At midnight Dec. 12, Indian Point Energy Center”™s Unit 3 nuclear reactor license expired, joining its counterpart, Unit 2, into a period of indefinite license extension until the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission can complete its review of the power plant”™s request for renewal.
On Sept. 28, 2013, Indian Point”™s Unit 2 license expired and marked the first time in the federal regulatory agency”™s 40-year history that a U.S. nuclear power plant license had expired. The plant in Buchanan is the first in the country to have all of its active reactors expired and extended.
The reactors at Indian Point, which is owned and operated by New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., are legally allowed to continue operating and generating what is estimated to be about 25 percent of electricity for New York City and Westchester County because of a rule known as timely renewal.
Reactor licenses are issued initially for a period of 40 years and a license renewal allows the plant to operate for an additional 20 years. Timely renewal means that the applicant submitted its renewal application at least five years in advance of its reactors”™ expiration date.
“We did that because we wanted to have some more orderliness to the process,” said Neil Sheehan, a NRC spokesman in the regional office that includes Indian Point. “We didn”™t want plants submitting (applications) in Year 39.”
This practice of allowing businesses or people to continue operating on expired permits or during ongoing negotiations over contracts is not new, according to Michael B. Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in New York City.
“The New York (Department of Environmental Conservation) has a very similar rule that if you have a permit and you have applied before it expires, the permit remains in effect until the DEC acts,” he said. “And that happens fairly frequently.”
The renewal process with the NRC largely focuses on aging management. The applicant has to be able to “tell us how they”™re going to manage the effects of aging,” Sheehan said.
Plants are inspected to ensure that they can last another 20 years and to test the aging effects on “passive systems,” which Sheehan said are long-standing systems that don”™t get used as regularly. For instance, there are pumps that don”™t get used on a routine basis and would need to be tested so the potential effects of aging would not go unnoticed.
Indian Point volunteered to be inspected and implement the commitments for the aging management program as if it had been granted renewal.
“We wanted to further demonstrate to our stakeholders that we were doing everything that any plant that had a renewed license in hand would have had to do to enter that second period of operation,” said Jerry Nappi, a spokesman with Entergy.
Of the 99 still-active reactors in the U.S., 79 have been renewed and the process has typically taken between 18 and 24 months. Plants that face hearings during the renewal process, like Indian Point, should usually expect about 30 months, according to the NRC.
Entergy submitted its license renewal application for Indian Point in 2007. Almost nine years later, the plant is still not close to receiving a decision about whether or not it will be renewed.
This is in large part due to the state”™s opposition to the plant.
Gerrard said that Indian Point is the only plant seeking renewal that is facing strong opposition from its home state”™s governor.
In numerous letters and statements, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and members of his administration have voiced safety concerns, among others, over the plant”™s proximity to New York City.
Most recently, Jim Malatras, the director of state operations, penned a letter to the NRC that said “Entergy”™s aging management plan is woefully inadequate” and that because more than 20 million people live within 50 miles of the plant it is “impossible to have an effective safety and evacuation plan.”
The state”™s strong opposition, Gerrard said, “has slowed down the (renewal) process measurably and led to considerable controversy and litigation.”
The license renewal process is designed to have public input with hearings and public comment periods.
“In the case of Indian Point, the license renewal hearing has been the most time consuming element of this review because there were a greater number of contentions submitted by far than any other plant in the U.S.,” Sheehan said.
Nappi said he thinks that most people recognized that Indian Point would take longer than the average nuclear power plant looking to renew its reactor licenses.
“There are interveners who are interested in the process and get to raise issues, which is a good thing in the sense that we”™re able to demonstrate a very comprehensive process,” he said. “But I don”™t think anyone predicted it would last more than eight years.”
At the onset of the application process, stakeholders including New York State and the environmental organization Riverkeeper Inc. collectively filed about 100 contentions it had with Indian Point”™s renewal application.
Those contentions have since been narrowed down to three, which were the focus of an evidentiary hearing in November with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, a three-personal panel that conducts hearings for the NRC.
The other main issues holding up the process have to do with a Coastal Zone Management Act and a water quality certificate, both required by the state.
Indian Point”™s use of billions of gallons of water a day from the Hudson River requires that the plant prove that it does not have harmful effects on the river before the permits can be granted.
In 2014, a state appellate court ruled in favor of Entergy that it should be grandfathered into the state”™s Coastal Management Program. The state Department of State, which oversees the Coastal Management Program, has appealed this decision and the case is pending in New York”™s highest court, the Court of Appeals. That case will most likely be argued sometime in 2016.
Also in dispute is the water quality certificate Entergy must secure from the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The main issue with getting this certificate is the fish from the Hudson River that get sucked into Indian Point”™s water-cooling system. There are mitigation proposals being debated about how to deal with this issue, including shutting down the plant during spawning season, using a wedge-wire screen to keep fish out and constructing two cooling towers.
Hearings on this issue were held for three weeks starting Sept. 14 and briefs and reply briefs were scheduled to be filed in December.
Nappi said there is “still at least a handful of years before we would expect a final decision” on the plant”™s renewal application.
