The Omaha, Neb., Public Power District (OPPD) projects it will cost nearly $1.4 billion over five decades to maintain and decommission the closed Fort Calhoun Station nuclear power plant, according to the utility’s newly released post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR).
The 43-year-old single-reactor facility permanently shut down last October, and OPPD at the time said it would place Fort Calhoun in SAFSTOR mode under which full decommissioning can be delayed for up to 60 years while site radioactivity decays and available funding increases for the project.
The Fort Calhoun PSDAR, submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on March 30 and made public last week, lays out a detailed schedule and spending forecast for decommissioning.
Preparations for SAFSTOR are underway and would end on July 1, 2018, with the plant remaining dormant until 2058. All spent fuel would be moved from wet storage to dry storage by 2022. Preparations for dismantlement and decontamination would last from 2059-2060, with actual decommissioning and site restoration scheduled from 2060 to 2066. Total time from plant shutdown to license termination is forecast at 50.16 years.
License termination operations would cost just under $932 million, covering the preparation period, fuel storage, and elimination of the plant itself. Another $406 million would go toward spent fuel management, primarily storage operations. The remaining $46 million would be spent on site restoration.
The Omaha Public Power District has two accounts for decommissioning operations: The license termination expenditures account had a $285.8 million balance as of Dec. 31, 2016, while the spent fuel management and site restoration expenditures trust held $96.3 million.
