Decommissioning trust funds for 119 operational and retired nuclear power reactors in the United States together held $64.7 billion at the end of 2018, according to the latest update from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Two power providers initially failed to demonstrate “decommissioning funding assurance” for a handful of reactors, though those issues were all resolved, the report says.
Agency staff on Dec. 31 provided the NRC commissioners with its review of the 2019 decommissioning funding status reports from nuclear utilities. The report, plus accompanying funding tables, were posted to the NRC website last week.
Federal regulations require nuclear power plant operators to provide regular reports on the trust funds that will pay for cleanup of their properties once operations cease. Decommissioning funding status reports are due on a biannual basis from operators of active facilities, and annually for plants that are due to close within five years or have shifted into decommissioning.
Per the NRC, decommissioning involves the safe removal of a reactor from operations and lowering radioactivity to the level at which the property can be released and the federal license terminated.
Licensees are legally required to show “reasonable assurance” that they can pay for decommissioning a facility, which the NRC projects to cost anywhere from $280 million to $612 million. “Shortfalls should, therefore, be corrected in a timely manner,” the NRC review says. “The staff notes that while the decommissioning funding amounts certified by licensees … do not represent the actual cost of plant decommissioning, they do provide assurances that licensees have available the bulk of the funds to safety decommission the facility.”
At the Dec. 31, 2018, cutoff dates for the reports, there was a total of $56.5 billion spread across decommissioning trusts for 98 operational power reactors. Trusts for 21 reactors in decommissioning held another $8.2 billion.
Two companies temporarily failed to show decommissioning funding assurance for three active reactors: Exelon Generation’s Unit 1 at the Clinton Power Station in Clinton, Ill., and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co.’s Beaver Valley Power Station, Unit 1, in Shippingport, Pa., and Perry Nuclear Power Plant, in Perry, Ohio.
The trust for the Clinton reactor held nearly $543.2 million on Dec. 31, 2018, with a projected balance of $662.9 million before decommissioning and an NRC minimum cost estimate of $681.9 million. Beaver Valley Unit 1 had a trust balance of $286.9 million at the end of that year, compared to a projected balance of $301.1 million before decommissioning and an NRC site-specific cost estimate of $748.6 million. The corresponding numbers for Perry were: $517.1 million, $597.7 million, and a $1.1 billion site-specific cost estimate.
The companies primarily attributed the shortfalls to the market performance for their trust-fund investments. Improved market performance enabled them to demonstrate the required assurance for the Clinton and Perry trusts within the first two months of 2019, NRC staff said.
The situation for Beaver Valley was slightly more complex. Power company FirstEnergy Solutions, of Akron, Ohio, owns the plant’s two reactors, along with the single-reactor Perry facility and Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio. It will separate from owner FirstEnergy Corp. after emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. At that point the new company will be renamed Energy Harbor.
The NRC on Dec. 2 approved the transfer of the reactor-operations licenses for the three sites from FirstEnergy Solutions and its nuclear affiliates to Energy Harbor Corp., Energy Harbor Nuclear Generation LLC, and Energy Harbor Nuclear Corp. That approval directed establishment of a provisional trust that would cover any shortfall at Beaver Valley Unit 1. That then demonstrated decommissioning funding assurance, NRC staff said.
Only one of the reactors in decommissioning failed to show funding assurance as of the close of 2018: Exelon Generation’s Unit 1 at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Delta, Pa. It was down by roughly $15 million in 2018 dollars. The decommissioning trust balance as of Dec. 31, 2018, was $117.7 million, with an estimated cost to complete radiological decommissioning of $263.4 million.
Exelon Generation “provided additional financial assurance to cover the estimated cost to complete decommissioning,” NRC staff said in the year-end review. “Specifically, EGC indicated that collections from ‘non-bypassable charges’ from which EGC funds its decommissioning trust will be adjusted to cover any funding shortfall that exists.”
