Year: 2019

We are pleased to announce that Holtec has successfully loaded four HI-STORM FW systems at Dominion Energy’s V.C. Summer Nuclear Station. V.C. Summer’s second spent fuel campaign was ahead of schedule with zero industrial safety events and no human performance errors. Dose to plant personnel was well below the campaign target with the total crew dose for the four-cask campaign coming in at 779 mRem, thanks to the excellent performance of the loading crew and the superb shielding imbedded in the dry storage system and ancillaries. 

We are pleased to announce that Battelle, Pacific Northwest Division, the management and operating contractor of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, completed their evaluation under a competitive solicitation and awarded a contract to Holtec Government Services, LLC (HGS) for the design, certification and fabrication of two new transportation casks, dedicated trailers and ancillary equipment for the shipment of Tritium Producing Burnable Absorption Rods (TPBARs). The new transportation casks will be dedicated to shipment of TPBARs from the TVA Watts Bar Nuclear Plant to the Savannah River Site. 

We are pleased to announce that Holtec fabricated and delivered six PWR high-density spent fuel racks and associated ancillary equipment to Duke Energy’s Harris Nuclear Plant well ahead of the promised contractual date.  Blessed with four Fuel Pools, the single unit Shearon Harris is unique among nuclear plants in the matter of wet storage capacity. Holtec has designed and provided PWR and BWR high-density racks to Harris starting with a contract entered in 1991. Several repeat contracts have followed since 1991 with the latest established in 2018 and delivered in early 2019. The spent fuel racks will be installed in Pool D during Phase 1.

Holtec International’s subsidiaries completed the ownership transfer and acquisition of the Oyster Creek Generating Station from Exelon Generation today. This follows the recent approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to transfer the plant’s operating license to Holtec subsidiaries Oyster Creek Environmental Protection, LLC (“OCEP”), as owner, and Holtec Decommissioning International, LLC, as operator (“HDI”), for decommissioning.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved the transfer of the Oyster Creek Generating Station operating license today from Exelon Generation to Holtec International.  The NRC review confirmed that Holtec met the regulatory, legal, technical and financial requirements to merit qualification as the successor licensee of the plant. 

Mitsubishi Electric commits to stage two of SMR-160 Alliance with Holtec with a large resource commitment 

June 10, 2019 Camden, NJ: Ukraine’s national nuclear operator NAEK Energoatom, the nation’s State Scientific and Technology Center (SSTC), and Holtec International ratified the creation of a consortium partnership that binds the three companies into a cooperative undertaking to chaperone the deployment of the SMR-160 small modular reactors in the country. The Consortium is a US company registered in Delaware with each of the three parties owning allotted shares. The Consortium’s technology operation center will be based in Kiev, Ukraine. This Consortium will give fresh impetus to realize the objectives of the MOU signed by Energoatom and Holtec last year that envisages building of six SMR-160s at the country’s Rivne nuclear station site. President Yuriy Nedashkovskyof Energoatom and Dr. Kris Singh of Holtec signed the Consortium document in person with SSTC President Igor Shevchenko signing remotely. The signing ceremony was attended by senior Holtec officials and delegations from Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO), US Department of Energy and Energoatom. Speaking at the signing ceremony, Mr. Nedashkovsky spoke of the dominant role played by nuclear in Ukraine’s energy mix providing over 50% of the nation’selectric generation and expressed the confidence that SMR-160s will provide a clean energy successor to the nation’saging fleet of coal-fired plants. He assured the attendees that there is a national consensus in Ukraine to build SMRs which has been reached after extensive research and consultations.

Ukraine’s Central Spent Fuel Storage Facility (CSFSF), world’s first, is being constructed only a few miles from the site of the Chernobyl accident. The CSFSF, designed for 100-year service life, will receive and store used fuel in a robust confinement system shipped from nine of Ukraine’s reactors. This facility will be a litmus test for the Country’s national nuclear generator, Energoatom, to manage its used fuel safely which is necessary to realize the nation’s ambitions to substantially replace its coal-fired plants with “walk away” safe nuclear reactors.

“Because no petitioner has both demonstrated standing and proffered an admissible contention, this proceeding is terminated” reads the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) Memorandum and Order issued May 7 in the licensing process for the Holtec’s HI-STORE CIS facility (NRC’s press release on this matter is attached).  With the hearings hurdle removed, Holtec’s effort to establish the HI-STORE CISF (consolidated interim storage facility) in New Mexico remains on track for licensing in 2020. The license application for the HI-STORE CISF was submitted to the USNRC on March 31, 2017 and was accepted by the Commission in February 2018 (USNRC Docket No. 72-1051).

We are pleased to announce the start of final system-wide trials for Chernobyl’s dry store facility today. These functional dry runs follow a long series of exhaustive tests of the individual systems, structures and components within the spent nuclear fuel processing and storage complex called ISF-2. Over the next two months, we expect to complete stem-to-stern functional demonstrations of the spent fuel handling and storage processes before handing over the facility to Ukraine’s State-owned enterprise Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP). ChNPP will then initiate commissioning of the facility beginning with “hot” confirmatory tests. To be sure, dismembering more than 21,000 RBMK spent fuel assemblies in a special purpose “Hot cell,” packaging those fuel assemblies in double walled canisters (DWCs), and transferring them from (open) water-cooled pools into hermetically sealed rugged helium-filled storage systems inside ventilated modules will mark a huge safety milestone for Ukraine. This project is funded by a group of Western countries and Japan and is administered by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

We are pleased to announce that Entergy Corp. (NYSE: ETR) has agreed to sell the subsidiaries that own Indian Point Units 1, 2, and 3, located in Buchanan, N.Y., to a Holtec International subsidiary for decommissioning. The sale, which will be effective after Unit 3 has been shut down and permanently defueled, includes the transfer of the licenses, spent fuel, decommissioning liabilities, and Nuclear Decommissioning Trusts (NDT) for the three units.