Pilgrim decommissioning plan out for public comment
Federal nuclear regulators will hold a public meeting next month in Plymouth to discuss and take feedback on the plan the owners of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station have to decommission the aging plant, which is scheduled to be shut down by June.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday officially began a review of the decommissioning activities report submitted by Entergy Corp., and set a Jan. 15, 2019 date for a public meeting on the submittal. A comment period will extend through March 21, 2019.
Entergy’s decommissioning report calls for the plant to be “placed in a safe and stable condition and maintained in that state allowing levels of radioactivity to decrease through radioactive decay, followed by decontamination and dismantlement.”
The plan estimates it will take 60 years from shutdown to final license termination.
The NRC does not have to formally approve Entergy’s plan, but must certify that it meets its regulatory requirements.
Entergy, which bought Pilgrim from Boston Edison in 1999, is also seeking to sell the plant to Holtec International, a company that specializes in “accelerated decommissioning” of power plants. The companies filed a joint license transfer application last month asking the NRC to approve the sale by the time the power plant closes by June 1. Each company has submitted its own decommissioning activities report.
The NRC said it is considering the license transfer application separately and the public meeting and comment period will focus only on Entergy’s report. Holtec’s decommissioning activities report, which lays out the process its subsidiary would use to decommission the power plant by the end of 2027, is being considered as a supplement to the license transfer application, the NRC said.
Holtec plans to transfer fuel from Pilgrim between 2019 and 2021 and restore the site to meet NRC requirements by 2027. Activity would continue at the spent fuel storage installation until 2062 or 2063 and the Pilgrim site would be fully restored by 2064, according to the company’s filings.
Massive concrete and steel casks, described by their manufacturer as providing “an impregnable barrier,” are expected to protect the public from radiation emitted by the 4,000 spent fuel assemblies left behind at Pilgrim after the reactor permanently shuts down.
The plant, which began generating power in 1972, employs about 600 people and generates 680 megawatts of electricity.
It has been plagued by problems over the years, including repeated shut downs that have cost Entergy tens of millions of dollars in revenue just this year.
— Material from the Cape Cod Times was used in this report.
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