A Chicago-based environmental organization has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reconsider a proposed decision to dismiss a petition against nuclear power operator FirstEnergy Corp. over the state of decommissioning funding for three power plants due to close in coming years.
The facts that form the basis for the proposed NRC director’s decision will be “outdated and inaccurate” by the time it goes to the commission for potential consideration, the Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC) said in a Jan. 22 letter posted on the agency website Thursday. For that and other reasons, ELPC said its petition should be kept open.
In March 2018, just before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy subsidiary FirstEnergy Solutions said it would close its Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio, by May 31, 2020; Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Perry, Ohio, by May 31, 2021; and the two reactors of the Beaver Valley Power Station in Shippingport, Pa., respectively by May 31, 2021, and Oct. 31, 2021.
Immediately before the plant shutdown announcement, the ELPC submitted a petition asking the NRC to find FirstEnergy Solutions in violation of federal requirements to prove it had sufficient funding to pay for decommissioning of the three sites. FirstEnergy figures from March 2017 indicated the external trusts were short by $350 million of the anticipated $2.1 billion cost to clean up the three locations, the petition says. The organization made a number of requests of the NRC, including that the operation licenses for all three plants be suspended and that FirstEnergy be required to turn over various documents related to the decommissioning trusts.
In preliminarily denying the petition, the NRC said the March 2017 numbers indicate FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Corp. (FENOC), the subsidiary that runs the facilities, met the minimal funding requirements for radiological decommissioning. It noted that FENOC must submit updated decommissioning funding reports by March 31 of this year.
That is a reason to keep the petition alive, the ELPC said.
“Around the time that the Director’s Decision will reach the Commission for its possible review, id. at 10, the updated decommissioning funding status reports will be available, and the factual basis for the current proposed Director’s Decision will be outdated and inaccurate. Indeed, the December 31, 2018 data for the Nuclear Plants is presently available,” ELPC attorneys Margrethe Kearney and Andrene Dabaghi wrote in the letter to Craig Erlanger, director of the NRC’s Division of Operating Reactor Licensing. “The NRC staff could request that information from [FirstEnergy and its subsidiaries] today, and could and should obtain that decommissioning trust fund data immediately, instead of relying on outdate and inaccurate data for the proposed Director’s Decision.”
The letter notes FirstEnergy’s financial troubles since March 2017 report, headlined by the FirstEnergy Solutions’ bankruptcy filing and anticipated reactor retirements. The proposed director’s decision offers no hint that the NRC is evaluating FirstEnergy Solutions’ monthly financial affairs updates, which are mandatory for debtors in Chapter 11, the ELPC lawyers wrote. “Whatever the conclusions reached with respect to the 2017 reporting cycle, the 2018 petition for bankruptcy casts a broad and deep shadow that can no longer be ignored.”
The ELPC called on the NRC to force FirstEnergy and its nuclear power branches to submit decommissioning funding figures as of Dec. 31, and that its petition be kept open until the agency reviews that data.
FirstEnergy Solutions did not submit any comment on the proposed decision prior to the Jan. 22 deadline, the NRC said Thursday. The company did not immediately comment for this article.
The final NRC director’s decision is expected to be issued on April 3. The five-person commission then has 25 days to decide whether to review the decision.
