nuclear plant site following its closure in December 2014.
The NRC in June 2015 approved Entergy’s request for an exemption authorizing it to use part of the trust fund for “irradiated fuel management activities, not associated with radiological decontamination” – meaning management of used fuel assemblies that are stored on-site. Entergy also can forgo the directive to notify the NRC ahead of time of such disbursements, according to a March 8 notice in the Federal Register.
Entergy said in its request that its decommissioning and irradiated fuel management funds were commingled, and submitted documentation demonstrating that it had sufficient money for both operations through termination of the NRC license for Vermont Yankee.
However, in November 2015 the state of Vermont, the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. (the plant’s prior owner), and the Green Mountain Power Corp. submitted a petition with the NRC arguing that agency staff had failed to prepare an analysis on Entergy’s exemption request that would be compliant with the National Environmental Policy Act. They also sought a broader NRC review of Entergy’s use of the decommissioning trust fund, pointedly an agency exemption allowing $225 million from the account to be used for spent fuel management.
This work encompasses operation and maintenance of the plant’s spent fuel pool and independent spent fuel storage installation, along with security of the material and other activities, Entergy said Thursday.
“Every dollar that is used for something else is a dollar less that is available for radiological decontamination” of the property, state Assistant Attorney General Kyle Landis-Marinello said in a telephone interview Thursday.
While it denied the state request for a hearing on the trust fund, the NRC last October directed staff to study possible environmental impacts from the spending exemptions. In the meantime, Entergy was allowed to apply the exemption, NRC spokesman David McIntyre said Tuesday. It was not immediately clear how much money from the trust fund the company has spent to date on used fuel operations.
In the Federal Register notice, NRC Reactor Decommissioning Branch chief Bruce Watson wrote, “[T]he NRC concludes that the exemptions did not, and will not, have significant effects on the quality of the human environment. Accordingly, the NRC has decided not to prepare an environmental impact statement for the action.”
Public comments on the draft environmental assessment are being accepted through April 7. Landis-Marinello said the Vermont Attorney General’s Office would file comments, though he could not say yet what those comments would address.
He said it was also too early to discuss additional actions the state might take. A federal appeals court in February 2016 dismissed a state lawsuit over management of the decommissioning trust fund, saying at the time the NRC should first consider the matter.
Entergy has one fuel dry-storage pad at Vermont Yankee and is preparing another. Close to 3,000 spent reactor fuel assemblies remain in wet storage, due to be transferred to dry-storage casks by the close of 2018, Entergy said in November in announcing plans to sell the facility to decommissioning specialist NorthStar Group Services. That $145 million project – which Entergy had said would not be paid for via the decommissioning trust fund — would complete the transfer two years earlier than the previously announced schedule.
“Major decommissioning activities cannot begin until the spent fuel is transferred to dry storage,” the company said in emailed comments Thursday.
The Vermont Yankee sale would encompass the trust fund, and is intended to cut decades off the time needed to eliminate the facility and restore the property, with decommissioning finishing in 2030 under NorthStar rather than in 2075 under Entergy. NorthStar would also maintain the site’s independent spent fuel storage installations until they can be decommissioned once the Department of Energy takes possession of the fuel assemblies.
The trust fund at the end of February held $571 million. Entergy in 2014 estimated decommissioning would cost $1.24 billion.
The NRC and Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) must both approve the sale. The Attorney General’s Office has filed with the PSB to intervene in the deal, alongside organizations including the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, the town of Vernon Planning and Economic Development Commission, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and the Elnu Abenaki Tribe.
A PSB hearing on the sale, postponed from Tuesday by a major snowstorm, has been rescheduled to 7 p.m. Thursday, April 6, at the Vernon Elementary School in Vernon.
