NorthStar Group Services on Monday told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission it will have sufficient funds to both decommission the retired Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and manage its spent fuel.
The New York City company was responding to the agency’s latest request for additional information as it reviews the application to transfer the NRC license for Vermont Yankee from owner Entergy to prospective buyer NorthStar. The regulator in April had specifically asked for data demonstrating NorthStar has both sufficient financing and qualifications to decommission the plant upon assuming ownership.
In a letter to the NRC, NorthStar President and CEO Scott State said an attached cash flow analysis “demonstrates there is a reasonable assurance of funding to complete all license termination activities, even when setting aside $20 million for spent fuel management.”
The cash flow analysis shows the Vermont Yankee decommissioning trust fund at over $513 million in fiscal 2019. The fund would transfer to NorthStar once the sale is sealed; the company would spend the bulk of it on license termination operations and spent fuel management from 2019 to 2026, the year at which it believes it can complete decommissioning. About $31.5 million would be left at that point, but the trust would actually grow afterward through interest earnings while NorthStar is not spending any money – up to over $51 million as of 2051.
That model assumes NorthStar receives no money from the federal government to compensate for the Department of Energy’s failure to meet its legal mandate to remove spent fuel from U.S. nuclear reactors. A separate analysis incorporating DOE payments ends with the Vermont Yankee decommissioning trust at nearly $85 million as of 2053.
The letter “conservatively” assumes Vermont Yankee’s used nuclear fuel will be stored next to the site until 2052. The cost analyses show a $3.5 million withdrawal that year.
The NRC will now review State’s letter and accompanying documents to see if the federal agency’s concerns are addressed.
Entergy wants by the end of this year to sell Vermont Yankee to NorthStar for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management. Both the NRC and Vermont Public Utility Commission must approve the sale.
