Edison to close nuke plant Utility doesn't plan to renew license for Fermi II in 2025. Shutdown cost is pegged at $3 billion.
 The Detroit News Edison plans to close Fermi II, which produces 15 percent of the utility's power, in 2025. |
MONROE -- Detroit Edison plans to close Fermi II in 2025 when the 40-year license to operate one of the nation's largest nuclear power plants expires -- at a cost of $3 billion.
Edison spokesman Guy Cerullo said "at this time" the utility doesn't plan to seek renewal of its license for the power plant in Monroe. The company has not made a decision on whether to tear down Fermi II after it is closed, Cerullo said.
"The industry standard is most power plants operate for about 40 years," Cerullo said. "We don't have plans to seek a renewal of the Fermi II license at this time. It's prudent for us to plan to decommission in 2025."
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued Edison a license for Fermi II in 1985.
Because the planned shutdown is nearly 30 years away, the company has not decided how it would replace the electricity Fermi II produces -- about 15 percent of Edison's total.
A 1997 annual report by Edison's parent company, DTE Energy Co., stated, "It is estimated that the cost of decommissioning Fermi II when its license expires in 2025 will be $523 million in 1997 dollars and $3 billion in 2025 dollars."
That figure includes the cost of shutting down a plant and removing all radioactive materials.
The news comes at a time when Edison, fearing blackouts, has asked the state Public Service Commission to reopen the Detroit Connors Creek power plant this summer in the event of an unusually hot summer. However, the company says it has enough power for the normal summer crunch.
In addition to planning for decommissioning Fermi II, Edison plans to spend $10 million this year to begin the cleanup of the Fermi I site, which closed in 1972. There are no plans to tear down that plant, which still is useful for training purposes, according to Edison.
Cerullo said it is not possible to predict whether customers' electricity bills would increase because of the Fermi II shutdown, especially since deregulation will reshape the industry.
Jessie Deerinwater, a longtime critic of Fermi II, said she hopes the plant closes before 2025.
"We think it's time Detroit Edison stopped poisoning our environment," said Deerinwater, an anti-nuclear activist with Citizens Resistance at Fermi II and a 54-year-old substitute teacher.
Detroit Edison denies that Fermi II, the nation's 28th-largest nuclear power plant, harms the environment. Edison notes that Fermi II, unlike fossil fuel power plants, does not emit harmful greenhouse gases into the environment.
The Fermi II plant has been the target of environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists. Over the years, critics have included a former employee, a teacher and an order of nuns.
At one time, the anti-nuclear group called the Safe Energy Coalition sponsored several Fermi rallies and distributed free ballons which bore the message: "The winds which brought you this balloon could also bring you radioactive material from Fermi 2."
A 10-year-old fund electricity users pay into to decommission Fermi II has raised $202.6 million through Dec. 31. The average customer pays about 50 cents a month into the fund, Cerullo said.
Edison joins other utilities nationwide that face a key question as licenses for the 105 U.S. nuclear power plants expire in the early part of next century -- whether to seek 10- or 20-year renewals.
On Friday, Baltimore Gas and Electric became the first utility in the nation to file an application with the NRC seeking a 20-year renewal of its license to operate its two Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plants, south of Annapolis, Md. The license expires in 2014.
"We expect many more nuclear power plants will follow," said Leigh Ann Marshall, a spokeswoman with the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry's trade association.
Utilities will decide whether to request license renewals based on economics, regulators and industry officials said. But regulators whose job it is to renew the licenses base their decision on the capability of the plant.
"This is a rigorous process to prove that the plant can make electricity safely for the next 10 or 20 years," said William Beecher, director of the NRC's public affairs office.
Beecher said the agency expects many of the smaller plants not to seek license renewals.
Some 22 commercial power plants have closed in the past two decades. In August, Consumers Energy closed Big Rock Point station near Charlevoix, the nation's oldest nuclear power plant, because it wasn't profitable anymore.
In another sign that Detroit Edison may not seek a license renewal, the company did not participate in a Nuclear Energy Institute project to draft proposed guidelines for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to use in determining whether to approve license extensions.
"We're not in a position to seek a renewal at this time so that's why we didn't participate," Cerullo said.
Six utilities, including Baltimore Gas and Electric, participated in the project.
In a separate move, Detroit Edison will spend $10 million to begin removing asbestos and other toxic waste from the long-shuttered Fermi I, but isn't expected to finish until 2025, Cerullo said
A Nuclear Regulatory Commission public hearing will be April 22 in Monroe on the issues related to Fermi I.
Fermi I was built in Lagoona Beach, 30 miles south of Detroit in Monroe County. In October 1966, while conducting a power test, two fuel assemblies overheated and two others partially melted. The incident inspired the book The Day We Almost Lost Detroit, but did not release any radioactivity to the environment.
Snapshot of the power plant
Fermi I operated from 1963-1972, interrupted for four years by the fuel melting accident in 1966. Here are some key dates in the history of the Fermi II nuclear power plant.1968: Edison announces plans to build the Fermi II plant. Cost estimated at $229 million.
1970s: The Monroe chapter of the Safe Energy Coalition (SECO) sponsored several anti-Fermi rallies, including distrubuting balloons that warned of alleged dangers..
1985: The Sisters of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and other opponents who own shares of Detroit Edison stock protest the Fermi II nuclear plant.
1985: After many delays, Fermi II is completed and tests begin.
1990: Judith Ellen Cumbow, a mechanical engineer, was killed in an industrial accident at Fermi II. She was decapitated while working on an air supply fan.
1993: Christmas accident and fire are blamed on a turbine blade that snapped off and smashed through its protective casing. It took a year to clean up a million gallons of radioactive water released by the accident and repair the turbine.