Entergy opposes Pilgrim decommissioning fee
By Andy Metzger / State House News Service
Posted Nov 6, 2017
BOSTON — Without sufficient funds for safely decommissioning the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, the state could be left holding the bag once the plant ceases operations, environmental activists warned lawmakers Monday, asking them to impose a $25 million annual fee on the station if it misses deadlines.
The plant is set to close in a year and a half and its owner, Entergy Corp., said the timetable for completing the decommissioning five years after closing is unrealistic.
“Physically it’s impossible to decommission in five years,” Tom Joyce, a lobbyist for Entergy, told the Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy.
The fuel that was delivered to the power plant on the Plymouth coast about six months ago is “very hot and being used now to fuel the reactor and produce electricity, which will stay in the pool and can’t be touched for five years,” Joyce said.
Pilgrim went into operation in 1972, and it has been a source of major safety concern for residents of the South Shore and Cape Cod, especially after the meltdown in Fukushima, Japan.
Closure of the plant will represent a blow to the state’s carbon-free energy goals. Pilgrim generates 680 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 600,000 homes, without burning fossil fuel.
The plant, which is rated one notch above the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s ranking of unacceptable, is set to close at the end of May 2019, and federal regulators will oversee the decommissioning process.
Pilgrim has a fund to pay for decommissioning that Joyce said stands at around $1 billion, and anti-Pilgrim activists said was recently priced at about $960 million. Activists say that amount won’t be enough to cover the cost of safely securing the spent fuel and other decommissioning responsibilities.
Decommissioning Vermont Yankee, a smaller plant, had an estimated cost of $1.23 billion, according to Claire Miller, a community organizer for Toxics Action Center.
“If there’s not enough money the reactor could be mothballed for 60 years, and during that time obviously the workforce would be reduced to a skeleton [crew], offsite emergency planning would be eliminated, and offsite environmental monitoring eliminated or reduced,” Miller told the committee. “If Entergy ... skips town, we are left holding the bag, along with lots of radioactive waste.”
Legislation filed by Plymouth Republicans Sen. Vinny deMacedo and Rep. Mathew Muratore would establish a Nuclear Power Station Post-Closure Trust Fund financed with $25 million annual payments by any nuclear plant that is not completely decommissioned five years after it stops making electricity. Pilgrim is the only remaining nuclear plant in Massachusetts.
“This is a detriment to our community,” deMacedo told the committee about the soon-to-be shuttered plant.
The $25 million fee is a “purely punitive” tax, Joyce said. Federal law pre-empts the state in regulating nuclear plants, he said. Conceding that federal law permits decommissioning to be completed within 60 years, Joyce said the average timeframe for decommissioning is 12 to 15 years.
Pilgrim has about 3,000 fuel rods on-site and the plant has moved about 600 of those rods into dry-cask storage, Joyce said. The company hopes to move all of its spent fuel into dry cask storage “as quickly as possible,” he said.
Dry cask storage “allows spent fuel that has already been cooled in the spent fuel pool for at least one year to be surrounded by inert gas inside a container called a cask” that is typically a steel cylinder welded or bolted closed and then surrounded by “additional steel, concrete, or other material to provide radiation shielding to workers and members of the public,” according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
While the speed with which Entergy can decommission Pilgrim is still a matter of debate, there is little question the plant will cease operations as announced, according to Joyce.
“My understanding is there isn’t a scintilla of a chance of this plant operating — sadly — beyond the end of May 2019,” Joyce said.
Shutting down Vermont Yankee has been a personal crusade for me. I
know too much about the fear and uncertainty radiation from a damaged nuclear
plant can create. On April 26, 1986, the day Chernobyl melted down, I was living
800 miles away in Southern Germany, the mother of a four-year-old son and newly
pregnant with twins. Four days after the disaster, the radioactive plume blew
over my village where I was caught in a heavy rainstorm that pelted my family
and me with dangerous radioactive isotopes. The following weeks were the most
terrifying of my life, not knowing what would happen to my son and my unborn
children due to this radiation exposure.
When I moved to Montpelier in 1989, I was well aware that I was
moving much closer to a nuclear plant than I had been in Germany. I was uneasy
about putting my children at risk of unnecessary and dangerous radiation yet
again, and my unease grew as Vermont Yankee continued to age and suffered from
myriad problems, making it one of the oldest and most dangerous nuclear
facilities in the country. It was clear that Entergy Louisiana could not be
trusted to safely and reliably operate Vermont Yankee past its original
retirement date of 2012. It even won a Dirty Dozen award! [1]
Now
finally, thanks to efforts of Toxics Action Center organizers, Vermont Yankee
Decommissioning Alliance activists, and many others, Vermont Yankee has powered
down for the last time. We still have many concerns about the plant's safety,
and we will be watchdogging the decommissioning process carefully. But we are so
excited that Vermont Yankee has finally retired.
