Utility company Exelon announced Friday that it would in October retire the Oyster Creek Generating Station in New Jersey at the close of its current operational cycle.
That is more than a year ahead of the December 2019 closure date mandated in a 2010 agreement with the state of New Jersey, according to a press release from Exelon Generation. The 2019 date was selected so Exelon would not have to pay to build cooling towers at the plant in line with then-recently approved state environmental rules, Exelon said in an 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The decision to retire Oyster Creek in 2018 at the end of its current operating cycle involved
consideration of several factors, including economic and operating efficiencies, and avoids a refueling outage scheduled for the fall of 2018 that would have required advanced purchasing of fuel fabrication and materials beginning in late February 2018,” Exelon stated in the 8-K, also noting the challenges facing it and other nuclear power providers in recent years, including higher operational expenses and “historically low” wholesale power prices.
The single-reactor Oyster Creek plant in Ocean County has operated since 1969, making it the longest-serving commercially operated nuclear power facility in the United States. Some of its 500 workers will stay on as the facility moves into decommissioning, and Exelon hopes to offer all remaining workers employment at its other sites, spokeswoman Lacey Dean said Friday.
Upon closure, Oyster Creek will hold more than 700 metric tons of spent reactor fuel that will be placed into dry storage on-site until the U.S. Department of Energy meets its legal obligation to take the waste for disposal.
Management has not yet determined which decommissioning approach it will employ at the site. The approach must be designated in a post-shutdown decommissioning activities report that is required to be submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission within two years of a power plant’s closure.
In the 8K, Exelon acknowledged that it might not meet the NRC’s minimum funding requirements for the Oyster Creek decommissioning trust due to the early start of decommissioning work and reduced amount of time for the trust to accrue investment funds. Dean could not say how much money is currently in the trust, and the projected cost will be based on the approach selected. Exelon would have to cover any shortfall in the funding requirements, but told the SEC it does not believe that will be necessary no matter which decommissioning plan is used.
“Upon either passing the NRC minimum funding test or the issuance of any required financial guarantees, if required, Oyster Creek would be able to utilize the NDT funds for radiological decommissioning costs, which represent the majority of the total expected decommissioning costs,” the 8-K says. “However, the NRC must approve an additional exemption for Generation to utilize the NDT fund to pay for non-radiological decommissioning costs (i.e. spent fuel management and site restoration costs). If Oyster Creek does not receive this exemption, the costs would be borne by Generation. While the ultimate amounts may vary greatly and could be reduced by alternate decommissioning scenarios and/or reimbursement of certain costs under the United States Department of Energy settlement agreement, if Oyster Creek does not obtain the exemption, Generation estimates it could incur spent fuel management and site restoration costs over the next ten years of up to $200 million, net of taxes.”
Exelon also said it expects to incur $25 million to $35 million in one-time, pretax, charges in the first quarter associated with the early closure.
The company has in recent years announced plans to close several other nuclear plants. The Three Mile Island facility in Pennsylvania remains on schedule to shut down in 2019 unless it receives economic assistance from the state. Exelon in 2016 said it would close its Quad Cities and Clinton plants in Illinois, but changed course when the state legislature later that year approved economic energy subsidies to help support the sites. Exelon also acquired the James A. Fitzpatrick nuclear plant from Entergy last March after New York state lawmakers approved a zero-emissions credit plan.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December spent $9,999 of its remaining balance from the Nuclear Waste Fund, leaving just under $514,000 for work on licensing the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, according to the agency’s latest update to Congress.
Three years after the Obama administration halted work on Yucca Mountain, a federal court in August 2013 ordered the NRC to resume the licensing process for the planned Department of Energy underground site for disposal of spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
The NRC had $13.5 million available from the Nuclear Waste Fund at the time of the court ruling, and has since used over $12.9 million. Nearly $11.5 million was spent on three projects: completion of a safety evaluation report on Yucca Mountain, loading Yucca-related documents into the NRC’s online data library, and producing a supplement to the environmental impact statement for the project.
In December, the NRC spent $8,079 on information gathering for a site that could be used for the agency’s adjudication of the Yucca Mountain license application, if that is resumed, along with planning a virtual meeting of the Licensing Support Network Advisory Review Panel (LSNARP).
The panel is now scheduled to meet on Feb. 27-28 to discuss options for reconstituting the Licensing Support Network, the digital trove of Yucca documents that was retired when the NRC halted its licensing activities.
The remaining $1,920 in December expenditures went toward program planning and support.
That left $564,340 in the NRC’s Nuclear Waste Fund balance. Of that, $50,508 is already committed, leaving a total unobligated balance of $513,832.
The NRC requested $30 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund for fiscal 2018 to resume the licensing process for Yucca Mountain. Congress has yet to approve the request, much less a full budget for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, 2017. The stopgap measures that have kept the federal government running for more than four months have included no money for Yucca Mountain.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission believes it needs to collect $826.7 million in fees from licensees and license applicants to fund its operations in the current year. The remainder of the anticipated budget authority of $967 million would come from other sources.
Of the total fee amount, $289.4 million would fund direct services for applicants and licensees and $537.3 million would be collected from annual fees.
In a Federal Register notice, the agency cautioned that its figures are based on its budget request for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, 2017. Congress has yet to pass a full-year budget, instead keeping the government open with a series of stopgap spending measures that mostly freeze federal spending levels at prior-year levels. The current continuing resolutions expires on Feb. 8.
“If the NRC receives an appropriation providing a different total budget authority, the final fee rule will reflect the final appropriation,” according to the Federal Register notice.
The NRC employs more than 3,000 personnel to carry out its mission of licensing and oversight of commercial nuclear power and waste operations.
Comments on the fee plan are being taken through Feb. 26, at the regulations.gov website, Docket ID NRC-2017-0026; by email to [email protected]; by fax to Secretary. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, (301) 415-1101; by mail to Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff; or in person at 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has begun a full technical review of a request that would eliminate the requirement that the agency authorize dismantlement and disposal of the reactor on the retired nuclear-powered merchant vessel NS Savannah.
The regulator as of early January had completed its acceptance review of the Oct. 31, 2017, license amendment request from the U.S. Maritime Administration for the ship, according to a Jan. 4 NRC letter posted online Wednesday.
Primarily, the amendment would remove one license condition: “The licensee shall not dismantle or dispose of the facility without prior approval of the Commission.” However, that work would still be subject to NRC regulations on modifications to nuclear facilities and issuances of amendments.
The NRC expects to complete the technical review by April, a spokesman said. The agency would also have to eventually sign off on a license termination plan, which would be due at least two years prior to license termination. “This plan would include remaining decommissioning work and final radiological survey plans,” NRC spokesman David McIntyre said by email. “Finally, the licensee must request license termination, which is accompanied by survey documentation that the site cleanup criteria in the LTP has been achieved. NRC approval is required to terminate the license.”
The NS Savannah operated from 1959 to 1971, and is now docked in Baltimore. Its reactor has been defueled. The Maritime Administration, a branch of the U.S. Transportation Department, estimates it will take about $110 million over seven years for decontamination, dismantlement, and license termination. The agency received $24 million for this work in the federal omnibus budget for fiscal 2017; it did not request any additional funding for fiscal 2018, which began on Oct. 1 of last year.
