The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a meeting today to discuss the transfer of the Michigan-based Palisades nuclear plant license from Entergy Corp. to Holtec Intl. for decommissioning.
Palisades is scheduled to shut down on May 31, 2022: a couple years later than the original shutdown date of 2018. The companies agreed to the sale in August 2018, a year after Entergy announced plans to close the plant, according to slides released by Holtec and Entergy before the meeting.
Holtec and Entergy plan to submit the license transfer application together sometime in December and will request that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approve the application by December 2021. Entergy plans to select some 260 “Decommissioning Organization” employees from among the plant’s current staff of around 600 to stay, should the sale close.
If the NRC approves the license transfer, Holtec will acquire the Palisades Nuclear Decommissioning Trust — which held a balance of approximately $552 million total as of December 2 — as well as the plant’s decommissioning obligation and the title to its spent nuclear fuel and Department of Energy Standard Contract.
Holtec plans to complete decommissioning of the plant by 2041, 40 years earlier than it would take Entergy to facilitate the process alone through the SafeStor method, according to a joint presentation the companies published ahead of the meeting. Selling the plant to Holtec cuts the decommissioning period in half, according to the presentation.
Holtec will serve as the main contractor on the project, while Comprehensive Decommissioning International, LLC (CDI) will facilitate the actual decommissioning as a subcontractor. CDI is a joint venture between Holtec and SNC-Lavalin.
The most recent Palisades refueling was completed in October 2020, the companies said in their slides.
The slides said the sale isn’t certain yet, and depends on a number of factors, namely the approval of the license transfer and the “docketing of certifications of permanent cessation of operations and permanent removal of fuel from the reactor.”
Holtec plans to spend three years removing fuel from the plant, from 2022 after the site shuts down to 2025. The company said it will start defueling 30 days after the plant closes.
At other Holtec decommissioning sites, such as the Indian Point Energy Center in New York, community groups have expressed concern that Holtec doesn’t have the money to execute its decommissioning plans on schedule. Perhaps in anticipation of similar comments, Holtec said in the Palisades presentation that once the transfer is made, trust fund values “will be sufficient to fund the costs of radiological decommissioning, spent fuel management, and site restoration.”
The company said in the presentation that its final license transfer application will include “financial data supporting the adequacy of the NDT [Nuclear Decommissioning Trust] funds” including: decommissioning, spent fuel management and site restoration costs; annualized decommissioning cost estimate and a cash flow analysis.
Holtec has already started decommissioning another nuclear plant previously owned by Entergy — the Massachusetts-based Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, which ceased operation in May 2019. Holtec’s license transfer application to decommission the plant was approved less than three months after the shutdown. The company plans to complete most decommissioning and site restoration processes by 2027.
The meeting will be held from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. ET via teleconference. It can be accessed at (888) 787-0207 with passcode 8479074.
