Members of the public have a month to comment on the proposed sale of a mothballed Wisconsin nuclear power plant to a decommissioning company, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this week.
NRC is accepting input on the proposed license transfer of Kewaunee Power Station to an EnergySolutions subsidiary from Dominion Energy until Nov. 12, the agency said in a Federal Register notice dated Tuesday. Requests to intervene or petitions against the transaction should be filed by Nov. 1, the notice said.
There’s no statutory deadline for proceedings but all of the parties involved in WPSC’s review are working on a draft schedule, a commission spokesperson told RadWaste Monitor via email on Friday. At deadline Friday such a schedule had yet to be published on the online docket.
If the commission approves the license transfer, the Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions will also assume control of the Carlton, Wisc. plant’s 38-cask spent fuel inventory — all of which is already stored at an onsite storage pad.
While NRC collects public comments on the proposed sale, another decommissioning company is trying to muscle in on the state level. The Wisconsin Public Service Commission (WPSC) Sep. 7 allowed NorthStar to intervene in its review of the transaction, saying that the company’s involvement would “promote the proper disposition of the issues.”
New York-based NorthStar asserted in June that it could decommission Kewaunee for around $500 million — a significantly lower price point than EnergySolutions’ projected $724 million.
Although Dominion and EnergySolutions agreed to the plant’s sale back in May, they can’t finalize things without WPSC’s approval.
If EnergySolutions secures the Kewaunee site it will have a total of four decommissioning projects in its repertoire. The company is already dismantling Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 reactor in Pennsylvania, San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California and Nebraska’s Fort Calhoun plant.
