nuclear-news

Radiation is forever’: How long will it take to clean up Three Mile Island? [Lancaster Watchdog] lancaster Online, 
SEAN SAURO | Staff Writer ,  6 Dec 20,  Traveling Route 441 across Lancaster County’s northwestern border, motorists, for decades, have been able to look out toward the Susquehanna River to see a pair of cooling towers stretching skyward from the now-defunct Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.For almost as long, Eric Epstein said he’s kept a watchful eye, worrying about safety on the island, where a 1979 partial reactor meltdown remains the worst commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history.

And Epstein, a Harrisburg-based nuclear watchdog, said those concerns persist even as plant owners move forward to dismantle its reactors — a process likely to take nearly 60 years. Even after that, he said, some nuclear waste is expected to remain onsite, just north of Conoy Township in the river.
 TMI is going to remain radioactive for the rest of human history,” Epstein said, nervous that a future disaster could pose a threat to public health and the environment both locally and downstream. “I can’t think of a worse place to store radioactive waste than an island in the Susquehanna.”At the same time, officials at companies leading the decommissioning efforts have maintained that work will be completed safely, which they say is paramount in their plans.

Plans exist for both, separately owned reactors on the island. Unit 2, the site of the partial meltdown, has remained inactive since 1979. And Unit 1 was taken offline last year.

Epstein shared his concerns last week in the days after it was announced that officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a Unit 2 license transfer that would move ownership of the reactor and related assets from FirstEnergy to TMI-2 Solutions. The subsidiary of Utah-based EnergySolutions would lead the decommissioning.

That transfer is likely to wrap up by the end of 2020, FirstEnergy spokeswoman Jennifer Young said……………….

“Decommissioning work can begin after the license transfer is completed, but TMI-2 Solutions would have to provide a more specific timeline for its projected start date,” NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said.

While most of the highly radioactive fuel was removed from Unit 2 by the mid-1990s, the upcoming decommissioning work is expected to cost at least $1 billion, paid for with ratepayer funds set aside for that purpose.

According to an EnergySolutions timeline, the two-phased Unit 2 decommissioning is scheduled for completion in 2037, with “a potential area set aside for waste storage facilities” on the island.

All along, Epstein has remained skeptical of the plan for Unit 2, where interior conditions largely remain a mystery due to high radiation levels, which have precluded close inspection.

Those fears have only been exacerbated by the idea that waste could be stored on the island, where Epstein believes natural disasters like flooding could lead to released radiation, he said.

“The plant was not designed to be a high-level radioactive waste site. Everybody agrees the radioactive waste shouldn’t be on an island,” Epstein said. “This is like putting waste on an airplane with no place to land. At some point, that plane is going to crash.”

EnergySolutions officials did not return messages left with them about the decommissioning by Friday afternoon.

However, Unit 1 owners at Exelon provide some insight into their separate decommissioning plan, which also will require some on-site storage — likely to begin in 2022, when spent fuel is moved into casks.

“Dry cask storage will require robust metal canisters placed in a massive concrete housing,” according to Exelon spokesman David Marcheski.

It is storage that officials claim will be able to withstand a 100-year flood.

The Unit 1 decommissioning process is expected to wrap up in 2078, costing about $1.2 billion, covered by a related trust fund. https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/radiation-is-forever-how-long-will-it-take-to-clean-up-three-mile-island-lancaster/article_643a5aea-3676-11eb-a87d-1ffabfe61953.html