An anti-nuclear group looking to block decommissioning of a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant may get a chance in the new year to argue its case before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to agency correspondence.
NRC’s Atomic Safety Licensing Board planned to hold a 90-minute oral argument session on Three Mile Island Alert’s (TMIA) petition against a proposed license amendment for Three Mile Island Nuclear Station’s Unit 2 reactor, the agency told Eric Epstein, the head of the environmental organization, in a Wednesday email viewed by the Exchange Monitor.
NRC is considering whether to grant Epstein’s Nov. 4 request for a public hearing on the proposed license amendment, which the agency said in an August Federal Register notice would alter certain administrative controls and surveillance requirements at the Dauphin County, Pa., plant to “support the transition” to decommissioning.
EnergySolutions subsidiary TMI-2 Solutions is currently decommissioning Three Mile Island, a two-reactor nuclear plant located near Harrisburg, Pa. TMI-2 that suffered a partial meltdown in 1979. It was one of the worst nuclear accidents in U.S. history.
In its Wednesday email, NRC told Epstein that the planned oral argument, which would concern the “standing and contention admissibility” of TMIA’s petition, would take place on either Jan. 18 or 19 at the agency’s Rockville, Md., headquarters.
In his November petition, Epstein argued that EnergySolutions’ proposed license amendment “will reduce safety margins, and increase the likelihood of ‘significant hazards’ during … the cleanup.” Such an amendment would allow the decommissioning company to store radioactive waste at the TMI-2 site “for an indefinite period of time,” he said.
The TMIA chairman also complained that the proposed license change would “normalize” TMI-2’s decommissioning without taking into account the effects of the reactor’s 1979 partial meltdown.
“The Applicant wants to rewrite history, and create an ‘apples to apples approach’ for decommissioning,” Epstein said. “TMI-2 Solutions fails to recognize the unique status of TMI-2.”
EnergySolutions, meanwhile, told NRC in a Nov. 28 filing that Epstein “fails to allege a particularized injury that could plausibly flow” from the proposed license amendment, “as is required under traditional standing.”
The company called on NRC to scrap Epstein’s petition, arguing that “the harms Petitioner asserts are entirely speculative and unsupported by any evidence or analysis.”
EnergySolutions, which acquired TMI-2 from FirstEnergy in 2020, has said that it could finish decommissioning the site by 2037 or so. Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 reactor is owned by Constellation Energy.
