By John Stang
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects to take nine months to a year to complete its technical review of the request from Entergy and Holtec International to transfer the federal license for the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts.
The two corporations in November submitted the request to transfer the plant reactor operations license and license for its spent fuel storage pad.
Owner Entergy plans to close the nearly 47-year-old Cape Cod facility by June 1. It aims by the end of the year to sell the site to Holtec, after which the New Jersey energy technology company would assume responsibility for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management at Pilgrim.
Holtec and Entergy in November also filed separate post-shutdown decommissioning activities reports, which lay out cleanup schedules, cost projections, and other data. The NRC has scheduled a public meeting for Jan. 15 to discuss Entergy’s PSDAR and decommissioning cost estimate.
The PSDARs are due two years after a nuclear power site closes. “Entergy and Holtec are well ahead of the curve,” Bruce Watson, chief of the Reactor Decommissioning Branch in the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Materials Safety and Safeguards, said Tuesday during a webinar on Pilgrim’s license transfer and decommissioning.
Watson said four to five NRC staff members will do most of the 500 hours of review work needed for the license transfer application, translating to up to a year of work. The review’s purpose is to ensure Holtec has the appropriate technical and financial qualifications to handle decommissioning and to manage the used nuclear fuel while the casks are on the site, said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan.
If Entergy remains owner, the site would be largely dormant until 2073, with major license termination activities wrapping up in 2080, according to its PSDAR. Holtec, meanwhile, would complete decommissioning around 2025. Full license termination would occur in 2063 — after the Department of Energy meets its legal requirement to remove the spent nuclear reactor fuel from Pilgrim.
Holtec’s PSDAR predicts a $1.134 billion budget for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management. Entergy’s PSDAR estimated the total cleanup budget at $1.166 billion. The power company’s decommissioning trust fund currently has more than $1 billion; it would transfer to Holtec once the sale is completed.
The expected 9-to-12-month timeline for reviewing Pilgrim’s license transfer is faster than the recently completed 20-month review of the license transfer for the retired Vermont Yankee power plant from Entergy to NorthStar Group Services. The sale was officially sealed Friday.
That was a first-of-its-kind application in which an outside company would take full ownership of an atomic energy facility for purposes of decommissioning. Holtec has eagerly taken up this business model – planning not only to buy Pilgrim, but also Exelon’s newly shuttered Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey and Entergy’s still-operational Palisades Power Plant in Michigan.
One reason for the long NRC review of Vermont Yankee’s license transfer was due to questions about whether its decommissioning trust fund was adequate.
“We determined that while the fund was sufficient for decommissioning, it was insufficient to cover spent fuel management over the timeframe expected before the U.S. Department of Energy would take the high-level radioactive waste from the site. As such, we sought further details via Requests for Additional Information (RAIs) and discussions with both NorthStar and Entergy,” Sheehan wrote in an email.
Entergy and NorthStar made additional financial guarantees to resolve that concern.
Another complicating factor was that the Vermont Yankee sale required approval by the Vermont Public Utility Commission, which eventually led to a settlement agreement involving several state agencies and other organizations that provided financial guarantees to ensure the project would be completed, Sheehan wrote.
The NRC is preparing to accept public comments and requests for intervention for its review of the license transfer application for the Pilgrim plant.
Comments will be accepted for 30 days after publication of a Federal Register notice, while requests for a hearing will be taken for 20 days. The notice will be published only after the partial shutdown of the federal government ends.
Requests for hearings and intervention in the proceeding must explain why the party has standing to intercede and raise specific contentions against the license application, according to the NRC notice.
“Those permitted to intervene become parties to the proceeding, subject to any limitations in the order granting leave to intervene. Parties have the opportunity to participate fully in the conduct of the hearing with respect to resolution of that party’s admitted contentions, including the opportunity to present evidence, consistent with the NRC’s regulations, policies, and procedures,” the regulator said.
There are several means for submitting comments: at regulations.gov, Docket ID NRC-2018-0279; by fax to Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 301-415-1101: by mail to Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff; or in person to 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md.
