The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans a July 23 public meeting in Harrisburg, Pa., to discuss the shutdown plan for the Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power reactor.
The meeting is intended to specifically address the post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR) for the Dauphin County facility, with an opportunity for public feedback. It follows an NRC webinar Tuesday on the site closure.
Three Mile Island Unit 1 remains on schedule to close no later than Sept. 30, according to Tuesday’s presentation.
Owner Exelon plans to use the SAFSTOR option, which calls for long-term storage of much of the reactor before completing decommissioning within 60 years. Preliminary decommissioning operations would be conducted through February 2021, including removing used fuel from the reactor, along with nonessential smaller equipment.
All of the plant’s spent fuel is scheduled to be moved to dry storage by 2022, according the PSDAR. The amount of fuel at TMI-1 is enough to fill 46 canisters. The fuel that is not in the reactor is currently in a cooling pool.
Active decommissioning would resume in the 2070s and wrap up to license termination by 2079. Exelon’s budget estimate for decommissioning TMI-1 through that year is $1.001 billion, along with over $158 million for spent fuel management and $86 million for site restoration. That brings the total budget estimate to $1.245 billion, according to the PSDAR.
Exelon’s decommissioning trust for the reactor held $626 million at the end of 2016, according to an NRC report from August 2018.
On July 1, Exelon completed the sale of its retired Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station to Holtec International, which assumed ownership of the site’s decommissioning trust and all responsibility for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management. However, the Chicago-based power company has indicated it intends to retain ownership of its Three Mile Island reactor.
Exelon announced the planned retirement of the money-losing power reactor in May 2017, citing the need for state and federal energy policy reforms to bolster nuclear power against economic challenges including lower-price natural gas. Two bills died this spring in the Pennsylvania legislature that would have added nuclear power to a list of non-carbon sources from which utilities would have to buy some of their energy.
The TMI plant has 675 employees. Layoffs are planned to begin after closure, drawing down to about 50 remaining employees in 2022.
Three Mile Island has two reactors. FirstEnergy Corp.’s TMI-2, closed after famously partly melting down in 1979, has been in a SAFSTOR mode since 1993.
The NRC meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Sheraton Harrisburg Hershey Hotel, 4650 Lindle Road in Harrisburg.
The agency is also taking comments on the PSDAR through Oct. 9, via www.regulations.gov, Docket ID NRC-2019-0142; or by mail, using the same Docket ID, to Office of Administration, Mail Stop: TWFN-7-A60M, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C. 20555-0001, ATTN: Program Management, Announcements and Editing Staff.
