Power company Exelon has moved up the retirement date for its reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania to Friday, a senior U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission official said Tuesday.
Reactor Unit 1 had been scheduled to close by Sept. 30.
“We originally were told it would shut down by the end of this month, but apparently it’s going to be Sept. 20, so they’re moving that up,” Bruce Watson, chief of the Reactor Decommissioning Branch within the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, said during a presentation at the agency’s Reg Con 2019 in King of Prussia, Pa.
Exelon had not confirmed its revised schedule at deadline Wednesday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
The company in 2017 announced its plans to retire the 45-year-old pressurized-water reactor near Harrisburg, citing the market challenges highlighted by other nuclear power plant operators in explaining their own closures. Exelon management indicated government assistance could keep the facility alive, but Pennsylvania lawmakers have resisted the zero-emission credit programs now in place in other states.
After closure and defueling, the Three Mile Island reactor would be placed into “safe storage,” or SAFSTOR, mode, under which completion of decommissioning can be delayed for up to 60 years. Active decommissioning would begin in the 2070s, with license termination in 2079, under Exelon’s schedule. The projected cost is $1.245 billion, covering decommissioning, spent fuel management, and site restoration.
In July, Exelon completed the sale of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey to energy technology company Holtec International for decommissioning. But the Chicago-based power provider has said it will retain ownership of the Three Mile Island reactor.
FirstEnergy Corp. is the owner of the other reactor at Three Mile Island, Unit 2, which never resumed operations after famously partially melting down in 1979.
Including the Three Mile Island reactor, there will be 23 commercial power reactors in decommissioning, Watson said. Thirteen of those are in active decommissioning, while 10 are SAFSTOR.
