A decade after Nebraska's only nuclear power plant went dark, the wrecking is officially over. Omaha Public Power District says every structure it needed to tear down at Fort Calhoun Station has come down, closing out the physical demolition phase of a decommissioning project that began not long after the plant shut off its reactor for good in 2016.
OPPD reached what it calls substantial completion at the site on October 7, and physical demolition work is now complete, according to OPPD The Wire. “All of the physical demolition work is now officially done,” the utility said, though it noted that paperwork and federal reviews still have to play out before the chapter is fully closed. As Grow Omaha reported, the plant has now entered the final stage of decommissioning, a milestone a decade in the making.
Fort Calhoun Station came online in 1973 and ran for more than four decades before OPPD shut it down in 2016, a decision the utility attributed to economic necessity and shifting conditions across the energy industry, per the same account from OPPD The Wire. At the time it closed, the plant's single pressurized-water reactor generated 484 megawatts of electricity — the smallest rated capacity of any operating commercial power plant in North America, according to the utility.
Clearing the Containment Housing and Hauling Rubble to Utah
The milestone capped a methodical, years-long teardown. Demolition of the plant's containment housing, the last major structure, began Aug. 25, the report notes. Once walls and equipment came down, workers loaded the resulting rubble onto trains bound for a disposal site in Utah, per the same account.
Not everything at the site has been erased. What remains includes a substation, a former training center now used as office space, a concrete storage building, a metal equipment shed, a six-bay garage, and a secure facility holding used fuel assemblies, the article states. The Fort Calhoun site itself spans 660 acres between the towns of Fort Calhoun and Blair, Nebraska, sitting along the Missouri River, according to EnergySolutions, the contractor OPPD hired to handle the decommissioning work.
What Comes Next for the Land — and the Bill
What ultimately happens to all that acreage hasn't been decided. OPPD has said it's possible the land could be farmed or put to some other use, though no final determination has been made public. The utility previously indicated the site is expected to eventually return to cropland, much as it was before the plant was ever built.
The teardown hasn't come cheap. OPPD ratepayers are on the hook for more than $1 billion over seven years to fund the decommissioning, according to Omaha.com. The estimate covers the decommissioning project, even as its physical work wraps up.
Federal oversight has run alongside the demolition the whole way. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission lists Fort Calhoun's reactor as permanently shut down as of October 24, 2016. OPPD's decommissioning work has continued at the site. With the physical work now finished, those remaining federal reviews are what stand between Fort Calhoun and the end of a process that began long before most of the plant's buildings ever came down.
