Orano USA has finished dismantling and packaging the main reactor unit at a Vermont nuclear power plant under decommissioning, the company announced this week.
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station’s single boiling-water reactor has been completely segmented and all irradiated components have been packaged for transport, Orano said in a press release dated Tuesday. The reactor’s pressure vessel and internal components are being shipped to Waste Control Specialists’ low-level radioactive waste disposal facility, the company said.
Two Orano subsidiaries, Orano Decommissioning Services and TN Americas, were under contract with Vernon, Vt., Vermont Yankee owner NorthStar to handle the plant’s reactor components and other low-level radioactive waste.
“Completion of this complex segmentation of Vermont Yankee’s reactor represents more than 280,000 hours of our Orano teams performing safely and professionally,” Orano president and CEO Amir Vexler said in a statement. “For the waste transportation, our attention to detail and transparent, close coordination resulted in incident-free shipments and informed appreciation from a variety of stakeholders.”
A NorthStar spokesperson told RadWaste Monitor in November that Vermont Yankee’s Greater Than Class C waste — which includes material such as activated metals, soil and building materials — has been packaged and moved to the plant’s independent spent fuel storage installation.
NorthStar purchased Vermont Yankee from former operator Entergy in 2018, and the company has said it could wrap decommissioning by 2030 or so. The plant stores around 58 casks of spent nuclear fuel on its ISFSI.
