The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s staff “intentionally mischaracterized” a nuclear watchdog group’s request to hold up the sale of Three Mile Island Generating Station Unit 2 when it recommended the agency toss the petition on procedural grounds, according to a new filing this week.
Three Mile Island (TMI) Alert’s March 15 request to pause the plant’s Unit 2 license transfer was not a motion to reopen proceedings on the transaction despite NRC staff’s argument to the contrary, TMI-Alert’s president Eric Epstein said in the filing obtained by RadWaste Monitor.
“This motion asks for a pause in the license transfer until and when the emerging challenges that have arisen, are addressed,” the filing said.
The watchdogs’ response alleges that NRC staff didn’t address the central complaint of its March motion — that the sale of Three Mile Island Unit 2 from the FirstEnergy Companies to an EnergySolutions subsidiary company violated a water quality certification rule in the 1972 Clean Water Act.
At deadline Friday for the Radwaste Monitor, no new responses had been filed.
NRC staff wrote last Monday that the watchdog group’s March 15 request was no longer valid since proceedings surrounding Unit 2’s license transfer from the FirstEnergy companies to EnergySolutions subsidiary TMI-2 Solutions were closed. Epstein told RadWaste Monitor by phone April 14 that the request was “appropriate.”
The commission approved the sale of Three Mile Island Unit 2 in December, after EnergySolutions announced its intention to buy back in 2019. The reactor shut down in 1979 after a partial core meltdown.
