Decommissioning of the nearly retired Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts could be largely complete in less than a decade if it can be sold, according to its owner and prospective buyer. Otherwise, the process could stretch on for decades, power company Entergy and energy technology firm Holtec International will tell the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next week.
Both timelines are illustrated in slides prepared for a Sept. 25 meeting between representatives for the companies and NRC officials, which were posted to the agency’s website this week.
The meeting will be followed by submission of the license transfer application in October, the two companies say in their presentation. They hope the regulator will sign off on the transfer next April.
“The pre-submittal meeting on September 25 will allow the joint applicants, Entergy and Holtec, to provide an overview of the proposed transfer process, provide a timeline, and share what approvals we will be seeking from the NRC,” Entergy spokesman Pat O’Brien said by email Thursday. “The meeting will also allow for questions from the NRC staff ahead of the formal submittal for license transfer.”
The application has been anticipated since Entergy announced on Aug. 1 it planned to sell Pilgrim and another plant in Michigan to Holtec. Upon closure of the separate deals, Holtec would be responsible for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management at each property. It would carry out that work in partnership with Canadian engineering company SNC-Lavalin.
Holtec would also take ownership of the decommissioning trust fund for each plant, which for Pilgrim held just over $1 billion as of Aug. 31. The trust will have a sufficient balance at the time of the sale to cover all decommissioning, spent fuel management, and site restoration costs under Holtec, the presentation says.
This could be a point of concern – one worry among locals in a similar deal for the planned sale of Entergy’s retired Vermont Yankee plant has been that buyer NorthStar Group Services might not be able to fulfill its cleanup commitments. The partners in March reached a settlement with participants in the state regulatory review of the deal that included a number of additional financial assurances.
Entergy expects to retire Pilgrim, a 46-year-old single-reactor facility on Cape Cod, on May 31, 2019. If everything goes right, the sale would close before the end of 2019.
Four key developments in the sale are scheduled for next month: submission of the license application to the NRC; a revised plan for management of the plant’s spent fuel; a request for an NRC exemption to federal regulations so that money from the plant’s decommissioning trust could be used for spent fuel management and site restoration; and delivery of a post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR) for accelerated cleanup at Pilgrim, with a decommissioning cost estimate.
Licensees are required to submit the PSDAR to the NRC no more than two years after a nuclear power plant closes. Among other details, it lays out the approach, schedule, and estimated cost of decommissioning — remediating the site to the point that it can be released for other use and the license terminated.
In this case, the regulator should receive two PSDARs and two cost estimates in October: One for the DECON approach for decommissioning, in which work begins shortly after the site closes; and another for SAFSTOR decommissioning, in which final cleanup can be delayed for up to six decades while radiation levels drop and the funding trust grows.
“There will be two separate documents,” O’Brien wrote. “The reason behind that is that we can’t assume a license transfer would be approved so if that were to be the case we need to have our own plans laid out.”
Under SAFSTOR, used reactor fuel would be transferred to dry storage from 2019 to 2024, after which the plant would go dormant except for monitoring and storage operations until 2075, according to a slide for next week’s presentation. Decommissioning operations would run from 2075 to 2083, with license termination that year and site restoration by 2084.
Under DECON, Holtec would complete the fuel transfer by 2021, then decommissioning by 2027, at which point the license would be restricted only to operation of the independent spent fuel storage installation. Full license termination would occur in 2063 — a year after Holtec and Entergy forecast the Department of Energy will finally meet its legal mandate to remove the plant’s used fuel — followed by site restoration in 2064.
Other details of the PSDAR have not yet been made public.
About 300 of the current staffing of 585 utility and security workforce will be selected to stay on prior to the deal closing and then be hired by Comprehensive Decommissioning International (CDI), the Holtec-SNC Lavalin venture that will perform the actual cleanup.
“Entergy has committed that any qualified employee who wants to stay with the company and relocate will have a job with the company,” O’Brien stated. “Additionally, we are working to assist any employees who may choose to retire or seek employment outside the nuclear industry.”
The reactor would be defueled within about 30 days of shutdown, according to the presentation. The 580 bundles of fuel assemblies would be moved to the spent fuel pool for cooling. At that point Pilgrim would have 1,156 bundles in dry storage and 2,958 in the pool. Holtec would aim to have all fuel assemblies in dry casks no more than three years after closure.
The sale will involve a number of corporate entities. Entergy subsidiary Entergy Nuclear Generation Co. will be sold to Holtec subsidiary Nuclear Asset Management Co., then renamed Holtec Pilgrim. That entity will remain the owner licensee for the plant, while Holtec Decommissioning International will assume the role of licensed operator. Comprehensive Decommissioning International, the venture will SNC-Lavalin, will be the general contractor for decommissioning at Pilgrim.
The partnership would hold the same role at Entergy’s Palisades Power Plant in Michigan, due to close in 2022, as well as Exelon’s Oyster Creek Generating Station in New Jersey. The NRC in August received the license transfer application for that facility, which closed on Monday.
