The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station shut down permanently last week.
Entergy hopes by the end of the year to sell the Cape Cod property to Holtec International, which would assume all responsibility for cleanup and spent fuel management, along with the trust fund that will pay for the work. The final curtain fell after deadline last Friday for RadWaste Monitor.
In 2015, the New Orleans-based power company announced it would retire Massachusetts’ last nuclear power plant this year, saying increasing operating costs and competition with natural gas as a power source had made the 690-megawatt boiling water reactor economically unviable.
Entergy hopes by the end of the year to sell the Cape Cod property to Holtec International, which would assume all responsibility for cleanup and spent fuel management, along with the trust fund that will pay for the work.
The site currently has 580 employees, with that amount expected to shrink to about 270 in about 10 months.
“The difficult but necessary decision to close Pilgrim impacted our dedicated employees and their families, and was a decision we did not make lightly,” said Entergy Chief Executive Officer Leo Denault in a press release. “Our employees are the backbone of the company, and their pride and professionalism are evident every day. Their legacy is a 47-year record of carbon-free power generation, done safely and securely, which benefited the region in innumerable ways.”
The company plans to find a position within Entergy for qualified employees who were willing to relocate, the press release said. Currently, more than 50 employees from Pilgrim have accepted offers to continue with the company in other locations.
Holtec, an energy technology company based in Camden, N.J., is also planning separate acquisitions for two other Entergy sites: the Palisades Power Plant in Michigan, due for retirement in 2022, and the three-reactor Indian Point site in New York in 2021 after its final reactor shuts down. It also aims to buy Exelon’s newly closed Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey.
