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. 13, “setting a new industry record” in the process. The Plymouth, Mass. plant’s defueling took two and a half years to complete after it shut down in May 2019, Holtec said in the release.
Pilgrim’s spent fuel inventory is now stored in a total of 62 casks at the site’s new independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI), built in 2020, the company said.
In order to complete their record-setting run, Holtec had to design a specialized device to extricate a damaged fuel assembly that had been stuck in one of the plant’s fuel racks since the 1970s which had until now resisted removal, the press release said.
Holtec has said that it could finish dismantling the Pilgrim plant by 2027 or so. The company acquired the site from Entergy in late 2018.
The plant was defueled not long after Holtec missed out on a roughly $56 million spent fuel management payout from the Department of Energy.
A federal judge Nov. 15 ruled that Pilgrim’s former owner, Eversource subsidiary Boston Edison, was entitled to the funds paid out by DOE to support waste storage at nuclear plants in the absence of a federal repository.
Meanwhile, Holtec is in the process of nailing down its fourth and fifth decommissioning projects. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week approved the sales of Michigan’s Palisades and Big Rock Point nuclear plants to Holtec from Entergy — a transaction which the company has said could be set in stone this summer. In addition to Pilgrim, Holtec is already working at New York’s Indian Point Energy Center and the Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey.
