The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week preliminarily rejected an environmental group’s petition that power company FirstEnergy Corp. be penalized for failing to ensure it had sufficient funding to decommission three nuclear power plants scheduled to close by 2021.
The latest available information does not demonstrate that FirstEnergy and several subsidiaries are breaching NRC regulations, Ho Nieh, director of the agency’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, wrote in a Jan. 8 proposed decision. “Therefore, there is an insufficient basis on which to take enforcement action, issue civil penalties, or suspend a license,” he stated.
The decision, which was posted to the NRC website on Wednesday, will become effective unless the five-person commission initiates a review within 25 days of the final order.
FirstEnergy Solutions, a branch of the Akron, Ohio, power provider on March 28, 2018, announced plans to retire four reactors at three nuclear plants: the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio, by May 31, 2020; the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Perry, Ohio, by May 31, 2021; and the two reactors of the Beaver Valley Power Station in Shippingport, Pa., respectively by May 31, 2021, and Oct. 31, 2021.
FirstEnergy Solutions and two affiliates, FirstEnergy Nuclear Generation (NG) and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co. (FENOC), then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 31 of last year. FirstEnergy Solutions is in the process of splitting from its parent company, which was not included in the bankruptcy filing.
One day ahead of the plant closures announcement, the Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center filed a petition with the NRC asserting that FirstEnergy Solutions was in breach of federal requirements to ensure it had sufficient funds in the trusts that would pay for decommissioning of the three plants. It said FirstEnergy numbers showed the company’s external trusts as of March 2017 were $350 million under the projected $2.1 billion price tag to decommission the three properties.
The petition asked for a series of measures by the NRC, including: fining FirstEnergy and its subsidiaries for operating nuclear plants without adequate decommissioning funds; suspending the licenses for all three plants; preventing the sites from being placed into SAFSTOR mode, under which final decommissioning could be delayed for up to 60 years, “for purely financial reasons”; and demanding a number of pieces of information, such as site-specific decommissioning trust funding plans for the facilities and planned investments and financial contributions to address the funding shortfall.
The NRC accepted the petition for review in August.
In this week’s proposed order, the NRC said FENOC – the subsidiary that actually operates the power plants — is not presently breaching agency rules. The company’s most recent decommissioning funding status update for the three power plants, from March 2017, indicated “FENOC met the minimum funding requirements for future radiological decommissioning of its NRC-licensed facilities for the 2017 reporting cycle, and that there were no shortfalls in decommissioning funding.”
The follow-on funding reports are due by March 31 of this year. They will include the information sought by the Environmental Law & Policy Center. Staff at the regulator will then evaluate the filings to determine whether there are any funding shortfalls.
“If the NRC staff identifies a funding shortfall in its evaluation of the next status report … the NRC will evaluate the report and take appropriate action, including enforcement action, if necessary,” the agency said. “Further, the NRC staff will continue to work with the U.S. Department of Justice to protect and preserve its interests in FENOC’s compliance with decommissioning requirements in the bankruptcy proceeding.”
Regarding the organization’s request on SAFSTOR, the NRC noted that it is among the decommissioning approaches allowed for nuclear power licensees. That means it remains an option for FirstEnergy.
The proposed director’s decision was mailed to FirstEnergy and the ELPC. They have 14 days to provide comments that will be considered in preparing the final document. The NRC hopes to finalize the decision within 45 days of the close of the comment period, an agency spokesman said.
FirstEnergy Solutions declined to comment for this article. The Environmental Law & Policy Center had not responded to a request for comment by deadline for RadWaste Monitor.
