By John Stang
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is taking public comments through Nov. 19 on the proposed license transfer for the newly closed Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey.
Parties also have until Nov. 8 to request to intervene and a public hearing on the proposed sale of the plant, according to an NRC notice posted Friday in the Federal Register.
The public input is a central component of the agency’s review of the license transfer application for the boiling-water reactor plant in Lacey Township from power company Exelon to Holtec International.
The facility closed on Sept. 17 after 49 years of service. Roughly 300 of a prior Oyster Creek employees are expected to stay on for decommissioning. The plant at its peak employed about 700 workers, which was down to 400 at the time of closure.
Holtec and Exelon hope to obtain NRC approval by May 1 of next year and to close the deal in the third quarter of 2019. However, the agency has not committed to that schedule for reviewing the requested license transfers for the Oyster Creek reactor and spent fuel storage pad.
Assuming the sale receives federal approval and goes through, Holtec would assume all responsibility for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management. The New Jersey energy technology company has formed Comprehensive Decommissioning International with Canadian engineering company SNC-Lavalin to carry out the actual work.
Exelon originally planned to place the Oyster Creek reactor into SAFSTOR mode for several decades, with decommissioning and site restoration to be finished in 2080. Holtec intends to expedite decommissioning to 2027. Full off-site transfer of the plant’s used fuel would shift from 2024 under the original Exelon plan to 2021 under Holtec. The total cost for cleanup and spent fuel management is projected at slightly over $885 million.
Oyster Creek is the first of at least three retired or soon-to-retire nuclear plants Holtec plans to buy for decommissioning. The company and Entergy are expected to soon file a license transfer application for the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, which is scheduled to be retired no later than June 1, 2019. The two companies are also planning a deal for the Palisades Power Plant in Michigan, with details still firming up ahead of its planned shutdown in 2022.
While the companies have avoided discussing financial details of the planned sales, they could be in line with Entergy’s advancing sale of its retired Vermont Yankee plant to NorthStar Group Services. In that case, the prospective buyer is paying a nominal $1,000 and will keep some portion of the site’s decommissioning trust fund once it completes that work.
More information on the Oyster Creek commenting procedures is available at www.regulations.gov under Docket ID NRC-2018-0237. Comments can be emailed to [email protected]. The mailing address is Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff. Hand-delivered comments can go to 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland.
On Wednesday, the NRC announced that it will allow Oyster Creek to trim back its emergency preparedness requirements after all fuel was removed from the reactor core by Sept. 25. The changes cannot take place until Sept 17, 2019, in order to give the used fuel enough time to cool in the site’s storage pool.
“Exelon provided analyses to justify the exemptions showing that the risk of an offsite radiological release is significantly lower than an operating power reactor,” according to an NRC press release. “Also, the types of possible accidents are significantly fewer at a nuclear power reactor that has permanently ceased operations and removed fuel from the reactor vessel.”
The trimmed measures include making evacuation plans and procedures less stringent and suspending the 10-mile emergency preparedness zone caround the site. A number of preparedness drills would no longer be mandatory and requirements for an emergency operations center would be greatly decreased.
Oyster Creek is still required to notify response agencies of an incident, but does not have to communicate directly to the public. Also, Oyster Creek is no longer responsible for public evacuation plans.
