NRC RELEASES MOST OF YANKEE NUCLEAR POWER STATION SITE
FOR UNRESTRICTED PUBLIC USE
Printable Version

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has released a majority of the Yankee Nuclear Power Station site near Rowe, Mass., for unrestricted public use. This action completes the decommissioning of the former nuclear power station portion of the site.

The land, approximately 30 acres, is below NRC safety requirements that allow a maximum radiation dose of 25 millirem per year from residual contamination. (The average person in the United States receives about 300 millirem from background radiation each year.) Release of this land for unrestricted use poses no threat to public health and safety.

Yankee’s license still applies to the site’s dry cask storage facility, where the spent nuclear fuel from the plant’s 30 years of operation is safely stored, plus a small parcel of land surrounding this facility. The total land remaining under license is approximately five acres. The licensee, Yankee Atomic Electric Co., remains responsible for the security and protection of this land and the dry cask storage facility, and is required to maintain $100 million in nuclear liability insurance coverage for the facility.

Yankee Nuclear Power Station began commercial operations in 1961, and ceased production Oct. 1, 1991. Yankee Atomic Electric Co. initiated decommissioning shortly thereafter. Dismantlement and decommissioning were completed in July 2007. NRC surveys verified that cleanup met the 25 millirem per year requirement.

The NRC’s Safety Evaluation Report of Yankee’s amendment request will be available in the agency’s online documents database, ADAMS, at this address: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/web-based.html, using accession number ML071830515 in the search field.

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Friday, August 17, 2007