NEI Nuclear Notes

Nuclear plants occupy an unusual spot in the towns where they operate: integral but so much in the background that they may seem almost invisible. But when they close, it can be like the earth shifting underfoot. Lohud.com, the Gannett newspaper that covers the Lower Hudson Valley in New York, took a look around at the experience of towns where reactors have closed , because the Indian Point reactors in Buchanan are scheduled to be shut down under an agreement with Gov. Mario Cuomo. Patty O’Donnell, chairwoman of the Vernon, Vermont, select board, had to drastically cut the town’s budget in the wake of the closure of Vermont Yankee. Photo courtesy of LoHud.com. From sea to shining sea, it was dismal. It wasn’t just the plant employees who were hurt. The losses of hundreds of jobs, tens of millions of dollars in payrolls and millions in property taxes depressed whole towns and surrounding areas. For example: Vernon, Vermont, home to Vermont Yankee for more than 40 years, had...

Today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held a public meeting to consider the latest development in what has become a growing trend in the nuclear power industry – accelerating decommissioning by transferring licenses to third parties after a plant shuts down. The topic of today’s NRC meeting was to provide an overview of Entergy’s plan to sell and transfer the NRC licenses for the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station – which permanently ceased operations at the end of 2014 – to NorthStar Group Services, Inc. , a company that specializes in nuclear decommissioning and environmental remediation. This meeting began the process by which the companies seek NRC approval of the transaction. Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station Why would anyone want to buy a nuclear plant? Because they can decommission it faster, with more certainty in schedule and costs,that’s why. In the nuclear decommissioning business, time is literally money. NRC regulations allow up to 60 years for compl...

Nuclear Energy Insider has an interesting article up on the decommissioning of Illinois’ Zion facility outside Chicago. There are some details that suggest how this kind of work might be done relatively quickly : The Zion decommissioning project will take considerably less time than originally planned because the cleanup will bypass one of the most laborious and time-consuming steps of taking down a nuclear plant. According to the New York Times, the project will bypass separating radioactive materials --  which must go to a licensed dump -- from nonradioactive materials, which can be deposited onto ordinary industrial landfills. The NYT report says that the new strategy eliminates separating the two. Instead, anything that could include radioactive contamination will be treated as radioactive waste. The article describes it as a 10-year project, which I assume includes moves like this one. There are 12 other shuttered plants in the United States that have not yet set decommiss...

Lisa Black of the Chicago Tribune wrote a piece on the effects the shutdown Zion plant in Illinois has had on the community : Ronald Schuster remembers exactly how he felt when he heard the Zion Nuclear Power Station would close, a decision that rocked the community that relied on it for much more than electricity. "It was literally like someone got hit in the solar plexus," said Schuster, a radiation-protection safety officer who was herded into a meeting at 8:05 a.m. Jan. 15, 1998, to hear the news. ... The plant's closing marked a crushing blow to blue-collar Zion, where it had served as the city's largest employer and taxpayer. Nearly 2,000 out-of-town contractors left town immediately, and the 860 regular full-time workers began looking for new jobs. Some local businesses saw sales plummet by 25 percent to 30 percent, said Eugene Swindle, who said his auto shop lost up to $6,000 monthly when workers stopped coming in. Across the street, a new owner of Dunkin'...