Starting in 1972, the plant on the banks of the Connecticut River in Vernon, Vermont produced the lion’s share of electricity for the Green Mountain State. While its operating license was extended for another 20 years by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2011, the state legislature moved to block continued operations. Despite winning a court case to continue producing power at the site, owner Entergy announced it planned to close Vermont Yankee, citing economic factors, in 2013. By the end of 2014, it was shuttered. In 2019, it was purchased by NorthStar for decommissioning and environmental cleanup.
“Our original schedule here, as you know, was 2030. We committed to try to do it by 2026. And I think will largely be done with the project in ‘25," said NorthStar CEO Scott State, who brought reporters on a tour of the site Tuesday. “There's a regulatory release process, surveying, sampling that we have to conduct, and we will be doing that actively, really, as we go along here. And when that process is done, then the project is done. But we don't know a specific date when regulators will end up approving our final status survey and release reports.”
One of the major unanswered questions for the site is about the spent fuel still inside the reactor building, the largest remaining structure on a property otherwise covered in mounds of shredded rebar and concrete.
“We, earlier this year, licensed a facility in Texas where this fuel could have been moved to," said State. "That license was challenged by the state. Ultimately, it went to court and the license was vacated a couple of months ago. So, while we licensed a facility, we don't have a licensed facility anymore, and there's another facility in New Mexico very close to where ours is located that's got similar challenges. The state of New Mexico has actually barred that facility. So, as it stands today, spent fuel is going to sit where it's been sitting for some time.”
The path forward for the fuel’s ultimate fate is in the hands of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“We understand that they're considering a couple of options," State explained. "There's a process called an en banc review, which is a review of- It's a three person or three judge ruling at this point. They can go to the entire circuit court and ask all the judges, that's a step that can be taken. And then the final step is you can try to take it to the Supreme Court. As you know, when you go to the Supreme Court, you offer the case to them and ask them to take it up. And they don't have to do that. But there's some precedent that would suggest that they will look at it because there's other circuit courts, other appellate courts in the country that have taken a different opinion on the legality of the NRC to issue that type of a license.”
Getting the license for depositing the fuel is just one of the hurdles to getting it out of Vermont.
“When the fuel is ready to go somewhere, we are to load it on a pre-approved transport system that the Department of Energy is to provide," continued State. "The Department of Energy hasn't licensed, gone through a complete process yet for that type of transport. That type of transport does occur other places in the world. France, for example, transports spent nuclear fuel, really, on a daily basis. So, it's not technologically complex, but it's a regulatory situation to get an approval in place to do that.”
The ownership of the nuclear fuel is ultimately in the hands of the federal government.
“DOE’s responsibility has always, under the standard contract signed decades ago, has always been to take ownership of that fuel and to permanently dispose of it," said State. "And so there's an ownership transfer that occurs when you deliver it to DOE. And the delivery is basically at this facility. It's delivered to a rail system, and it becomes their property to take to either an interim storage facility, like we licensed that's now not licensed, or to a permanent facility such as Yucca Mountain [Nuclear Waste Repository].”
For now, the fuel will remain – under guard – in the reactor building.
“Ultimately, there's going to have to be some meeting of the minds amongst the various states that host nuclear facilities," said the NorthStar CEO. "I know Vermont has expressed concern- Or, I wouldn't say concern, but interest in having that fuel moved to a permanent location or an interim location elsewhere then from here. But there's a lot of parties at the table that have to come to some kind of a conclusion.”
State says there’s no rush.
“I don't know the precise amount of time that fuel could sit in those containers, but it's metal, it's oxide inside of metal, and it's not going to degrade anytime soon," he told reporters. "Hundreds to thousands of years would be the expected time it could sit there. It's in a very safe, stable condition today, and the protocols for securing that fuel are very high. As you know, you're not allowed to take film around there because the various security precautions are part of a security plan that's essentially a secret plan that, to make sure there's not any problems in the future with somebody coming and disturbing that fuel.”
NorthStar’s decommissioning involves the use of some heavyweight equipment — including a towering, 28,000-pound concrete cracker used to reach into the earth itself and tear up the base of Vermont Yankee.
“Part of our criteria that we established with the state is that we would remove the foundations around these buildings to four feet below the grade of the soil," explained State. "And so, that's one of the things that machine is doing, is breaking those massively thick concrete walls that were part of the foundation down to that four foot level. It was a part of our commitment as to how we would leave the site when we're done.”
Near the reactor building, a crane swings loads of waste stripped from the plant into railcars destined for Texas alongside the Connecticut River.
“We own our own disposal facility for low-level radioactive waste," said State. "So, all of this material is going into that facility- Metal, some maybe some concrete, primarily it's going to be metals at this point in time. I'm sure that material came out of the reactor building and it's going to be valves and pumps and pieces of piping and that sort of thing that we're actively removing right now.”
The half-life of the lower-level irradiated waste is nowhere near that of the millennia the spent fuel boasts.
“Most of this is going to be probably Cobalt-60 or some isotope from irradiation or activation of metals," said the CEO. "And you know, it could be anywhere from, the materials in there are probably anywhere from eight to 60 years. These are not long-lived isotopes.”
State says NorthStar prides itself in how it’s managed the project, which is budgeted at around $600 million.
“The project itself is funded out of a trust that we're given when we take over the project," he said. "And so, we're able to use that money to do the work, and our financial management system requires us to actually do work before we take money. And in some of the other projects, they haven't been done that way. They've taken money as they spent money. So, you know, spending money doesn't necessarily mean getting work done. And for us, it's a pre-funded project. So, we like those. We don't have a risk of getting paid. We know we'll get paid what we agreed to take for doing the work at all times.”
Until around 20 years ago, State says, decommissioning was usually handled by utilities companies.
“There was another private company that started a project in Illinois in, I think, 2009 and hasn't finished yet," he told reporters. "They're at like 14 years. And there's been a few other small facilities, but no one's really done it the way we've done this job, where we took ownership of everything, took the spent nuclear fuel, and brought in our own workforce and executed all of this project ourselves. We've done a lot of smaller reactors, research reactors- Call it a half a dozen of those. Then we took on this job. And we've done other sites for the Department of Energy that were radiologically contaminated sites. And then beyond that, we took a second nuclear power plant in Florida, and then we're taking our third project in California right now.”
The Florida plant is larger than Vermont Yankee, but they have substantial differences in their design.
“This is a boiling water reactor, that's a pressurized water reactor," explained State. "The schedule on that's a little bit faster, because it's just a little bit easier to do that project. California has a totally different thing. There's four reactors on that site. It was General Electric's development site for nuclear power back in the 50s, 60s- So, the first reactor that actually produced power that went on the electrical grid is at that site, and it's kind of a historical location. It was, became obsolete for General Electric, so we agreed some months ago to acquire the facility, and now we're awaiting the NRC’s approval to close on that.”
State says Vermont Yankee’s story is a microcosm of the larger American nuclear story.
“The US nuclear fleet is well along its lifetime," he said. "The 40-year licenses on almost every plant have now been extended to 60 years. There's going to be life extension probably to 80 years on a number of plants, but they can't last forever. The thing about a nuclear plant is that the vessel that the fuel sits in and boils the water, it gets bombarded by neutrons every day, and that embrittles that steel. And at some point, that steel reactor vessel has to be removed. And no one's ever taken a reactor vessel out and put a new one in and said, okay, we'll restart this plant. I think that's typically viewed as where, that's where you, the plant's obsolete and you you build a new one.”
There are exceptions.
“There's a site in Michigan that shut down that now is being considered to be repowered, which would be a first of its kind where you've actually delicensed a site and you're going to relicense it," said State. "And then there were some plants that were expected that might enter the queue for shutdown that got some financial support from various states, Pennsylvania and Ohio come to mind, where those plants didn't shut down, but were expected to potentially shut down.”
The heyday of large plants in the United States is likely over.
“The move right now seems to be towards small modular reactors," State said. "And there are half a dozen companies that are out there that are promoting that, have developed technologies. And if there is a nuclear renaissance, so to speak, I expect that it's going to be in these much smaller plants that are factory built almost, and you come out and you install the plant in pieces- Much like building a house 50 years ago, you brought lumber in and you built it, and if you look at building a house today, all the pieces and parts that are brought in in big chunks, the roofs. And it's the same kind of factory mentality that I think that's going to come into play.”
While the Vermont Yankee site will be transformed by the end of the decommissioning, it won’t be unrecognizable.
“The trees and things are going to stay here," said State. "Those substations stay. They’re actually under a lease to [Vermont Electric Power Company], which is a local operator in this part of the world. But yeah, the hill- We're not going to flatten the hillsides out or anything, but the plant footprint itself will be just basically a level lot.”
As for the land itself, State says NorthStar is happy to hand it over to the town that’s hosted the plant for the last half century.
“We've always said if Vernon wants the site, they would, we'd be happy to give title to them," said Sate. "We're also looking at things like, how could we help develop the site? We may find a use for the site, and if Vernon would love like us to continue owning it and just be a taxpayer, we'll look at that as well. But yeah, that was our commitment from day one. And that's what we're going to do."
