NRC comments abut their process came before a Thursday public meeting on Three Mile Island restart at Penn State Harrisburg.
Cooling towers at the Crane Clean Energy Center at Constellation's nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island. June 25, 2025. Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.comThe potential restart of the idled Unit 1 nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island is methodically moving toward owner Constellation Energy ’s mid-2027 launch date.
With all of Constellation’s major licensing amendment applications now in, it’s in the next 12 months, federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission leaders said Thursday, that inspectors will undertake most of the plan and physical plant inspections to make sure the mothballed reactor is ready to operate safely. The NRC officials spoke in advance of a public meeting at Penn State Harrisburg where they and Constellation representatives were set to brief area residents about where things stand with the restart, and then field the public’s questions and concerns. On-site inspections have been limited to this point, in part because Constellation’s restoration efforts hadn’t gotten far enough along to make them worthwile. “We’re not inspecting promises. We’re inspecting the plant,” said Erin Carfang, regional branch chief in the NRC’s Division of Operating Reactor Safety.First, no one has ever returned a closed commercial nuclear power station to full operation yet, though at least three plant operators are in various stages of trying. And second, this particular plant’s twin station, Three Mile Island Unit Two, was the site in 1979 of America’s worst nuclear power accident. Unit Two, it is important to note, will never be reopened, was never owned by Constellation, and is now in its own long-term decommissioning process. As for Unit 1’s proposed restart, NRC leaders Thursday promise an extensive review process that includes approval of Constellation’s plans and demonstrations of systems to make sure they operate according to those plans. “We have a risk-informed approach where we’re taking the most important systems and we’re going to do paperwork reviews and then we’re going to go do field inspections to validate that what we saw on the paperwork matches what is in the field,” said Carfang, Separate subject matter teams, meanwhile, will study other aspects of the operation, including physical security, cyber-security, emergency preparedness, and management of maintenance and repair programs. In all, the NRC officials said, the agency will spend nearly 8,000 man-hours on the review and inspections. At times, the restart - which has great political support at the federal, state and local level - has felt inevitable. But NRC officials noted Thursday the only item actually approved to date is a change of the reactor’s name from the notorious Three Mile Island, to the fresh start Christopher M. Crane Clean Energy Center.Action on most of Crane’s license amendments and plan approvals necessary for the actual restart could start to come in March 2027. The history of the NRC has led many observers to conclude that these reviews generally get to ‘yes,’ for plant operators.“For us, it’s very important to make sure we can say the public health and safety is maintained because we know the system works because we watched them test it,” Carfang said. “The number one thing that we are concerned with is safety... Wherever we’re at, safety is our focus,” added Jamie Pelton, the NRC’s acting deputy director for reactor safety programs. It is also true that, 47 years after the partial meltdown at TMI Unit 1, there is a great deal of support for Unit 2’s restart. But, in another important pivot point, people with serious objections to some aspect of the plant’s operation will soon be able to request a formal hearing with the NRC. Officials said Thursday that notices for public comment periods , and requests for hearings will be published Feb. 24. Requests for hearings will go to NRC administrative law judges, who first consider whether the petitioners have standing and appropriate grounds to proceed.The hearing process would go on concurrently with the licensing inspections and reviews.
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