By John Stang
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved exempting the Oyster Creek Generating Station in New Jersey from some emergency planning requirements following its closure this fall.
In individual votes cast between July 5 and July 11, four of the five commissioners approved Oyster Creek owner Exelon’s entire request to forgo some emergency preparedness measures during decommissioning. A fifth commissioner — Jeff Baran — wanted to delay decreasing certain requested emergency measures by several years after the plant shuts down.
The NRC staff recommended that Exelon’s entire request be approved. In a May notice to the commission, then-Executive Director for Operations Victor McCree noted that power plant operators regularly request exemptions from emergency preparedness standards upon decommissioning.
Exelon plans to close the 650-megawatt, single-reactor facility in Lacey Township in September. It wants to place the Oyster Creek plant in SAFSTOR, a mode of decommissioning in which the shuttered reactor is maintained under monitoring, with full cleanup not required for 60 years.
The to-be-decreased measures include making evacuation plans and procedures less stringent, eliminating the requirement to have evacuation timetables in place for a 10-mile radius around the site. A number of preparedness drills would no longer be mandatory and requirements for an emergency operations center would be greatly decreased. Many requirements addressing the actual reactor would be eliminated after the fuel is removed.
In his written comments, Baran concurred with NRC staff that certain off-site radiological emergency planning requirements were not needed at Oyster Creek after September 2019. But he objected to lifting other requirements until 2023 or until all used nuclear fuel is placed in dry storage, whichever comes first. For example, under Baran’s proposal Exelon would still have to keep a public notification mechanism and the capacity to alert local and state authorities within 15 minutes of an emergency declaration.3
Baran said the primary risk posed by reactors undergoing decommissioning is a major loss of water in the spent fuel pool that could lead to a zirconium-fueled fire. Quoting NRC staff, he wrote: “This is the only accident scenario that might lead to a significant radiological release.”
The commissioner noted an earthquake or a large airplane crash are the likely causes of a significant rupture in the storage pool to increase the danger of a radiation-releasing fire. A 2014 NRC report found some potential subterranean shifting in that area could be greater than the 49-year-old facility’s earthquake-proofing designs, according to Baran.
Four commissioners, including Baran, wrote that many emergency agency measures can be safely trimmed after shutdown begins because off-site agencies can respond quickly enough to deal with most accidents.
While its current NRC license authorizes Oyster Creek to operate through 2029, New Jersey officials and Exelon agreed in 2010 to shut down the plant by late 2019 so the company would not have to pay $800 million to install new cooling towers. This year, Exelon bumped that closure date to Sept. 17, 2018, to help in shifting its workers to other sites and to reduce maintenance costs.
Exelon’s initial plan calls for the site to be totally restored by 2080, with a 62-year cost estimate of $1.46 billion — although the corporation has not ruled out speeding up that timetable. The company anticipates some used reactor fuel will be kept in wet storage to March 2024, and dry fuel storage to last until 2034. So far, 34 fuel canisters have been moved to dry storage, according to Exelon. Another 40 casks will eventually go to dry storage.
The NRC acknowledges that operating nuclear reactors pose different risks than those from shuttered plants. The biggest differences are that the reactor core would not be in use, and that the remaining worst-case scenario of a fire in a storage pool with no water would take hours to become an off-site danger, according to agency documents.
While power facility operators today must request NRC regulatory exemptions and license amendments to reduce emergency planning requirements upon closure, the NRC is conducting a rulemaking intended to eliminate the need for such allowances.
