By John Stang
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved significant reductions in the amounts of insurance the newly retired Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station must carry.
The reductions cover both on-site and off-site insurance plant owner Exelon must keep at the single-reactor New Jersey facility, according to Dec. 28 notices in the Federal Register. Exelon requested the reductions last March. They will go into effect Sept. 25, 2019 — one year after Exelon officially informed the NRC of the reactor’s closure.
Exelon plans to sell the site this year to energy services firm Holtec International, which would then take charge of decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management at Oyster Creek — pending NRC approval the license transfer application.
The 1957 Price-Anderson Act requires nuclear reactor sites to carry insurance for potential nuclear incidents. The amounts are now set at $1.06 billion of insurance to cover damages from on-site accidents and another $450 million worth to cover damages to off-site properties from potential incidents. An NRC briefing paper said a reactor site pays roughly $1 million per year to carry that amount of coverage.
The NRC has approved Exelon to carry $50 million worth of on-site insurance coverage and $100 million worth of off-site coverage. The Chicago-based power company will also no longer be required to hold secondary financial protection for Oyster Creek.
Exelon referred questions about the insurance reductions to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“Our decision on both exemption requests was based on the significantly reduced risk of an accident at the plant following its permanent shutdown,” agency spokesman Neil Sheehan said by email.
The insurance reductions will be automatically transferred to Holtec once it assumes ownership.
In the Federal Register, the NRC said the most likely and dangerous accident scenarios occur in the heated core of the Oyster Creek reactor. These scenarios were removed once the reactor was permanently defueled as of Sept. 25, 2018.
Consequently, the current remaining accident scenarios pertain to handling, moving, and storing used nuclear fuel. The most dangerous storage scene is a zirconium fire in the fuel within the storage casks. However, the NRC said that a year after the reactor’s closure, the spent fuel will be permanently at temperatures “far below those associated with a significant radiological release.”
Oyster Creek now has 2,430 fuel assemblies in its spent fuel pool. Another 2,074 assemblies in 34 canisters are in dry storage.
The reduction in coverage drew concern from the Sierra Club of New Jersey. The Sierra Club and Lacey Township, where Oyster creek is located, have requested public hearings on the proposed transfer of the NRC reactor license from Exelon to Holtec. The two corporations oppose those petitions, saying Lacey Township and the Sierra Club have not provided enough evidence that the hearings are needed.
The Sierra Club of New Jersey has not yet internally discussed the insurance issue, according to Executive Director Jeff Tittel. But he added “that automatically raises an alarm” when the owner of a reactor decreases its insurance coverage.
Tittel said his organization and Lacey Township are concerned about Exelon and Holtec having enough money to finish decommissioning. They also worry the track record of Holtec’s partner in its plans for decommissioning Oyster Creek and other power plants, Canadian engineering company SNC-Lavalin, which has faced bribery charges in its home nation.
Tittel contended the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office should scrutinize the insurance situation. The state AG and the Lacey Township administrator did not return messages seeking comments.
A complicated chain of Holtec subsidiaries would tackle the decommissioning.
Holtec subsidiary Holtec Decommissioning International has formed its own subsidiary —Oyster Creek Environmental Protection LLC — which would become the new owner of the Oyster Creek reactor site if and when the sale goes through. Meanwhile, HDI has joined forces with Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin to form Comprehensive Decommissioning International LLC. Holtec is the majority owner of CDI. Then Oyster Creek Environmental Protection would hire CDI to handle the decommissioning work at the plant. Holtec says it can complete decommissioning by 2027.
