VERNON, Vt. — The sound of jack-hammering has largely stopped. Gone is the large, five-story pale green reactor building that has dominated the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant for close to 50 years.
Decommissioning or demolition work at the reactor, which was shut down in 2016 by its then-owner Entergy Nuclear because it was losing money in the deregulated New England energy market, is fast approaching completion. Almost all of the $602 million decommissioning trust fund has been spent on demolishing the reactor and its affiliated structures, and shipping the debris thousands of miles away.
During a tour of the site earlier this month, Scott State, who until recently was the CEO of NorthStar Group Services, the owner of the 140-acre Vermont Yankee site, said that the ambitious, 10-year-long project was “99% done.”
State stepped down as NorthStar’s CEO in July to become its executive chair and chief nuclear officer.
Along on the tour was NorthStar’s new CEO, Jeffrey Adix, who was promoted from his position at NorthStar as chief financial officer.
State said the project has used up almost all of the $602 million in the decommissioning trust fund NorthStar inherited when it bought Vermont Yankee in 2019, though there is $8.5 million left to complete what needs to be done in the next several months. There is also another fund for site restoration. Final work will be completed in 2027, three years ahead of NorthStar’s promised deadline of 2030.
While construction and cleanup may soon be completed by NorthStar, in the parlance of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the site can’t be “released” for potential reuse until it has reviewed NorthStar’s work — a review that State expects will take a couple years.
All the concrete from the reactor building’s foundation and above-ground building, approximately 28,000 cubic yards, was shipped out of Vermont to Waste Control Specialists’ disposal site in Texas.
The reactor’s foundation and walls were in some places 12 feet thick, and NorthStar has agreed to remove any concrete 4 feet below the surface.
During negotiations with the state over the sale of Vermont Yankee to NorthStar, it was agreed that the concrete would not be pulverized and used as fill on-site, State said.
NorthStar sourced the clean fill for the reactor building basement from a local Vermont quarry, State said. When excavation and fill of the reactor building site is completed, NorthStar anticipates that it will have used approximately 28,000 cubic yards of locally sourced clean fill to restore the site.
During the tour, there were still dozens of construction workers present, with NorthStar Manager Corey Daniels estimating there were between 50 and 80 people on site.
One of the remaining projects that won’t be tackled until early next year is dismantling the plant’s water discharge structure, a non-nuclear concrete structure that would release the heated but not radioactive cooling water from Vermont Yankee’s cooling towers and, indirectly, its reactor, back to the Connecticut River.
“Following physical decommissioning, NorthStar’s team will work efficiently to satisfy all Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements for partial site release,” State added.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission typically hires a consultant to evaluate the work done by a decommissioning firm. State anticipates the commission will hire the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, and that will be paid for by NorthStar.
“We pay for everything,” he said.
NorthStar largely won over the state’s support of its purchase in 2018-2019 by promising to dismantle Vermont Yankee as soon as possible. Previously, the plan under Entergy Nuclear was to put the plant into cold shutdown, a process the Nuclear Regulatory Commission called SAFSTOR, and start demolition and cleanup in about 60 years. The time would have allowed the decommissioning trust fund, which was invested in government bonds, to grow, and also for radiation to decay. State noted that none of the nuclear reactors shut down in recent years have gone into SAFSTOR.
NorthStar in 2018 said the $602 million was adequate to do the job, and it also provided guarantees to the state in case it wasn’t. Those guarantees won’t be necessary, State said.
Workers have already tackled the intake structure, which drew millions of gallons of the river water to indirectly cool the reactor. In both cases, the riverbank will be recontoured to its original slope, NorthStar officials said. “It’s not a rad-thing,” State said, pointing out that both structures had no exposure to radioactivity.
State and other NorthStar officials wouldn’t discuss the future use or development of the site. PowerTransitions, the Texas-based company that has a lease with NorthStar to study the site for potential future use, is said to be exploring a battery energy storage facility, to take advantage of the adjoining power substation, owned by VELCO (Vermont Electric Power Co.). PowerTransitions is also considering a data center and even a small, modular nuclear reactor, although Vernon town officials have said that its focus is on a battery energy storage facility.
While the large industrial buildings are gone, the large collection of giant steel and concrete casks, about 20 feet tall, and which contain the 42-plus years of spent nuclear fuel — remains at the northern edge of the property and will stay there for the foreseeable future until the federal Department of Energy creates a national repository and takes them away.
Contact Susan Smallheer at ssmallheer@reformer.com.