NorthStar Group Services has requested approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for disposal in Idaho of 2 million gallons of wastewater from decommissioning at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
The agency on June 23 informed a subsidiary of the New York City-based environmental solutions provider, NorthStar Nuclear Decommissioning Co., that it had accepted the application for a full technical review.
With federal approval, up to 1 million gallons of wastewater would be shipped annually to US Ecology’s disposal facility near the city of Grand View in southwestern Idaho. It will be mixed with clay for disposal as a soil-like material, according to the May 20 filing from NorthStar, which was posted June 15 to the NRC website.
The material to be shipped will be comprised of process water and infiltration water contaminated by various radionuclides, the application states.
The US Ecology facility is not licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The exemption is needed to ship material from an NRC-licensed facility to one outside its purview.
A decision from the agency is expected in less than a year.
“An exemption would be approved if it was demonstrated that any dose to the public from such disposal would be less than a few” millirem per year, NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci said by email Monday.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June 2017 authorized shipment of 200,000 gallons of wastewater from Vermont Yankee to US Ecology.
Then-owner Entergy closed the single-reactor power plant in December 2014. In January 2019, it sold the facility to NorthStar, which assumed all responsibility for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management. The company expects to complete decommissioning by December 2026.
