Andrew Maykuth reports for the Philadelphia Inquirer
Exelon Generation, which plans to shut down Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear reactor in September unless Pennsylvania lawmakers come to its rescue, says it would take nearly 60 years and $1.2 billion to completely decommission the Dauphin County 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 cooling towers and other large components would remain standing until 2074, according to 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.
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.
Exelon’s critics objected to the announcement, saying the 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 $500 million nuclear industry 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 was 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.
Neil Sheehan, an NRC spokesperson, said the timeline for the final cleanup of the damaged reactor needs to be sorted out in light of Exelon’s announcement.
“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.
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