NRC: News Release - 2005-135 - NRC Releases Majority of Maine Yankee Atomic Power Plant Site for Unrestricted Public Use

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NRC NEWS U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Office of Public Affairs	Telephone: 301/415-8200
Washington, DC 20555-0001	E-mail: OPA.Resource@nrc.gov
www.nrc.gov

No. 05-135

October 3, 2005

NRC RELEASES MAJORITY OF MAINE YANKEE ATOMIC POWER PLANT SITE
FOR UNRESTRICTED PUBLIC USE
Printable Version

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has amended the operating license of the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co. to release the majority of land from the old Maine Yankee power plant site for unrestricted public use.

The land, approximately 167 acres, meets NRC regulatory requirements of a maximum radiation dose of 25 millirem per year, as well as the state of Maine’s clean-up standards of 10 millirem per year from all pathways and 4 millirem per year from groundwater sources of drinking water. (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.

Maine Yankee’s amended license will still apply to the site’s dry cask storage facility, where the spent nuclear fuel from the plant’s 23 years of operation is stored, plus a small parcel of land adjacent to this facility that was used as a loading area for excavated soil awaiting offsite shipment and disposal during the decommissioning of the plant and will be used for future cask-handling operations. The total land remaining under the license is approximately 12 acres. Maine Yankee remains responsible for the security and protection of this land and the dry cask storage facility, and is required to maintain a radiation monitoring program at the site.

Maine Yankee received an operating license on June 29, 1973. The plant ceased production on December 9, 1996, and the company informed the NRC in August 1997 that it intended to decommission the plant. Decommissioning work began in February 2003 and was completed in June 2005. Transfer of the spent fuel from the spent fuel pool to the dry cask storage facility was completed in February 2004.

The NRC’s Safety Evaluation of Maine Yankee’s license 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 ML052380284 in the search field. A notice of the license amendment will be published soon in the Federal Register.

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