The Tennessee Valley Authority is about $108 million short of what it needs to dismantle all of its nuclear reactors safely, federal officials said Friday.
But TVA said it soon will outline plans to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to address the shortfall in its nuclear decommissioning fund.
Investment losses over the past couple of years have left the fund without enough savings to pay for the eventual shutdown of TVA’s six operating reactors, according to a TVA report made to the NRC this spring.
The NRC announced Friday that 26 nuclear reactors at 18 plants now have inadequate reserves in their decommissioning funds. TVA had nearly one-fourth of the reactors with insufficient decommissioning funds.
Federal regulators require utilities to set aside money to pay for the dismantling of nuclear reactors and the disposal of radioactive materials after the plants are shut down.
Tim McGinty, director of policy and rulemaking in the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, said a recent biannual review of all of the utilities’ nuclear funds indicated that several must adjust their funding plans.
“We’ll discuss this with the plants over the next few weeks so they can explain to us how they’ll get the funds back on track to account for their decommissioning cost estimates,” Mr. McGinty said in a statement Friday. “This is not a current safety issue, but the plants do have to prove to us they’re setting aside money appropriately.”
TVA spokesman Gil Francis said one way TVA plans to assure shutdown costs is to run the plants longer. He said TVA expects to request another 20-year license extension on more of its nuclear units, including Sequoyah and Watts Bar, once their current 40-year licenses get closer to the end. Such extensions give TVA more time to earn a return on its nuclear fund investments and thereby lessen TVA’s current fund needs.
“We fully anticipate that by the time the decommissioning of any of our reactors starts there will be more than adequate funds available,” he said.
In its most recent quarterly filing, TVA said the nuclear decommissioning account had only 79 percent of what it should after losing $240 million in the value of its investments in the previous six months.
For its six operating reactors, TVA had $727 million in its nuclear decommissioning fund as of June 9. That total is up more than 10 percent since the start of the year.
Mr. Francis said the shortfall in early June was $108 million, or about 15 percent less than what should be in the fund.
NRC spokesman Joey Ledford said the operators of America’s 104 reactors collectively have set aside nearly $41 billion toward the eventual dismantling of the units. The NRC is not disclosing the shortfalls at individual plants, but Mr. Ledford said they range from $12 million to $204 million.
