Holtec International has moved into storage some highly-radioactive reactor components at a Massachusetts nuclear power plant under decommissioning, the company announced recently.
Holtec finished moving Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s Greater-Than-Class-C (GTCC) waste, which includes non-fuel waste products such as “highly activated metal components,” onto the site’s independent spent fuel storage installation in early March, the company said in a press release earlier this month. The plant’s GTCC inventory is stored in Holtec-designed canisters similar to the ones used to store spent nuclear fuel, the company said.
Pilgrim’s GTCC storage campaign expanded on “best practices” from a similar campaign Holtec completed last summer at New Jersey’s Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station, the release said. Oyster Creek’s non-fuel waste inventory is also stored onsite in four canisters, the company said.
Meanwhile, Holtec is still weighing its options for disposing of the Plymouth, Mass., plant’s irradiated wastewater. The company has said that it would not follow through on a proposal to discharge Pilgrim’s water into the nearby Cape Cod Bay in 2022, but that such an action would “likely” be part of its final disposal strategy.
Holtec finished moving Pilgrim’s spent fuel inventory into dry storage Dec. 13. The company has said that it could finish decommissioning the plant, which it bought from Entergy in 2018, by 2027 or so.
