An internal U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission working group has found some weaknesses in the agency’s practices on how nuclear power plants’ decommissioning is financed, a growing issue as more plants retire due to financial circumstances. It’s a multi-billion dollar issue.
In an April 29 report, the working group says two new approaches to how to finance a shuttered nuke have introduced uncertainties into assuring that the money is available to render the dead plant is safe in the future. “Over the last decade, power reactor licensees have adopted new business approaches (i.e., models) for accomplishing decommissioning’ says the NRC report.
The conventional approaches to decommissioning, which are the basis of current NRC rules, involve either the original licensee performing the decommissioning itself, or contracting for the work. The examples were: PG&E’s ancient, 63-MW Humboldt plant, which shut down in 1963 and was fully decommissioned in 2018, which the California company decommissioned; the Omaha Public Power District’s 479-MW Fort Calhoun plant, shut down in 2016 and not expected to be fully decommissioned until 2058; and Southern California Edison’s two-unit, 2200-MW San Onofre plant, shut down in 2013, with no date established for full decommissioning.
Lately, licensees have turned to two new ways to decommission, either a temporary transfer of the operating license, or permanent license transfer. In the first case, the license and property is transferred to a company that specializes in decommission and comes back to the original holder when the work is done. An example of the temporary transfer model is Commonwealth Edison’s two-unit, 2000-MW Zion plant near Chicago, shut in 1998 and turned over to Energy Solutions of Salt Lake City in 2010. A case of the second model is Exelon’s 636-MW Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey. When closed in 2018, it was the oldest operating nuclear plant in the U.S., in service since 1969. Exelon sold the plant to Holtec International of Jupiter, Fla. last year.
The NRC working group wrote, “Two attributes of the temporary and permanent license transfer models introduce information and approaches that may not have been contemplated when the current reactor decommissioning financial assurance program was developed.”
* The significant acceleration of decommissioning schedules, which may accelerate withdrawals from decommissioning trust funds (DTF) and, in conjunction with more reactors permanently ceasing operations before the operating term of their licenses expire due to recent changes in the energy market, may challenge previous assumptions regarding the time available for DTFs to grow.”
* “The conduct of decommissioning by non-utility, limited liability companies that are dedicated to decommissioning and may have financial assurance methods that are significantly different than those available to traditional regulated electric utilities to finance decommissioning and ongoing spent fuel management expenses (although non-utility companies have been operating plants since the 1990s).”
What to do about this. The NRC staff report is cautious. The report says the group “recommends enhancements to the guidance and procedures implementing the program to improve its effectiveness, efficiency, and transparency.”
How the industry, and the commission, will react is unclear. NEI, the industry’s lobbying group, has long supported stand-alone decommissioning companies. These firms, says the organization, “have the ability to safely decommission permanently shutdown nuclear plants and restore their sites decades ahead of schedule. If the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission can remove barriers to this process, people who live near closed plants can begin rebuilding years sooner than planned, with great benefit to their local and regional economies.”
So far, NEI has had no comment on the NRC staff working paper.
— Kennedy Maize