Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff and the Indiana Michigan Power Co. have scheduled a July 17 teleconference to discuss a steep, unexpected reduction in the decommissioning trust funds for the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant’s two power reactors.
In March 2017, Indiana Michigan Power reported the trust funds as of Dec. 31, 2016, stood at $459.5 million for Unit 1 and $418.2 million for Unit 2, for a total of $877.7 million. However, the NRC noted in May of this year that those figures were down significantly from the trust-fund numbers from 2015: $537.9 million for Unit 1 and $489.3 million for Unit 2, for a total of just under $1.1 billion.
The total reduction comes to nearly $149.6 million in just two years. Agency staff “notes that market growth during this period of time was approximately 9%. Therefore, the staff expected the [decommissioning trust fund] balances … to have increased accordingly,” Allison Dietrich, a project manager in the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, wrote in a May 29 letter to Joel Gebbie, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer for Indiana Michigan’s Nuclear Generation Group.
In an April 10, 2018, meeting, staff with the utility told NRC officials that while the amount of money in the trusts had increased, some of the funds had been reallocated for future maintenance of the independent spent fuel storage installation at the Berrien County, Mich., facility.
Agency personnel noted that NRC rules prohibit repurposing of funds that have been designated for radiological decommissioning of nuclear power plants. The utility said it had not spent the money, but rather simply reallocated it for a separate purpose.
In her letter, Dietrich made five requests for additional information on the matter, including: confirming whether funds allocated for decommissioning of the two reactors had been repurposed for spent fuel management; the reasoning for reallocating the funds; and whether decommissioning funds were directed for any other purposes.
Dietrich directed Indian Michigan Power to respond within 30 days. The response has not been filed, but the upcoming call will help the company determine the schedule for submitting the answers, according to the utility’s parent company, American Electric Power.
“I&M asked for the meeting with the NRC to discuss the level of detail needed to provide the additional information requested by the NRC in order for the NRC to complete its review,” American Electric Power said in a prepared statement. It did not say when the requested information would be submitted.
The company emphasized that no decommissioning funds had been spent. It attributed the change in the funds’ levels to updated risk factors and assumptions.
The teleconference on the decommissioning trusts is scheduled for 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday. Information on participating in the call can be found here.
The NRC licenses for Units 1 and 2 and Donald C. Cook expire in October 2034 and December 2037, respectively. The minimum decommissioning cost estimates, per Indiana Michigan’s March 2017 filing, are $487.7 million for Unit 1 and $492.0 million for Unit 2, for a total of $979.8 million. However, those figures are derived from a project management risk analysis formula employed by the NRC to establish a present base funding level that would be sufficient when decommissioning actually occurs, an AEP spokesman said: “So it’s not really a minimum or maximum estimate of decommissioning cost, but rather just what the NRC says we need to have in our fund now.”
Nuclear power operators are required to provide a formal cost estimate for reactor cleanup in the post-shutdown decommissioning activities report, which must be filed with the NRC within two years of facility closure.
