Exelon Addresses Shortfall

Exelon's Limerick Unit 1 power plant recently produced a $115 million guarantee it will be in compliance with U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations.

"Exelon is executing a $115 million parent company guarantee to address a shortfall we identified in the decommissioning fund for the Limerick Unit 1 nuclear power plant," said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan via email today. "We will now review this approach to ensure it satisfies our requirements. We require each plant to submit an update on its decommissioning fund every two years. The most recent updates were submitted last March."

Background:

The NRC staff reviewed the decommissioning funding status reports for all operating power reactor licenses, including Limerick's Unit 1, Sheehan said in January.

"In that report, the NRC concluded, in part, that Exelon has not provided the full amount of decommissioning funding assurance as of December 31, 2010, for LGS, Unit 1," he said at that time. "Also, the report concludes that Exelon has not provided a resolution for the LGS, Unit 1 shortfall in the licensee's 2010 (decommissioning fund shortfall) report."

Meanwhile, the Limerick plant is partially shut down. 

"Unit 1 is shut down due to a scheduled refueling outage," said Exelon's Limerick Generating Station Communications Manager Dana Melia via email last month.

Exelon brought in 2,000 workers to work on Unit 1.

Employees and the part-time help will "perform over 13,000 outage-related activities, including state-of-the-art equipment upgrades, safety inspections and plant improvements," Exelon said.

In other Exelon News:

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• Exelon Names Finance Executives for Combined Exelon-Constellation

• Wisconsin will leverage $2.5M donation to retain faculty

• Power restored at Byron nuclear plant

• Exelon and First Solar defer change of ownership of AVSR PV - Niuzer

• Exelon's PECO Declares Dividends on Preferred Stock

• Post-Fukushima Rules May Prompt Nuclear Sales, PPL CEO Says