Pilgrim

The company in charge of decommissioning a Massachusetts nuclear power plant sought to set the record straight early Thursday on its now-delayed plans to discharge the site’s wastewater into the Cape Cod Bay. Although Holtec has said that it won’t release any wastewater from Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station into the nearby bay this year, president […]

The company in charge of decommissioning a nuclear power plant on the Massachusetts shoreline should pursue “alternative methods of disposal” for the site’s spent fuel pool instead of releasing the irradiated wastewater into the Cape Cod Bay, the state’s Senate delegation said in a letter this week. Although Holtec International has delayed plans to discharge […]

If transferring spent nuclear reactor fuel from wet to dry storage was an Olympic sport, Holtec International would take home the gold — at least according to the company. In a Dec. 13 press release, the Camden, N.J., nuclear services company announced that it had completed spent fuel transfer at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station Dec. […]

Holtec International’s hopes of taking over government payouts for spent fuel storage at a Massachusetts nuclear plant under decommissioning were dashed this week when a federal judge ruled in favor of the site’s former owner, according to a new court filing. Although Holtec currently owns Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, the plant’s former owner Boston Edison […]

Holtec International’s hopes of taking over government payouts for spent fuel storage at a Massachusetts nuclear plant under decommissioning were dashed Monday when a federal judge ruled in favor of the site’s former owner, according to a new court filing. Although Holtec currently owns Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, the plant’s former owner Boston Edison is […]

An inspection at Holtec International’s headquarters found that the company violated some federal regulations in its spent fuel cask program, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a recent letter. In a letter to Holtec president and CEO Krishna Singh, dated Oct. 28 and made public Thursday,  NRC said its investigation team in May discovered three […]

Holtec International this week secured the latest exemption to a low-level waste tracking rule that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has planned to rework as part of a long-stalled decommissioning rule. The proposed rulemaking would instruct companies shipping low-level radioactive waste to a disposal site to track shipments and notify the commission if the waste packages […]

Low-level nuclear waste shipments from a Massachusetts nuclear plant being decommissioned by Holtec International won’t have to adhere to a 20-day tracking rule, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided last week. Although NRC’s regulations say that a company shipping low-level radioactive waste to a disposal site needs to track and report shipments that don’t arrive at […]

About half of a Massachusetts nuclear power plant’s spent fuel inventory has been moved to dry storage, setting up the project for completion in late fall, the company in charge of decommissioning the sites said in a recent press release. Seventeen of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s 34 spent fuel canisters have been transferred to the […]

The company in charge of decommissioning nuclear power plants in Massachusetts and New Jersey claims it’s transferring both sites’ spent fuel inventories to dry storage at an “unprecedented” pace, according to a press release Tuesday. At Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, spent fuel is being transferred to dry storage from the plant’s spent fuel […]

After nearly a year of deliberations, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has finalized a settlement agreement with the company set to take over Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. The settlement document, dated Tuesday, withdraws Massachusetts’s objections to the Cape Cod-based plant’s license transfer to Holtec International from Entergy for decommissioning. The commonwealth in 2019 filed petitions with […]

Entergy is in conversations with the NRC and could close on its transfer of the three-unit Indian Point Energy Center license by the middle of 2021, a spokesman said in an earnings call Wednesday. NRC spokesman Scott Burnell told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing in an email on Monday the commission is on track to complete […]

North Wind Site Services has won an $11.8 million contract to remove the largest building at the radioactively contaminated Luckey Site in Ohio, under the Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP). In a press release Friday, the Army Corps said the Production Building must be taken out to allow for […]

Holtec International is seeking approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a new quality assurance program for its current and future fleet of nuclear power plants in decommissioning. The fleet decommissioning quality assurance program (DQAP) from subsidiary Holtec Decommissioning International would replace separate programs in place at the retired Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has begun procurement for a contractor to help prepare for a major cleanup job at the Niagara Falls Storage Site in New York state under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP). The Army branch ultimately intends to hire an architectural and engineering services provider for the […]

Thirteen nuclear power reactors were permanently retired in 2019, including two in the United States, according to an industry performance report issued Tuesday by the World Nuclear Association. “This is the joint second highest number of reactors shut down in a single year,” the report says. “However, for the majority of these reactors, 2019 was […]

The commonwealth of Massachusetts’ court challenge to the transfer of the federal license for the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station is being dismissed with prejudice, which would prevent it from being refiled. The parties to the petition for review filed the dismissal agreement on June 30 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of […]

The commonwealth of Massachusetts’ court challenge to the transfer of the federal license for the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station is being dismissed with prejudice, which would prevent it from being refiled. The parties to the petition for review filed the dismissal agreement on June 30 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is allowing Holtec International to delay conducting a mandatory force-on-force security exercise at the retired Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal regulator issued the exemption on June 18. The document was posted Friday to the agency’s website. Nuclear licensees for months have received expedited NRC […]

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, a state agency said this week. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority cited the investigation in a June 22 filing for its motion to dismiss a Holtec lawsuit over […]

By John Stang Holtec International and Massachusetts signed an agreement Tuesday under which the commonwealth will drop its objections to the already-completed federal license transfer and sale of the retired Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. The deal calls for the New Jersey energy technology company to provide additional financial assurances for complete decommissioning of the single-reactor […]

The commonwealth of Massachusetts is in the late stages of negotiations to lift its objections over the license transfer and sale of the retired Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was scheduled Thursday afternoon to rule on petitions for intervention and hearings in the license transfer application, filed in February 2019 by the […]

By John Stang The 2019 sale of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts drove a major revenue drop that put Entergy Wholesale Commodities’ income into the red for the first quarter of 2020, parent company Entergy Corp. said Monday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the 10-Q filing, the New […]

The 2019 closure of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts drove a major revenue drop that put Entergy Wholesale Commodities’ income into the red for the first quarter of 2020, parent company Entergy Corp. said Monday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the 10-Q filing, the New Orleans-based power company […]

By John Stang Limited liability companies and the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on long-term scheduling dominated discussion in a Nuclear Regulatory Commission webinar Tuesday on nearly completed recommendations for financial assurances for decommissioning of commercial nuclear power plants. The session was intended to receive input from the public on April 6 draft final recommendations from a […]

A working group of staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is scheduled in March to issue a formal set of recommendations to enhance financial assurances for decommissioning of nuclear power plants. Senior managers at the agency established the working group last September to consider the matter in the face of a growing trend in the […]

By John Stang Strong investment returns on the decommissioning trust funds for the Pilgrim and Indian Point nuclear power complexes helped Entergy improve its financial pictures for 2019. The better numbers came from a mix of financial sources – along with the decommissioning trust returns, Entergy benefited from more favorable income tax returns, lower asset […]

Good investment returns on the decommissioning trust funds for the Pilgrim and Indian Point nuclear power complexes helped Entergy improve its financial pictures for 2019. However, the Pilgrim fund is no longer part of Entergy’s corporate finances, Chairman and CEO Leo Denault noted in a Wednesday teleconference with analysts on the New Orleans-based power company’s […]

By John Stang The New York state Attorney General’s Office and three other parties this week filed petitions for hearings with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the proposed license transfer and sale of the Indian Point Energy Center. Along with the Attorney General’s Office, the petitioners are: jointly the town of Cortlandt, village of Buchanan, […]

Comprehensive Decommissioning International (CDI) has secured the contract for decommissioning the retired Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, one of the company’s owners said Monday. The deal is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin stated in a press release. It was signed on Jan. 31, CDI spokesman Pat O’Brien said by […]