The commonwealth of Massachusetts is in the late stages of negotiations to lift its objections over the license transfer and sale of the retired Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was scheduled Thursday afternoon to rule on petitions for intervention and hearings in the license transfer application, filed in February 2019 by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office and the local advocacy organization Pilgrim Watch. The meeting was canceled, at the request of the commonwealth and the plant’s former and current owners: Entergy and Holtec International.
The two companies and Massachusetts requested and have received a stay on the commission decision as they try to wrap up talks on a settlement agreement, under which the commonwealth would withdraw contentions filed in its petition to the NRC and two associated petitions before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The federal regulator actually last August approved the transfer of Pilgrim’s reactor and spent-fuel storage licenses from Entergy to Holtec, which completed the sale within days. But the commissioners theoretically could still approve the intervention petitions and overrule the staff decision on the license transfers.
The anticipated settlement would be the result of months of negotiations, including daily sessions in the last three weeks, according to Thursday’s stay request to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Only “discrete final issues” remain to be negotiated, but more time is needed, the parties said.
Details of the anticipated settlement were not immediately available. Representatives for both Holtec and the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office said they could not comment on the matter.
However, one of Massachusetts’ primary concerns has been ensuring adequate funding to complete decommissioning of the single-reactor facility on Cape Cod under Holtec’s ownership.
It was also not known how the NRC commissioners intended to rule on the intervention petitions.
“The Applicants and the Commonwealth are both concerned that today’s expected decision by the Commissioners on the pending Petitions could upset the current negotiating positions of the Applicants and the Commonwealth and affect the substantial progress they have made to date towards finalizing a settlement agreement, which will benefit the Applicants, the Commonwealth, the Commission, and the public,” according to their filing Thursday. Pilgrim Watch also supported the motion for the stay.
The development came on the same day as the advocacy organization Beyond Nuclear filed an appeal in the D.C. Circuit against the NRC’s rulings against its filings in opposition to another Holtec project – the license application to build and operate a facility for temporary storage of spent fuel from nuclear power plants.
Holtec, an energy technology company based in Camden, N.J., has been moving aggressively in recent years to buy retiring nuclear power plants, in each case assuming all responsibility for decommissioning, site restoration, and spent fuel management. While it says little about the details of each deal, the business model is believed to involve a nominal payment and anticipated profit from the decommissioning trusts for each reactor after cleanup is complete.
Holtec and New Orleans-based Entergy in August 2018 announced the planned ownership swaps for Pilgrim and the Palisades Power Plant in Michigan, which is scheduled to close in 2022. The companies filed the license transfer application with the NRC in November 2018, about six months before the reactor was retired after 47 years of service. Without federal approval, the deal could not proceed.
In their intervention petitions the following February, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office and Pilgrim Watch raised similar concerns.
The applicants had not provided “adequate financial assurance” that the decommissioning trust had enough money to ensure completion of cleanup, as required by NRC regulations and the Atomic Energy Act, according to first contention from the commonwealth’s attorneys. That could put the people of Massachusetts on the hook as the “payers of last resort,” they wrote.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is also required to conduct, at least, an environmental assessment of the license transfer, the commonwealth contended in its second contention.
If the petitions are approved, Massachusetts and Pilgrim Watch would be able to formally argue their contentions regarding the license transfer in an adjudicatory hearing at the NRC.
Massachusetts filed its petition for review with the federal appeals court last September, a month after the NRC signed off on the license transfer. It asked the court to order the agency to withdraw the license transfer approval and other measures that allowed the sale to proceed. It filed a largely similar petition with the court in January of this year, after the NRC commissioners rejected a request for a stay of the staff decision.
Holtec and Entergy have opposed any intervention by the two petitioners, saying the $1 billion in Pilgrim’s trust fund should leave $200 million when decommissioning and site restoration are complete – which is scheduled by the end of 2027. They argued that NRC rules preclude environmental reviews of license transfers.
There was no immediate word on when settlement negotiations might conclude. The parties committed to filing status updates every 10 days with the commission.
“If an agreement is not reached, the Commonwealth … expects to continue to pursue vigorously its pending D.C. Circuit petitions and, if the Commissioners’ anticipated decision later today is in any way adverse to the Commonwealth, to file a new petition seeking judicial review of that decision too,” the Thursday filing says.
Holtec did not face similar objections to its July 2019 acquisition from Exelon of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey. However, the state of New York and other organizations have petitioned the intervene in the license transfer application for Entergy’s three-reactor Indian Point Energy Center.
In each case, the actual decommissioning will be carried out by Comprehensive Decommissioning International, a Holtec joint venture with Canadian engineering multinational SNC-Lavalin.
