The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a blanket denial recently of four hearing requests and three motions filed respectively by the state of New York and environmental watchdog groups that sought to delay the sale of Indian Point Energy Center, according to a recent agency memorandum.
According to the memo dated Friday, the state of New York, as well as local petitioners from the Cortlandt, N.Y. area where the plant is based, filed separate motions to delay the transfer the licenses of Indian Point’s 1, 2, and 3 reactors to site-specific subsidiaries of Holtec International from Entergy Nuclear Operations.
Environmental groups Riverkeeper, Inc. and Safe Energy Group also submitted petitions for hearing to the Commission.
The NRC threw out all of the petitioners’ filings, concluding that none of the arguments presented were admissible contention — that is, they failed to convince the Commission that there was any reason to oppose the sale, the memo said.
The dismissal of these challenges brings the process of decommissioning the three Indian Point reactors forward another step.
The petitions raised concerns with Holtec’s ability to fund proper decommissioning of the Indian point reactors, the memo said. They also suggested that the company made unreasonable assumptions about the safe transport and repackaging of radioactive material from the site, among other logistical contentions.
Indian Point’s Unit 1 reactor shut down in 1974, and Unit 2 ceased operations in late 2020. Holtec will not assume control over the plant’s license until after Entergy has “permanently ceased operations” at the site, according to the memo. Entergy previously projected that it would finish shutting down the Unit 3 reactor by April 2021.
