Less than one year before its scheduled closure, the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts remains in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s lowest safety ranking allowed for an atomic energy plant to remain operational.
The NRC made the determination in its latest quarterly performance evaluation for the single-reactor facility in Plymouth, made public on Thursday. It covered agency oversight from July 1, 2017, to June 30 of this year.
“The NRC determined the performance at PNPS remains in Column 4, or the Multiple/Repetitive Degraded Cornerstone Column, of the NRC’s Reactor Oversight Process (ROP) Action Matrix,” NRC Region 1 Administrator David Lew wrote in an Aug. 28 letter to Brian Sullivan, site vice president for Entergy Nuclear Operations. “The NRC also determined that Entergy continued to operate PNPS safely and securely, and that additional regulatory action beyond Column 4 was not warranted.”
A series of safety failures and unplanned shutdowns landed Pilgrim in Column 4 in September 2015, a month before Entergy said it would close the facility due to ongoing market challenges facing the nuclear power sector. Following an extended NRC special inspection, Entergy began a recovery plan so it can improve its safety rating.
Lew said Entergy made progress in meeting its obligations under the recovery plan, but that “a significant amount of work related to the performance recovery of PNPS remain for Entergy to be completed.”
“As the NRC noted in its letter, the station has shown improvement in a number of areas, including site leadership, improving standards and expectations, and conservative decision making,” Entergy spokesman Patrick O’Brien said by email Friday.
Management hopes to return Pilgrim to standard regulatory oversight, Column 1, though that would not occur before early next year, O’Brien said. The NRC must still conduct the final two of five confirmatory action letter inspections, scheduled for this month and December.
Pilgrim is due to cease power production on May 31, 2019. Entergy on Aug. 1 announced plans to sell the plant to New Jersey energy technology company Holtec for decommissioning. The companies aim to file a license transfer application with the NRC later this year and to close the deal late in 2019.
