Had it not been for the coronavirus upending operations at nuclear power plants across the country, the highlight of 2020 might have been the Donald Trump administration giving up on Yucca Mountain.
In February, with campaign season in full swing, Trump leveraged his influential Twitter account to make a swing-state appeal to Nevada: one that marked the end of his administration’s failed efforts to restart DOE’s application to license Yucca with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
“Nevada, I hear you on Yucca Mountain and my Administration will RESPECT you!” Trump tweeted. POTUS came into office supportive of funding Yucca Mountain, including a $120 million line item to restart the approval process in a 2017 budget request. The 2020 request, released not long after Trump’s Yucca tweet, had no money for the proposed repository.
Joe Biden (D) ultimately beat Trump and won the White House, and though Nevada was not crucial to his victory, Biden carried the state with 50% of the vote to Trump’s 47.7% — a margin that might be slim enough to keep Republicans and Democrats feuding over Nevada. That could strengthen the hand of the state’s two Democratic U.S. Senators, who will not countenance any effort to bring spent nuclear fuel anywhere near their constituents.
The Trump administration had more success greasing the skids for a pair of consolidated interim storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel, but the Biden administration could still derail these efforts, which cannot be approved before the NRC publishes a pair of final environmental impact statements that are not expected until well after inauguration day.
With the holidays approaching, a public comment period was still open for environmental reviews of Holtec International’s planned spent fuel storage facility in New Mexico. NRC wrapped up a similar public comment period on Interim Storage Partners’ June 2018 application for initial storage of up to 5,000 metric tons across the state line in Andrews County, Texas, earlier this year. Interim storage partners is a joint venture of Orano and Waste Control Specialists.
The NRC expects to publish the final environmental impact statement for Interim Storage Partners’ proposal around May or June, and for the Holtec proposal around July. Groups of citizens, state and local politicians, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D), have spoken out against the proposed interim storage facilities.
Coronavirus
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and host community groups alike struggled to come to a consensus in the early days of the health crisis about how to do business during a pandemic unprecedented in the nuclear age: how to hold a public meeting? When to resume force-on-force inspections of nuclear power plants? What if there is a plant-wide outbreak of the virus?
Among other things, the commission extended the number of hours plant employees are allowed to work per week, to 86 hours per week, up from 72, and made nearly 50 exemptions for force-on-force inspections — simulated terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants. The exemptions started in May, and the most recent guidance available as of this writing says the inspections will resume again in March 2021.
Plant Shutdowns, Bailouts, Scandal
The Indian Point power plant’s Unit 2 and Iowa’s Duane Arnold Energy Center ceased operations in 2020, punctuating nuclear power’s continuing downward trend, even as construction of the Vogtle units three and four continued in Georgia.
Exelon announced plans in August to shut down units at two Illinois plants, Byron and Dresden, by September and November 2021, citing “severe economic challenges.” The company has hinted that if state subsidies are passed, the plants will stay open. State Rep. Tom Demmer (R) has launched a campaign to save the Byron nuclear plant, touting the jobs it provides for people nearby.
Two of Exelon’s other Illinois plants, Clinton and Quad Cities, are already receiving more than $200 million a year in ratepayer subsidies, passed in 2016 — a fact not lost on Illinois regulators who say the state’s support of nuclear power is already too much for ratepayers.
But as power plant bailouts go, even in a year when there was plenty of publicity about the Illinois reactors, Ohio was the real lightning rod.
In what some Ohio officials have called the biggest scandal in Buckeye State history, the FBI this summer unsealed a criminal affidavit against then-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder (R), three lobbyists, and another political operator, alleging a $60-million pay-to-play scheme in which FirstEnergy funneled dark money contributions to Householder and other Republicans ahead of 2018 elections, with the understanding that, once elected, they would pass a bailout for the financially troubled Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants.
The bill passed in 2019, but after the FBI investigation went public, Householder was ousted from his role as Ohio House speaker — he won reelection in November, despite the criminal indictment — and FirstEnergy, which no longer owns the bailed-out power plants, launched an internal probe that ended with the dismissal of CEO Chuck Jones and other executives. The company is also under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Meanwhile, despite the closures and threatened closures this year, some nuclear power plant operators are extending their license terms with the NRC.
In March, the NRC issued subsequent license renewals for Exelon Generation Company’s Pennsylvania-based Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station Units 2 and 3, allowing the former to operate through Aug. 8, 2053 and the latter to continue through July 2, 2054. At the end of those terms, the reactors would be around 80 years old. They came online in 1974.
NextEra Energy is also looking to stretch to 80 years and submitted an application in November to extend its license for the Point Beach Nuclear Plant Units 1 and 2 to 2050. If granted, the extension would make Point Beach the third-ever plant to be granted an 80-year NRC license. The plant started operations in 1970.
Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station, which got an extension in late December 2019, was the first plant the NRC cleared to operate for 80 years, out to 2053.
Decommissioning, License Transfers
Holtec’s license transfer application to decommission the New York-based Indian Point plant was granted in November, but not without outcries and legal interventions from state and federal lawmakers including U.S. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and Attorney General Letitia James (D), who called the deal “very risky.”
Holtec is also preparing an application to decommission the Michigan-based Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, which it said it plans to submit by the end of the year.
Holtec International faces a criminal probe for “misrepresentations” made in applying for millions of dollars’ worth of tax credits from its home state of New Jersey, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority said in a June 22 motion to dismiss a Holtec lawsuit over the frozen credits.
A judge also put a hold on the Holtec’s decommissioning of the Oyster Creek plant in October, requiring it to first obtain the proper construction permits. The ruling is the latest in a long-running battle between Holtec and host site Lacey Township, which claims the company began the decommissioning process without the required local approval. The parties were to submit a joint status report by Dec. 18, the deadline for this story.
Meanwhile, in early December, the NRC greenlighted the transfer of Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 license to EnergySolutions subsidiary TMI-2 Solutions from FirstEnergy for decommissioning.
The commission also granted transfer of the license for the retired Crystal River nuclear power plant in Florida to decommissioning contractor ADP CR3 — a subsidiary of Accelerated Decommissioning Partners LLC — from Duke Energy. The LLC is itself a joint venture of NorthStar Group Services and Orano USA, the domestic branch of French nuclear company Orano.
Greater Than Class C
Some progress was made regarding the question of how very low level waste should be disposed of, which has proven a touchy subject. NRC staff also disagreed about how Greater Than Class C waste should be disposed of, with dissenting staff members issuing a letter of disagreement in response to an issue paper on the topic in October.
Shimkus Retires
This year was the last in Congress for longtime nuclear-advocate Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) who will retire in January, leaving a Yucca Mountain-sized hole in the legislature’s shrinking circle of active nuclear policy-makers.
In 2018, in what could be called the most substantial progress on nuclear waste policy Congress almost made in a decade, the House of Representatives passed Shimkus’ Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis.
But the bill stalled in the Senate, and died not long after when the 115th Congress ended. In the 116th Congress, now in its final days, the revived bill didn’t get nearly so far. Shimkus got an updated draft of the amendments act out of a House committee, but it failed to gain further traction.
Legislatively, expectations were lower this year. The bi-partisan American Nuclear Infrastructure Act of 2020, a bill to keep on record how much waste the country is creating — and how much it costs — cleared the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee late in the 116th Congress on a bipartisan vote. Although the bill will almost inevitably die after the lame duck Congress, it could be reintroduced in the next session, if the political will remains.
