As part of the largest commercial nuclear plant decommissioning to date in the U.S., EnergySolutions has successfully moved a reactor pressure vessel head from the Zion site in Illinois to a landfill in Utah.
The 113-ton part arrived by truck Tuesday at the facility in Tooele County in the sprawling desert west of Salt Lake City, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. It will be buried in a landfill alongside other irradiated reactor parts from Pennsylvania and California.
After Zion’s two reactors stopped operating in 1998, Exelon transferred its facility license to ZionSolutions, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports will use a “rip and ship” process to reduce labor by sending materials in bulk to the facility in Utah.
According to Exelon, the Zion plant beside Lake Michigan 50 miles north of Chicago will take 10 years to decommission at a cost of $1 billion. The work will require 200 employees per year, with a peak workforce of 400.