Dismantling a nuclear plant  isn’t exactly retirement but what once seemed like a constant barrage of safety issues at Entergy’s Vermont Yankee has quieted since the plant stopped operating. That said, North Star Services (the new plant owners approved to do the decommissioning) don’t deserve to be completely out of the news.

Editorially the Keene Sentinel in nearby New Hamphire pondered the recent transfer: The sale is good news in that NorthStar plans to fast-track the decommissioning, while Entergy had indicated it might put the site into safe storage (“SAFSTOR”) for decades before starting to dismantle it. The reason, no doubt, is financial: NorthStar is betting it can do the job for less than the $500 million or so that’s in the decommissioning fund.

That raises an obvious issue: If doing the job cheaply is the company’s incentive, will it be done right?

Susan Smallheer of The Brattleboro Reformer reports a little bit of a problem was discovered in 2018 with the Holtec® storage casks used to bottle up and store 42 years worth of radioactive waste sitting along the banks of the Connecticut River at Vermont Yankee. The design of the casks manufactured by Holtec International had been modified in violation of NRC rules. “[…] last year [2018] Entergy Nuclear halted the transfer of fuel using the canisters to inspect the Holtec canisters it had. No problems were discovered in the canisters at Vermont Yankee, but the already loaded canisters could not be easily inspected.

Michael Layton, division director of spent fuel management for the NRC, who led the NRC inspection team, said it was possible the NRC would require additional canister inspections. Although Layton said he did not believe the Holtec design problems represented an “imminent safety threat” he added “[…] it may warrant additional inspections.”  That, to be sure, is a bit of classic, worn-thin NRC boiler-plate-speak.

It turns out that in 2016 the Holtec company changed the design and failed to alert the NRC — a violation of safety procedures. In the bureaucratic parlance of the NRC, the “pre-decisional enforcement conference” centered on whether Holtec should have alerted the federal agency before making changes to the design of aluminum shims that help center the highly radioactive nuclear fuel in a “fuel basket” inside the canisters.

The New Jersey-based company in 2016 redesigned the canisters by threading stainless steel pins about 4 inches long and a half-inch thick into the shims to improve circulation of helium inside the canister to keep the spent fuel cool.

Two years later The San Diego Union-Tribune reports Holtec became aware of a problem with lose holding pins found on spent fuel canisters being moved at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in southern California. The transfer of loaded casks was halted, and inspections followed. The investigations, in turn, led the NRC to discover that Holtec had changed the designs of the casks. At San Onofre Holtec has stopped using canisters with the newer design. All subsequent canisters at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) will revert to the original design that does not use pins.

I should mention here that Holtec International is not only a manufacturer but also is in the business of buying and decommissioning old nukes-fast tracking to avoid placing the plants in 60 year SAFSTOR. Much larger and more diverse than VY’s new owner North Star Services, Holtec is not only decommissioning San Onofre but may soon do the same — they say at an accelerated pace — to Oyster Creek in New Jersey, the Pilgrim Nuclear plant in Massachusetts and the infamous Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

Soon Holtec will have the franchise on decommissioning several old nukes in southern New England, despite the casual attitude of Holtec’s founder, president and CEO over the NRC violation. On the 9th of January this year, during an official NRC public “pre-decisional enforcement conference” podcast, Holtec CEO Kris Singh took the stage and dramatically complained  “This inspection, if you were to quote Shakespeare, is much ado about nothing,” Singh said while delivering a 37-page PowerPoint presentation as part of a public NRC webcast. “At least that is our perspective.”

Well sure, Mr. Singh, you say, “much ado about nothing.” But, “what is past is prologue” is it not? And you know this  is about nuclear waste storage in casks for 12+ years. So your unauthorized, uninspected design changes should warrant inspections.

And then again, still quoting the Bard of Avon, “The Devil may quote Scripture for his own purpose.”