1st Shutdown Imminent At Indian Point

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staffers held a webinar attended by about 300 people Tuesday afternoon.

By Lanning Taliaferro, Patch Staff 
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CORTLANDT, NY — The Indian Point nuclear plant will shut down Reactor 2 by April 30 as the plant’s owner, Entergy, continues preparations for Indian Point’s full decommissioning next year. The plant’s closure agreement was signed between Entergy, New York State and Riverkeeper after years of lawsuits.
There are three reactors at Indian Point. The Unit 1 reactor was permanently shut down in 1974 and has been in long-term storage since then, awaiting decommissioning. Unit 3 is scheduled to be shut down in 2021.
“Decommissioning a nuclear power plant is more akin to a marathon than a sprint,” said NRC staffer Ted Carter during a public webinar Tuesday on the process attended by about 300 people.
Source: Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Federal regulations give plant owners 60 years to decommission a plant, which can include stabilizing it to spend years un-demolished. However, the NRC is currently reviewing an application to transfer the license for the plant from current owner Entergy to Holtec International, which has proposed decommissioning and demolishing the facility by 2033.
Holtec has already submitted a decommissioning report, which NRC is not reviewing while the agency is reviewing the application to transfer the license. Bruce Watson said a financial and technical review of the company’s capabilities will be done as the NRC reviews the application.
There is litigation ongoing about Holtec, including a coalition of 12 states supporting Massachusetts’s challenge to the NRC’s approval for the transfer of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s license to Holtec. In addition to leading that coalition, New York Attorney General Letitia James also filed a petition to intervene in the transfer of Indian Point to Holtec.
Holtec proposes to do it all by 2033 at a projected cost of $2.3 billion. Decommissioning promptly would use less of the trust funds to pay for years of stabilization, NRC officials said.
There is currently $1.85 billion in the trust funds.
During the webinar, NRC officials talked about the decommissioning process as well as questions they’ve received about Indian Point specifically.
Once a plant is decommissioned, emergency protocols change, said Anthony Dimitriadis. After the fuel has cooled to the point that it couldn’t melt enough to affect the surrounding community, the licensee can apply to modify the emergency plan. For example, the 10-mile zone would no longer be in effect but local governments would be notified in emergencies.
The spent fuel from Unit 1 is already in dry cask storage and the spent fuel from units 2 and 3 is either in dry cask storage or in spent fuel pools, said Katherine Warner, physicist with the NRC. She said spent fuel pools are designed to withstand “all credible severe natural events” such as floods, earthquakes and hurricanes.
NRC inspectors are in place when spent fuel is moved around during decommissioning and demolition.
At the end of decommissioning, when the radiological surveys show the site is suitable for other uses, the NRC terminates the license.
Site restoration is not an NRC requirement, but is determined by the state and the owner.
In the 10 power plants that have been decommissioned across the nation, about a third are parks, a third await redevelopment and a third have new power plants, NRC officials said.
Questions from the public during the webinar demonstrated deep skepticism about Holtec and distrust of the NRC regulators themselves. They also expressed concerns that federal regulations aren’t sufficient to protect the community from a crisis with the spent fuel; about clean up of spent fuel pool leakage; that federal funding for NRC inspections could dry up; about earthquakes and natural gas pipeline ruptures; and when the site would be safe for other uses.
One of the commenters was Cortlandt Town Supervisor Linda Puglisi, who said she objected to any change in the 10-mile zone and emergency protocols. NRC officials responded that once the nuclear fuel has cooled down it is inherently safer.
Municipal and school officials are scrambling to deal with the loss of the plant, which is half of the village of Buchanan’s tax base, one-third of the Hendrick Hudson school district’s annual tax base, pays $1 million a year to the town of Cortlandt and pays Westchester $4.5 million a year in lieu of taxes. It employs close to 1,000 people.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is keeping an eye on the new coronavirus outbreak as it continues in constant contact with Entergy, NRC staffers said during the webinar.
When the hard-hit region has sufficiently recovered from the COVID-19 crisis, NRC officials intend to hold a public meeting near the plant about the problems with a public stakeholder’s petitions for enforcement action over problems in the NRC’s analysis of potential hazards from the AIM pipeline. SEE: Feds Lied About Pipeline Near NY Power Plant.