• Speedy reactor cleanups may carry both risks and rewards

    By: BOB SALSBERG, Associated Press

    PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) - Companies specializing in the handling of radioactive material are buying retired U.S. nuclear reactors from utilities and promising to clean them up and demolish them in dramatically less time than usual - eight years instead of 60, in some cases.



    "We were up in arms that it was 60 years," Janet Tauro, head of the environmental group New Jersey Clean Water Action, said of the initial plans for decommissioning the Oyster Creek plant. "And then we hear it's going to be expedited to eight years. It's great to get it over with, but are there corners that are going to be cut?"






    "Our commitment to the nuclear industry includes taking ownership of shutdown nuclear plants so that we can safely and efficiently decommission the plants so that the land can be returned to productive use," Holtec spokeswoman Joy Russell said in an email.




    The company would be able to keep anything left over in each fund after the plant's cleanup. Holtec and Northstar are also banking on the prospect of recouping money from the federal government for storing spent fuel during and after the decommissioning, because there is no national disposal site for high-level nuclear waste.

    The companies jumping into the business believe they can make in profit. For the utilities, such deals free them from having to oversee long, complex projects involving decades of work and round-the-clock guarding of the dangerous waste.


    "There's a natural tendency to say, 'Oh, they're doing it fast, they're going to make mistakes, it's not going to be safe,'" said Rod McCullum, senior director of decommissioning and used fuel at the Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington-based advocacy group for nuclear power. "You're actually getting safer by getting faster."

    In legal briefs filed with the NRC, however, Massachusetts state officials have expressed skepticism about Holtec's plan to decommission Pilgrim on an expedited schedule "never before achieved." Holtec has never managed a decommissioning start to finish.



    Federal regulators fined Southern California Edison, the plant's owner, $116,000, and an investigation found that some Holtec procedures had been inadequate or not properly followed.

    Massachusetts officials have stopped short of asking the NRC to block Pilgrim's sale but have cited the California incident while questioning whether the money in Pilgrim's decommissioning trust fund is sufficient to cover unexpected delays or overruns.

    By Holtec's accounting, the Pilgrim decommissioning will cost an estimated $1.13 billion, leaving $3.6 million in the fund. State officials have described that cushion as "meager" and have warned of "significant health, safety, environmental, financial and economic risks."




    "The story isn't over. There's a sequel," said Mary Lampert, the organization's director. "And sometimes the sequel, like in the movies, is worse than the main show."

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