Company Seeking to Purchase and Restart Nuke Plant
Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
10/31/2014
Any potential discussion on a path to restarting the Kewaunee Power Plant with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must go through Dominion, the owner of the site license, the NRC responded last week to RGA Labs, the engineering company looking to purchase and restart the plant. RGA Labs sent the NRC a letter of intent in August outlining its interest in re-starting the station and hopes for establishing a regulatory pathway for moving the plant from a shutdown status back to an operating status— something that has never been done before.
In its response letter, dated Oct. 21, the NRC said it could not help the company. “As an independent regulatory agency, the NRC cannot provide advice or consultation services to individuals or businesses interested in nuclear power,” said Michele Evans, director of the Division of Operating Reactor Licensing in the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. “Any discussions concerning postulated relicensing activities for the KPS would need to occur with the current holder of the license. Thus, you could contact DEK regarding any interest you have in acquiring the KPS license and postulated relicensing activities. In summary, the NRC cannot support your request concerning the relicensing of KPS at this time. However, if you reach an agreement with DEK and decide to file an application, we will be willing to meet with RGA Labs, Inc. and DEK to discuss potential approaches the NRC could follow to review a potential application seeking authorization to restart or relicense KPS.”
According to RGA President Robert Aboud, the letter represented a positive step forward. “The bottom line is that if Dominion will come to the table, the NRC will work with us on a restart path,” Aboud said in an email. “This is very good news for us.” RGA believes it can harness value from the plant, which Dominion announced it would be closing back in 2012 due to a poor economic market for nuclear, even though it had recently been granted a 20-year license extension, by moving away from the traditional utility model of operation and turning toward a more long-term outlook approach. For its part, Dominion said it still has not received any serious indication from RGA about the proposal. According to Dominion spokesman Mark Kanz, “They have not spoken to us, so they are kind of stirring things up locally, but they haven’t really had any dialogue with the company. We are continuing to move forward because in our minds, nothing has really changed, which is true. I’m never going to say never, but somebody has to talk though.”
