The Nuclear Regulatory Commission again extended the deadline on the license transfer agreement for an Illinois nuclear power plant under decommissioning to give agency staff more time to clear the site for unrestricted use, according to a recent notice.
The transfer of Zion Nuclear Power Station back to Exelon from EnergySolutions won’t need to be complete until November 2022, NRC said in a Federal Register notice Sep. 7. The transaction, which the agency approved in 2019, would otherwise become void Nov. 26, the notice said.
This is the third time NRC has extended the license transfer’s effectiveness, the notice said. The agency previously moved the expiration date to November from May 26. The transaction was initially supposed to expire in Nov. 2020.
An extra year will allow NRC staff to finish working through EnergySolutions’ final site evaluation reports and to make a determination as to whether the site of the former Zion, Ill. nuclear plant can be released for unrestricted use, the commission said.
EnergySolutions, which started decommissioning Zion in 2010 via the subsidiary company ZionSolutions, finished dismantling the plant in 2019. The plant’s 2,226 spent fuel assemblies are stored in 61 casks at an onsite storage pad.
Zion was permanently defueled and placed in safe storage (SAFSTOR) mode in 1998.
