FirstEnergy Corp. and its subsidiaries should be found in breach of their federal regulatory requirement to ensure they can fund decommissioning of three nuclear power plants scheduled for closure in coming years, a nongovernmental environmental organization said in a petition to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
FirstEnergy subsidiary FirstEnergy Solutions on March 28 announced it would shut down the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Ohio, Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Ohio, and Beaver Valley Power Station in Pennsylvania between May 2020 and October 2021. Three days later, the parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
In its March 27 petition, the Environmental Law & Policy Center said FirstEnergy’s nuclear decommissioning trusts and parent company guarantees could not be counted on to cover the costs for cleaning up the four reactors at the three plants. It noted FirstEnergy’s financial troubles and said external trust funds as of March 2017 were $350 million short of the estimated $2.1 billion projected cost of decommissioning the three sites.
Given the then-pending bankruptcy filing, “and FE’s rapidly deteriorating financial situation, in order to ensure compliance with federal laws and regulations, ELPC requests that the NRC give this petition immediate consideration and promptly issue Demands for Information and Notices of Violation” to FirstEnergy Corp., FirstEnergy Solutions, and nuclear licensees FirstEnergy Nuclear Generation and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co., the Environmental Law & Policy Center said in its petition, which was posted Wednesday on the NRC website.
Specifically, the NRC should find the companies to be operating nuclear sites without sufficient decommissioning funds, and then fine them and suspend the licenses for the three plants.
The NRC had no immediate comment on the petition. FirstEnergy Solutions referred to an April 4 notice from the NRC that said “decommissioning funding for the three plants “continues to be sufficiently funded under NRC regulations.”