Page 337 - Beyond Decommissioning

Case studies of nuclear redevelopment 313

undeveloped forested woodland and not contaminated by plant operations, the conclu-
sion was reached that it should be easy to transfer most of the property for preservation
or economic development purposes. But planning issues became more difficult soon
arising some questions, for example:
l Should the property be transferred as a single block or should it be separated into two or more
blocks? The logical subdivision appeared to be three blocks: the undeveloped property
which could be shortly available for disposition; the property to be reclaimed from the for-
mer power plant footprint which would be available for disposition until after the
decommissioning/remediation was substantially completed; and the smaller area where
the independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) was installed and expected to remain
for many years.
l How difficult would it be to transfer some of the property soon and wait many years for the
ISFSI parcel to be transferred upon removal of the spent fuel?
l How would ongoing regulatory requirements (e.g., environmental monitoring or for the
ISFSI security) be fulfilled if the property had been transferred in whole or in part before
the requirements terminated?
What are the financial terms of property transfer?
l
Should the YNPS impose any restrictions on future uses of the property? Or would any such
l
restrictions expected to be imposed by other parties (e.g., the NRC or Massachusetts)?
During the planning review, it transpired that the parties were quite unfamiliar with
legal and financial aspects of property transfer in this relatively new case. This
required a significant time for clarification.
The assessment applied three sets of evaluation criteria for each of the disposition
options (Table 7.2).
Once the evaluation produced a favorite disposition alternative, the YNPS per-
formed a stakeholder outreach effort to obtain stakeholder contribution on the pro-
posal. As of April 2018, there are no decisions regarding the disposition of the
former plant site property and no schedule is available for such a decision. All options
meeting shareholder, ratepayer, community, and other stakeholder interests remain
open. Figs. 7.7 and 7.8 show the YNPS during operation and after decommissioning.
A comprehensive study on the YNPS redevelopment options in given in Mermel
(2011). The study is structured in three parts:

Table 7.2 Evaluation factors relevant to the selection of a disposition option
Non-regulatory external Yankee
factors business factors Regulatory and legal factors
Stakeholder positions Property return Decommissioning and
remediation requirements
Protection of natural resources Corporate Pre-transfer obligations
dissolution
Protection of archeological Liability and risk Retained ongoing legal
resources transfer obligations
Realization of economic Insurance
development potential