The company in charge of decommissioning a former Vermont nuclear power plant aims to load and store the last of the facility’s low-level waste next month, according to a statement from its CEO this week.
NorthStar, which is in the process of dismantling Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station, “anticipates being able to load the Greater than Class C reactor components into a dry cask for removal to the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation [ISFSI] in October,” company CEO Scott State said Wednesday in a statement provided to RadWaste Monitor.
A spokesperson for NorthStar declined to provide a more specific timeline.
“The imminent removal of this last remaining Greater than Class C waste from the Vermont Yankee reactor building will mark another major milestone in NorthStar’s safe, on-time, and on-budget decommissioning efforts at Vermont Yankee,” State said.
Greater than Class C waste is a type of low-level radioactive waste which includes things like activated metals from power plants and manufacturing waste from radioisotope products.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently at work drafting a new rulemaking that would allow states to consent to store GTCC in near-surface repositories, such as the federal Waste Isolation Pilot Plant or Waste Control Specialists’ (WCS) Texas disposal facility, as opposed to a permanent storage facility such as Nevada’s moribund Yucca Mountain site.
The proposed rules change has been the subject of some controversy at NRC, with some staff arguing in a 2020 policy brief that only the federal government can legally bear responsibility for GTCC waste.
Meanwhile, “nearly all” of the Vernon, Vt., Vermont Yankee plant’s Class A waste has been removed from the site, and the last shipment of segmented reactor vessel components should be heading to Waste Control Specialists’ Texas disposal facility next week, NorthStar’s State said Wednesday.
NorthStar purchased Vermont Yankee from former operator Entergy in 2018, and the company has said it could wrap decommissioning by 2030 or so. The plant stores around 58 casks of spent nuclear fuel on its ISFSI.
