Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions Inc. announced it is close to finalizing a first-of-its-kind decontamination and decommissioning contract with the owner of the Zion Nuclear Power Station in Illinois. EnergySolutions said Sept. 1 is the target date for signing the cleanup contract with Chicago-based Exelon Corp. And once it is inked, cleanup can begin.
Calling it a major milestone in the Utah company’s “license stewardship program,” the ZionSolutions project has been more than two years in the making and is estimated to be worth about $900 million over a decade. It calls for having EnergySolutions assume the license for the Zion site, put used reactor fuel into dry cask storage and dispose of low-level waste at the company’s disposal site in Tooele County.
Exelon owns the nation’s biggest stable of nuclear power plants. It had planned to spend about $200 million more and take about 40 years longer to clean up the site, which is about 40 miles north of Chicago on the shore of Lake Michigan. The Salt Lake Tribune
