Selling off a nuclear plant to a specialist for decommissioning allows for a much more efficient process, an Entergy executive said Thursday in discussing a recent agreement.
Entergy in November agreed to sell its Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant to New York-based decommissioning specialist NorthStar Group Services, a deal that is expected to shorten the timeline to fully decommission the facility from 2075 to 2030. The plant ceased operations in 2014.
“Why would we want to do it?,” Bill Mohl, president of Entergy Wholesale Commodities, said at the Platts Nuclear Energy Conference in Washington, D.C. “One is, they can do it much more efficiently than we can. That takes our entire liability off our books, and puts it on their books. We think it’s a win-win for everybody.”
With the purchase of Vermont Yankee, NorthStar assumes ownership of the plant’s estimated $600 million decommissioning trust fund. Entergy’s original post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR) projected decontamination and dismantlement to start in 2068. NorthStar plans to start the work much sooner, potentially finishing the job in the 2030s.
Northstar has since formed a joint venture, Accelerated Decommissioning Partners (ADP), with the U.S. branch of French multinational nuclear company AREVA. That group is in discussions with Entergy on similar deals for decommissioning the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, which is scheduled to close in 2019, and the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan, scheduled for shutdown in 2018.
“We’re contemplating a similar transaction at Palisades, and Pilgrim on a combined basis, that’s in the very early stages, and we’re simply doing some diligence at this point in time,” said Mohl, who is retiring this month.
