The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still reviewing two petitions for intervention in the license transfer proceeding for the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, even though it approved the transfer in August ahead of the sale of the retired plant.
The “presidentially appointed Commission that oversees the NRC still has to rule on the requests for a hearing on the Pilgrim license transfer. The requests remain under review,” NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said by email Tuesday.
There is no set time frame for a decision, he said.
The commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of the petitioners, has already sued the NRC for approving the license transfer.
Power company Entergy retired the 47-year-old single-reactor plant on Cape Cod on May 31, less than a year after announcing in August 2018 that it would sell the facility to energy technology specialist Holtec International for decommissioning. The deal was contingent on NRC approval of the transfer of its operations and spent fuel storage licenses for Pilgrim.
Massachusetts and local advocacy group Pilgrim Watch in February filed petitions for intervention in the then-pending license transfer application. If their requests petitions are approved, they would be able to present contentions regarding the proceeding at an adjudicatory hearing.
Both petitions broadly raised the same two concerns: Holtec and Entergy did not prove there are sufficient financial resources to complete decommissioning, including failing to consider the potential for unexpected expenses; and the commission failed to perform an environmental assessment or supplemental environmental impact statement for the license transfer, as required by federal law.
Entergy and Holtec opposed the two petitions, saying the decommissioning trust fund for Pilgrim would hold over $1 billion at the time of the license transfer. The trust fund passed from Entergy to Holtec as part of the sale. It is anticipated to still have $200 million when decommissioning and site restoration are complete, according to their filings.
On the other contention, NRC regulations “categorically” preclude environmental reviews of license transfers, the companies said.
Sheehan said he could not say why the commission has not ruled on the petitions “other than to note the Commission will rule on the requests when ready to do so.”
Under NRC regulations dating to 1998, one or more of the commissioners, or a specially selected representative, would preside over a hearing on a license transfer. Participating parties would make oral arguments, but only the presiding officer would ask questions.
“It would be speculative to say what might happen if the requests were admitted,” Sheehan wrote. “At the time of our approval of the license transfer, we stated the decision did not preclude Commission actions that may require the modification of the conditions for the transfer. Any impacts would be assessed following the completion of the adjudicatory process.”
In the meantime, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office on Sept. 25 sued the NRC in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The commonwealth is asking the court to vacate seven NRC regulatory actions that paved the way for approval of the license transfer and to send the matter back to the agency for further review.
Early stage decommissioning operations are already underway at Pilgrim, managed by the Holtec-SNC-Lavalin joint venture Comprehensive Decommissioning International (CDI). The focus of the next 2 ½ years will primarily involve moving the reactor’s used fuel into dry storage, along with hazard reduction, CDI spokesman Patrick O’Brien said this week. The company expects to complete major decommissioning by 2027.
Holtec has already acquired the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey from Exelon for a similar decommissioning project. It plans to buy Entergy plants in New York state and Michigan in coming years. In each case, the primary anticipated source of profit would be money left from decommissioning trusts when that work is complete.
Pilgrim Flooding Mitigation Petition Nearly Closed
Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has nearly closed the door on a 2015 petition pressing for increased flood protections for Pilgrim.
In an Oct. 8 proposed director’s decision, the agency said the plant’s closure made it unnecessary to amend the site’s licensing basis to directly address the potential for flooding “caused by local intense precipitation/probable maximum precipitation events.”
The petitioners, along with plant licensee Holtec, can submit comments through Oct. 22, ahead of finalization of the director’s decision. That generally arrives within 45 days of the end of the comment period, Sheehan stated. The ruling would become official within 25 days of its formal release date, unless the NRC commissioners initiate a review of the action, according to Ho Nieh, director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
In July 2015, the nongovernmental Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) led a coalition of eight petitioners requesting the regulator update Pilgrim’s licensing basis – the directives that, among other things, set legally binding regulatory requirements on an NRC licensee. They said Entergy’s flood hazard re-evaluation report for Pilgrim suggests the site might face flood levels 10 feet above those foreseen at the time of its licensing in 1972. While doors were in place to safeguard key equipment from flooding, UCS and its co-petitioners said the NRC had not instituted regulatory mandates or received clear commitments that the doors would remain reliable.
In February 2016, the NRC told the petitioners that their concerns had been addressed in a March 2012 agency finding that U.S. nuclear power plants were not likely to experience a disaster along the lines of the multiple reactor meltdowns one year earlier at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. That disaster was precipitated by an earthquake and tsunami that flooded the area. The regulator also determined in November 2015 that Entergy’s hazard mitigation efforts exceeded those laid out in its licensing basis.
The agency deferred further flood evaluations in April 2017 after being informed Pilgrim would be retired no later than June 1, 2019. Entergy formally declared closure in a June 10 letter to the agency. Staff at the NRC then issued a July 5 evaluation letter determining that no further regulatory actions on this matter were necessary given the shutdown.
“It would be speculative to say whether any new requirements could have resulted from the petition process,” according to Sheehan. “But as a general principle, the NRC is always open to new information on safety issues at U.S. nuclear power plants and will carefully consider such information.”
Edwin Lyman, acting director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Nuclear Safety Program, said Thursday the organization did not expect to pursue the issue.
“The decision may be wrong-headed from a safety perspective but I don’t see any pathway to getting meaningful action from the NRC,” he told RadWaste Monitor by email. “Even if the reactor was going to continue to operate, the January vote on the mitigation of beyond-design-basis external events rule assures that no action will have to be taken to address reevaluated flooding hazards.”
In a 3-2 vote in January, the commission approved the rule intended to further protect U.S. nuclear power plants for a Fukushima-type event. The rule did not require licensees to incorporate more recent data on flooding and earthquake hazards in their mitigation plans for accidents that were not comprehensively considered in a nuclear plant’s design because they were determined too unlikely.
