Exelon Generation, which plans to shut down Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear reactor in September unless Pennsylvania lawmakers come to the rescue, would take nearly 60 years and $1.2 billion to completely decommission the Dauphin County, Pa., site.
The company, in a report filed Friday with federal regulators, said it plans to remove Unit 1's nuclear fuel from the reactor immediately after shutdown. The uranium fuel-rod assemblies would cool in spent fuel pools for three years until they are moved to above-ground sealed canisters in 2022.
But the reactor's iconic cooling towers and other large components would remain standing until 2074, according Exelon's Post-Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report filed Friday with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. All radioactive material would be safely stored or removed from the site by 2078.
A nuclear critic said that Exelon's choice to decommission the reactor site over the long-term, rather than pursue an accelerated decontamination schedule, is an attempt to increase pressure on Pennsylvania policymakers to enact a proposed nuclear rescue and keep TMI open.
"This is a veiled extortion attempt," said Eric Epstein, chairman of Three Mile Island Alert, a Harrisburg nuclear watchdog group.
Epstein feared that Exelon's prolonged decommissioning schedule would delay the completion of cleanup of the damaged TMI Unit 2, which permanently shut down in 1979 after America's worst commercial nuclear accident. FirstEnergy Corp., which owns Unit 2, has said it plans to coordinate the final cleanup of its dormant reactor with Exelon's decommissioning of Unit 1.
"Exelon is retreating from a timely cleanup of TMI-1, and this announcement means the damaged reactor _ TMI-2 _ will not be cleaned up until almost 100 years after the meltdown," Epstein said.
Neil Sheehan, an NRC spokesman, said the timeline for the final cleanup of the damaged reactor still needs to be sorted out in light of Exelon's announcement.
Exelon said the Unit 1 decommissioning would cost $1.2 billion, financed from a trust fund to which the power plant's customers paid since it the plant went online in 1974. Exelon or its successors would be responsible for paying any fund shortfall.
Plant operators are required to submit a decommissioning plan within two years of shutdown, but the timing of the report provided Exelon with an opportunity to refocus public attention on pending Pennsylvania legislation that would provide ratepayer subsidies to nuclear power producers. Exelon says it is prematurely shutting down Unit 1 because it is losing money.
"Absent action in the coming months by Pennsylvania policymakers, the loss of nuclear plants will increase air pollution, compromise the resiliency of the electric grid, raise energy prices for consumers, eliminate thousands of good-paying local jobs and weaken the state's economy," Exelon said in a news release.
Under federal regulations, plant operators have 60 years to clean up a site after a plant closes. The long-term decommissioning method called SAFSTOR allows radioactive levels to decline for decades before workers have to dismantle contaminated components. It also allows time for underfinanced trust funds to accumulate more value, said Neil Sheehan, an NRC spokesman.
The advantage of the more rapid decontamination strategy is that it allows the owner to employ workers experienced with the plant. It also makes the site available for reuse sooner. "For the community, they get the site cleaned up much more quickly," said Sheehan.
Exelon said that the 837-megawatt reactor, which employs nearly 700 people, would reduce staffing levels to 300 after shutdown. A skeleton workforce of 50 would remain in place after 2022 to secure the site and the 1,200 tons of spent fuel stored in special steel casks.
Exelon initially chose the long-term SAFSTOR method of decommissioning for its Oyster Creek Generating Station in New Jersey, which closed last year. But in July it announced it will transfer ownership to Holtec International, which plans to decommission the Ocean County site in eight years.
