The Department of Energy has applied for a 20-year renewal of the license for storage in Idaho of debris from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, according to documents made public Tuesday.
The regulator issued the license for Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) on March 19, 1999. If the agency approves the DOE request, the license would not expire until March 19, 2039.
Unit 2 at the nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pa., famously experienced a partial core meltdown in March 1979, though little radiation escaped the facility. It has been closed since then.
The ISFSI at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center is licensed to store debris and associated materials from the unit’s reactor core. All material was sent to the Idaho facility by 2001 and no more would be added under the extended license, according to the March 6 license application submission letter from Richard Provencher, deputy assistant energy secretary for Idaho Site Operations and Office of Nuclear Energy.
He noted that the ISFSI has a design life of 50 years, which would cover both the 20-year original license and the two-decade extension
