Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
10/3/2014
MIAMI—As a majority of the recently shutdown reactor plants enter the beginning stages of SAFESTOR, the overseers of the decommissioning plans of the various sites emphasized the importance of spending conservatively on the front end to ensure the decommissioning trust fund will have enough money to cover the total costs of the cleanup in remarks here at the Decommissioning of Nuclear Reactors and Materials North America Conference, held this week. One of the major ways to cut costs in the beginning stages of decommissioning is to move the spent fuel from pools to dry cask storage, enabling the reduction of staff needed to safely maintain the plant. Vermont Yankee, Kewaunee, and Crystal River have all planned ambitious schedules to move the spent fuel pool to dry casks by the end of this decade to cut costs and protect the principle balance in the trust fund. “We are working through the various regulatory submittals that are required to transition the licensing over to one that reflects decommissioning, and honestly, set us up for the minimum amount of staff we need,” Crystal River Plant Manager Blair Wunderly said. “Staff equates money, and it’s all about money in the trust. Particularly the impact of the money on the front end is critical when you are looking at time value money.”
Trust fund management has taken on an added importance in this recent wave of shutdown reactors mainly because the majority of plants did not anticipate a pre-mature shutdown. The funds have enough balance to eventually accrue the necessary interest to cover the costs, but that will take time, one of the driving factors for the three sites choosing the SAFESTOR option, which enables up to 60 years of time before decommissioning. With downturns in the market and front end spending, though, the funds may take even longer to accrue, something the plants are trying to avoid. “There are sufficient funds there. It did take a bit of a hit during the market downturn, but we had enough diversification like you would want in your own portfolio to be able to support that,” Kewaunee Site Vice President Arnold “Skip” Jordan said. “Similar to that, you don’t want to draw too much money out front because it does reduce your ability to recover if the market does downturn and you have less cash up front. You’re looking for that sweet spot where there is enough of a margin on the insurance policy to carryout. If you use it up too soon on the front end, you may not have it.”
Vermont Dislikes Front End Spending
Elsewhere, at the Nuclear Decommissioning and Used Fuel Strategy Summit in Charlotte, N.C., this week, Vermont Public Service Department Commissioner Chris Recchia opposed the use of decommissioning funds up front for the spent fuel management mainly due to the effect it would have on the overall trust fund’s ability to accrue the necessary money. Vermont has long opposed the Vermont Yankee station, and during negotiations with Entergy, the state received assurances from the utility the decommissioning would take place as soon as the fund had enough money. “From Vermont’s perspective, if we let Entergy take money out of the trust fund to do the spent fuel management, which no doubt NRC would allow them to do even though their rules say they cannot, we are then in a situation much like your 401k,” Recchia said. “If you spend the principle, the interest is not going to accrue and then it’s going to extend out more years in the time frame we are actually able to go forward and do the decontamination and dismantlement.”
Recchia added that Vermont would like to see the spent fuel moved to dry cask storage as quickly as possible, albeit with funds from someplace else. Recchia offered that support from the Department of Energy in terms of payouts from litigation over its failure to deal with the spent fuel would help cover these costs and maintain the integrity of the trust fund. “I might agree to increments of money coming out of the trust fund for spent fuel management if I knew they were coming back in relatively quickly or as a cycle,” Recchia said. “It’s a very big difference between taking $200 million out of there to build the pad and not seeing that money again for ten years, compared to taking $30-50 million out this year and having it come back in next year so it can be reused for the next stages of spent fuel management. In Vermont’s mind, that is the model we should be heading towards, and we have offered to help in any way possible with our congressional delegation as well as meeting with Secretary [of Energy Ernest] Moniz and NRC Chair [Allison] Macfarlane to talk about finding a better way here.”
SAFESTOR on the Way Out?
Regardless of trust fund management, SAFESTOR, as the current regulations allow, may decline in the coming years, according to Larry Camper, director of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection. With the increased stakeholder engagement, the public outcry for fast cleanup will drive the operators to active decommissioning, Camper said. “The interesting observation I make these days is that I suspect in the future you will see these sites going to more immediate dismantlement than SAFESTOR over a long period of time,” Camper said in Miami. “The reason: stakeholder concern. The moniker that I hear from these people when I am out there is that they have lost the power; jobs have been lost; and now it’s just sitting there and radioactive and they do not want it in their community. So besides the fact that the basis for the 60 years was to reduce worker dose dramatically and the volume of waste that needed to be disposed of dramatically, that’s not the point in their minds. It will be interesting to see how that plays out as time goes on.”
The SAFESTOR regulations may see a threat from the Commission itself. NRC Chair Macfarlane, at a briefing on decommissioning earlier this year, questioned the Commission staff on the technical justification of the 60 years allowed under the strategy, and she expressed a willingness to take a closer look at the strategy along with other regulatory issues facing the decommissioning process. The Commission directed the staff to prepare for another decommissioning briefing in January.
The main question, though, according to Camper, is where the resources for the rulemaking come from. “I don’t think anyone would disagree that we would be better served having a regulatory construct that is subjective to all the things that are involved in rulemaking,” Camper said. “That would establish when a reactor was operating, it’s this, or if it’s ceased operations, it’s that. That makes a lot of sense. The question is when and with what resources. The challenge is the very same staff that is working on this amendment right now would be the staff who would oversee the technical aspect of the rulemaking. The second point is that rulemaking takes two to three years, so by the time we get the rulemaking done, the current slate of utilities moving to decommissioning will have passed, but of course, there will be more coming.”
