Three Mile Island is on schedule to receive nuclear material by the end of the year. The material will be held in storage until the power plant, now renamed the Christopher M. Crane Clean Energy Center, earns approval to return to operations.
Tuesday night, staff from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the company set to reopen the nuclear power plant presented information about the process to reopen Unit 1 for energy production.
The meeting included a 75-minute public comment period, with supporters touting the economic benefits of the project and opponents raising concerns about emergency preparedness should something go wrong.
Dave Allard, the retired director of the Bureau of Radiation Protection for Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection, said he was not concerned with the company running Crane or the ability of local and state agencies to respond in the case of an emergency.
"I am concerned about the federal staffing levels," Allard said.
Ray McKinley, NRC's Director of Reactor Safety for the region, said the NRC "is a leaner organization for sure" than it was a year ago, but said they will be able to properly carry out all inspections of Unit 1 before deciding whether to grant an operating license.
Dauphin County Commissioner Mike Pries, a Republican, spoke in favor of the project.
"Over 3,400 direct and indirect jobs are being created, and when the Crane Clean Energy Center is up and operating, [there will be] over 600 full-time family sustaining jobs right here in Dauphin County," Pries said.
Jim Enders, president of Central PA Building and Construction, a group of 34 unions serving over 5,700 members across central Pa., also voiced support of the project for the jobs it has generated.
About 20 members of the public were present, with another 10 calling in.
Eric Epstein, an activist who runs Three Mile Island Alert and has pushed for greater transparency and more stringent regulation from Three Mile Island for over four decades, opposes restarting the plant. He was skeptical of the plant's evacuation plan, which FEMA is currently rewriting from what was in place in 2019.
"You're assuming the best of times," Epstein said. "I think you should assuming that it's a Friday night football game, snow, and that Route 30, Route 81, and Route 83 are clogged."
He also raised concerns about the NRC's environmental impact report. In June, the commission released its draft environmental assessment finding no significant impact in restarting the nuclear reactor. It held a 30-day public comment period and expects to release a final assessment in September.
Like Epstein, those speaking against restarting Unit 1 were all older folks, most of whom referenced being alive for the 1979 partial meltdown in Unit 2. It was the most significant nuclear crisis in American history, though it only released low levels of radiation that are unlikely to affect human health, according to NRC spokesperson Scott Burnell.
The remaining speakers in favor of the project, some of whom called in, included a student at Pennsylvania State University studying nuclear engineering, a Lancaster resident who worked in the industry for 37 years, and advocates for nuclear energy from the American Conservation Coalition and Generation Atomic, both based out of state.
The federal regulatory agency expects to host at least one more public comment meeting before making its decision on whether to grant the operating license, according to Burnell.
Next steps to reopen Crane, aka Three Mile Island Unit 1
Constellation Energy is the company that runs the power plant at Three Mile Island. At Tuesday's meeting, both Constellation and NRC staff estimated the regulatory approvals to be in place around May 2027 for Crane to receive its operating license.
Then, there will be additional checks and regulations before nuclear material is loaded into the core and the plant begins the process of ramping up and generating energy. That will happen sometime after June of next year, according to Constellation's spokesperson Dave Marcheskie, though there is not a set date for connecting the power plant to the grid. Only Unit 1 will be brought back online.
An alphabet soup of federal agencies are responsible for regulating nuclear agencies or providing input on policies, including the NRC, FEMA and other parts of the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation. The federal agencies coordinate with a similar network of state agencies.
Later this year, FEMA expects to hold public comment meetings on its emergency preparedness plan, which is currently at the beginning stages of collecting plans from local and state agencies. FEMA and its partner agencies are building on the emergency plan that was in place the last time the nuclear plant was in operation in 2019. The local population has grown by 2.5% since then, according to Daniel Rose, an emergency preparedness expert with FEMA, which will impact evacuation plans.
A full participation emergency exercise will take place before finalizing the emergency plan, according to FEMA and NRC staff. The exercise will include the NRC reviewing the operations within the power plant while FEMA will review the response of local agencies.
Job creation and the local economy
Constellation Energy currently has 90 reactor operators training to get licensed from the NRC, a process that takes between 18 to 24 months, according to Dave Marcheskie, a spokesperson for Constellation.
Running the powerplant is a 24/7/365 obligation. In all, the plant has 600 permanent jobs, Marcheskie said, divvied up between around-the-clock shift work and 9-to-5s, employing engineers, chemists, maintenance workers, reactor operators, and administrators.
Roughly 150 of the staff are "boomerang" employees, who were previously employed at the plant and are coming back. The remaining 450 were hired from around the country and will live locally, Marcheskie said. They made at least 8 hires from Penn State Harrisburg and have several staff who came out of Penn State's nuclear engineering program, he said.
Then, every two years, the power plant will create an economic jolt for local businesses. Every nuclear reactor has to regularly shut down to refuel the core. When that happens, between 1,500 to 2,000 additional union workers arrive for a month to carry out a suite of maintenance and other tasks.