The Vermont Public Utility Commission is scheduled next week to issue its decision on approval of the sale of the shuttered Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
Parties to the three-member panel’s review of the deal received notice Thursday in a one-sentence memorandum from Clerk of the Commission Judith Whitney: “The Vermont Public Utility Commission has asked me to advise you that it expects to issue its Order in this case by the end of next week.”
That schedule would still apparently push closure of the deal past its hoped-for closure before the end of this year. “If approval of the transaction is obtained from the PUC next week, we expect the sale to close in early 2019,” Mike Twomey, external affairs vice president for Entergy Wholesale Commodities, told the VTDigger website on Thursday.
New Orelans-based power provider Entergy retired the 42-year-old boiling water reactor in December 2014, then said in late 2016 it would sell the plant to NorthStar Group Services. The New York City demolition specialist would pay $1,000 and assume all responsibility for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management at Vermont Yankee. It will keep a portion of the plant’s decommissioning trust fund when that work is finished.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in October approved transfer of the plant’s operations and spent fuel storage pad licenses from Entergy to NorthStar. But the companies still need VPUC certification that the sale is in the public good to seal the deal.
Several state agencies and nongovernmental groups were made parties to the utility commission proceeding. In March, all but one of the parties agreed to support the sale plan through a settlement agreement and memorandum of understanding in which Entergy and NorthStar made a number of financial and cleanup commitments. The settlement set a July 31 deadline after which parties could withdraw if VPUC had not issued its ruling. That deadline was later amended to Oct. 31 and then Nov. 30.
NorthStar says it can complete decommissioning as early as 2026, while Entergy’s cleanup schedule had stretched into the 2070s. The new owner would remain responsible for the site’s spent fuel for years if not decades afterward, until the Department of Energy meets its legal obligation to remove it from the property.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to spend nearly $150 million in the current 2019 fiscal year on 20 separate nuclear cleanup projects under its Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP).
That funding covers $120 million budgeted for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1 and an additional $30 million under the Army Corps’ work plan released last week. The Army branch had requested $120 million for the current budget year and received an additional $30 million from Congress.
Under FUSRAP, the Army Corps is charged with remediation of properties contaminated by weapons and civilian energy programs managed by the Manhattan Engineer District and Atomic Energy Commission from the 1940s to the 1960s.
The current funding covers cleanup programs in eight states: Iowa, Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Not all the projects received additional funding under the work plan, but some secured significant plus-ups while two actually lost money. For example:
- The DuPont Chambers Works site in Deepwater, N.J., the location of 1940s uranium refinement operations for nuclear power, was budgeted at $15 million for ongoing remediation and removal and disposal of 15,000 cubic yards of contaminated material. The work plan adds $12 million, for $27 million in total spending, allowing for removal and disposal of an additional 4,000 cubic yards of contaminated material.
- The Luckey Site, onetime home to a beryllium production plant in Luckey, Ohio, was budgeted at $16 million for this fiscal year for soil remediation, removal and disposal of contaminated material, groundwater sampling, and other operations. It received another $7.2 million under the work plan for those activities, including task orders for remediation of roughly 16,800 cubic yards of contaminated soil.
- Conversely, the work plan removes $3 million from the $8 million budgeted for the Shallow Land Disposal Area, site of former nuclear fuel operations near Pittsburgh, Pa. No explanation is given for the reduced funding, but the project has been slowed by protests against the 2017 cleanup contract award to a Jacobs Engineering subsidiary. As of September, Jacobs Field Services North America has been given the go-ahead to start work – beginning with developing the work plan for the project.
SHINE Medical Technologies said Tuesday it has secured a $150 million financing pledge from a New York City-based healthcare investment firm to fund construction of its Wisconsin medical isotope manufacturing facility.
Deerfield Management Co. will provide the money in several installments, dependent on SHINE achieving select milestones, according to a press release. SHINE has received the first tranche of funding, spokeswoman Katrina Pitas said by email Wednesday. She did not discuss details of the milestones the company must meet to continue receiving funding.
With the funding in hand, SHINE expects next spring to begin construction of its 43,000-square-foot main molybdenum-99 production facility in the city of Janesville. The Deerfield money will also help SHINE prepare for commercial levels of output of the isotope, which it hopes to achieve by 2022.
The company will first need an operations license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “We are currently developing the NRC operation license application and expect to submit it to the NRC in the first half of next year,” Pitas stated. “The NRC has estimated that once the application is docketed, its review will take 18-24 months.”
SHINE will use accelerator-based neutron source technology to produce the isotope, rather than traditional nuclear reactor-based sourcing. Molybdenum-99 decays into technetium-99m, which is used in 40 million medical procedures each year around the world, including diagnosing various cancers.
The United States not had a commercial production source for the isotope since 1989, but SHINE and several rivals aim to re-establish this capacity. SHINE says it will ultimately be able to provide one-third of the global need for molybdenum-99.
In the press release, the company noted it had previously secured a separate $30 million in private investment for its project. The money will also go toward construction and production preparations, Pitas said.
SHINE to date has secured $250 million for its project, the spokeswoman told the Wisconsin State Journal. The cost of the production plant is not being released.
From The Wires
From the BBC: Robots are used in cleanup of the most dangerous areas of the United Kingdom’s Sellafield nuclear site.
From the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network: Croatia is on the clock to site a facility for storage of radioactive waste from the Krsko nuclear power plant.
From the Valencia County, N.M., News-Bulletin: Belen City Council approves resolution against rail transport of high-level radioactive waste through the city.
From Nuclear Engineering International magazine: Retired U.K. nuclear power plant at Bradwell placed into “care and maintenance” mode.
