GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) has been awarded a contract by Comprehensive Decommissioning International (CDI) to decommission reactor internals and the reactor pressure vessel at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in New Jersey, USA. CDI is a joint venture company of Holtec and SNC-Lavalin.

Oyster Creek (Image: Exelon)

GEH said today that its contracted handling and segmentation work at the boiling water reactor, which was shut down last September, will be carried out underwater and will be accomplished using the Primary Segmentation System that was designed in conjunction with REI Nuclear. GEH acquired the business and certain assets of REI Nuclear in December last year.

This month Holtec International's subsidiaries completed an ownership transfer and acquisition of the Oyster Creek plant from Exelon Generation, following approval by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to transfer the plant’s operating licence to Holtec subsidiaries Oyster Creek Environmental Protection (OCEP), as owner, and Holtec Decommissioning International (HDI), as the licensed operator for decommissioning.

Holtec has said that OCEP and HDI will be responsible for decommissioning the plant and managing its trust fund, which will cover the cost of decommissioning. As part of the decommissioning, the reactor's used nuclear fuel will be moved from the plant's used fuel pool, where it is in storage, to an onsite dry storage facility called an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation. Holtec says its dry storage systems will allow the transfer to be completed in 2.5 years. It ultimately intends to ship the site's used fuel to the HI-STORE consolidated interim storage facility it is licensing in New Mexico.

Holtec has now issued a decommissioning general contract to CDI to perform decontamination and decommissioning of the Oyster Creek plant.

Wilmington, North Carolina-headquartered GEH said it had recently completed the segmentation of reactor internals at unit 2 of the Oskarshamn nuclear power plant in Sweden and was now conducting the segmentation of unit 1.

The value and duration of the contract were not disclosed.