The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Nov. 22 urged a federal appeals court to dismiss two requests from the commonwealth of Massachusetts to freeze the license transfer of the retired Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit does not yet have jurisdiction to rule on the matter, because the commission itself has not issued a final decision on the license transfer and associated actions – even though NRC staff gave “provisional” approval and prior owner Entergy in August sold the plant to Holtec International, according to the agency filing.
Under the Atomic Energy Act and Hobbs Act, “the NRC must issue a ‘final order’ before the Court may exercise jurisdiction over a petition challenging NRC action,” the motion to dismiss says.
The motion would cover dismissal of Massachusetts’ request in September for the court to vacate the license transfer and other NRC actions that allowed the sale to happen, along with an October petition for the D.C. Circuit to stay the license transfer until it rules on the earlier motion.
The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office had not responded to the motion as of deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor. It did not respond to queries on the matter.
Entergy on May 31 closed the single-reactor facility on Cape Cod, the commonwealth’s last operating nuclear power plant, after nearly 47 years of energy production. It had already announced its intention to sell the property to New Jersey energy technology company Holtec, which would assume ownership of the decommissioning trust for the facility and all responsibility for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management.
In furtherance of the sale, the companies had requested NRC approval of the transfer of Pilgrim’s reactor and spent-fuel storage licenses; deletion of a $50 million contingency fund that had been required of Entergy; and a regulatory exemption allowing money from the plant’s decommissioning trust to be used for spent fuel management and site restoration. Agency staff approved all three requests on Aug. 22, just days before Entergy and Holtec completed the sale.
Massachusetts and the local advocacy group Pilgrim Watch in February separately petitioned the commission for adjudicatory hearings to challenge the license transfer. They largely raised the same concerns: whether Holtec and Entergy have demonstrated there is adequate funding to complete decommissioning at Pilgrim and whether sufficient environmental evaluations were conducted on the license transfer. The commission has yet to rule on the petitions.
“Where, as here, an adjudicatory proceeding is pending before the Commission, NRC regulations nevertheless anticipate that the NRC Staff may complete its review of a license transfer application and conditionally grant the transfer before the completion of the adjudicatory proceeding,” NRC counsel wrote in the Nov. 22 motion. “The regulations specify that, notwithstanding the existence of a pending adjudicatory proceeding, the Staff is ‘expected to promptly issue approval or denial’ of the application.”
The court has also authorized Holtec and Entergy, along with subsidiaries, to intervene in the case. Those entities – Entergy Nuclear Operations, Holtec International, Holtec Decommissioning International, and Holtec Pilgrim – on Nov. 22 filed their own response to the commonwealth’s requests with the court.
In the introduction to the court filing, the companies again addressed concerns that there is not enough money to complete decommissioning at Pilgrim: “Ample funding is available: As of August 2019, the $1.03 billion in Pilgrim’s decommissioning trust fund (“DTF”), conservatively assumed to grow at a real annual after-tax rate of 1.42%, exceeded the estimated $593 million radiological decommissioning cost and $501 million SNF management cost.”
Holtec has said it can complete most of the decommissioning by 2027.
The Holtec-Entergy response otherwise echoes the case laid out by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: The agency has yet to issue its final ruling on the license transfer, meaning the court does not yet have jurisdiction to dismiss the decision. If that is the case, the motion to stay the license transfer should be rejected as moot, according to the companies.
“But even if this Court has jurisdiction, this Court still should deny the Stay Motion because, among other things, Massachusetts has not demonstrated that it will be irreparably harmed absent a stay,” their lawyers wrote.
The commonwealth has until Dec. 20 to provide the court with responses to the motions to dismiss, after which the NRC, Entergy, and Holtec would have until Jan. 10 to file their replies to the Massachusetts filing.
GE Hitachi Gets Pilgrim Decommissioning Contract
Meanwhile, Holtec is proceeding with decommissioning at Pilgrim.
On Tuesday, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy said it had secured a contract for dismantlement, segmentation, and packing of the reactor internals and reactor pressure vessel for the plant.
The contract comes directly from Comprehensive Decommissioning International, the Holtec joint venture with Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin that is in charge of decommissioning the boiling-water reactor.
The segmentation work will be conducted fully underwater via the primary segmentation system GE Hitachi designed with decommissioning technology provider REI Nuclear, of Columbia, S.C., which it acquired in December 2018, according to a company press release.
A GE Hitachi spokesman said Wednesday that terms of the contract are not being released.
Last July, Wilmington, N.C.-based GE Hitachi received a contract from CDI for the same work at the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey. Holtec bought that nearly 50-year-old facility on July 1, close to a year after its September 2018 closure. The new owner says it can complete decommissioning in less than a decade, at an estimated cost of $885 million.
Holtec and Entergy in November also filed an application for transfer of the federal licenses for the Indian Point Energy Center in New York state. With approval of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Holtec would acquire and decommission the site’s three reactors. Reactor Unit 1 was retired in 1974, while Units 2 and 3 are scheduled for closure by April 30, 2021. The companies hope to complete the sale by the third quarter of 2021.
Holtec has also said it intends to buy Entergy’s Palisades Power Plant in Michigan, which is scheduled for closure in 2022.
