POWER March 2022 - 24

NUCLEAR
Accelerated Decommissioning
of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station:
A Progress Report
Holtec is decommissioning the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. The company has a
fairly aggressive schedule that could see site restoration work completed in 2027.
This article provides a current-day status report.
Paul Miller
T
he Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station
(NPS) sits on the western shore of
Cape Cod Bay in Plymouth, Massachusetts,
clearly visible to the many
pleasure and commercial boats that routinely
transit the bay (Figure 1). The plant
is just four miles as the crow flies from
the iconic Plymouth Rock where the Pilgrims
may have first touched the mainland
back in 1620.
Part of the early wave of nuclear generating
plants constructed in the U.S. by
Bechtel, Boston Edison commissioned
Pilgrim in 1972. While initially designed to
house three reactors, the as-built power
station employed a single 690-MW GE
BWR 3 boiling water reactor. Following
the deregulation of the Massachusetts
power industry in 1999, Boston Edison
sold the plant to Entergy for $80 million.
Following a lengthy and costly recertification
process, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) recertified the plant in
2006 to operate for an additional 20 years.
However, Entergy ultimately decided
to cease generating operations at Pilgrim
on May 31, 2019. According to Entergy,
this decision was based on " economic
considerations " and consistent with a
larger company policy to exit the merchant
nuclear business. It's likely that
the plant's less-than-stellar operational
history and the cost to resolve some recurring
safety issues both contributed to
Entergy's decision.
Following shutdown, Entergy completed
transferring all reactor fuel to the spent
fuel pool on June 9, 2019. In August 2019,
following NRC and state approval, Entergy
transferred ownership of the site to Holtec
Decommissioning International (HDI).
The Nuclear Decommissioning
Challenge
As the world
gradually
transitions
In the U.S., the NRC has approved three
different decommissioning approaches:
DECON (decontamination), SAFSTOR
(safe storage), and-for exceptional cases-ENTOMB
(permanent entombment
on site). DECON and SAFSTOR have the
same goal: reduce residual radioactivity
to below 25 milligrams per year, roughly
equivalent to two chest x-rays, to enable
the property's operating license to be terminated
and the bulk of the property returned
to unrestricted use.
The major difference between these
to
1. The now-shuttered Pilgrim Nuclear Power
Station sits on the extreme western shore of
Cape Cod Bay in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Courtesy: Entergy Nuclear
24
renewables in response to the climate
challenge, nuclear energy continues to
offer the promise of efficient, reliable,
greenhouse gas (GHG)-free baseload
power generation. The Pilgrim NPS, for
example, generated enough GHG-free
electricity to power 700,000 homes.
However, several high-profile accidents
and catastrophic events over the
years tarnished the industry's reputation.
The failure of governments around
the world to establish permanent geologic
repositories for the accumulating
volumes of spent nuclear fuel remains
another major problem. Due to public
pressure, many countries ceased building
new nuclear power generation capacity
and/or shut down a significant
fraction of existing capacity.
Decommissioning a nuclear power station
is a highly specialized, technically challenging,
costly, and rigorously regulated
process. Only a handful of companies
around the world have the technical expertise,
operational capabilities, and financial
resources to perform it safely and effectively.
Licensees frequently outsource selected
decommissioning activities to specialized
service providers. Less frequently, they
transfer ownership to companies such as
HDI, which then assume full responsibility
for all decommissioning activities.
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two main approaches is timing. DECON
has a relatively short time horizon since it
enables active decommissioning, dismantlement,
and decontamination to begin as
soon as it is safe to do so. With SAFSTOR,
once the fuel has been removed from the
reactor, decommissioning and dismantlement
activities can be deferred for up to
50 years, with another 10 years allowed
for final decontamination.
In all cases, the licensee must establish
and maintain a Nuclear Decommissioning
Trust Fund administered by
third-party trustees to ensure the availability
of adequate funds. At Pilgrim,
Boston Edison initially created this fund
from ratepayer revenues.
Until a consolidated repository becomes
available, the licensee must continue
to store the spent fuel in a secure
on-site Independent Spent Fuel Storage
Installation (ISFSI). Rather than waiting
for the Department of Energy to establish
a consolidated geological repository,
Holtec is exploring the potential of transferring
accumulated spent fuel to a private
consolidated interim storage facility
in Texas or New Mexico.
Before commencing decommissioning
activities, the licensee must first
prepare and submit a detailed decommissioning
plan for the NRC and other
governmental agencies to review and
approve, typically a multi-year process.
POWER | March 2022
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POWER March 2022

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