NorthStar Group Services has officially closed its deal to acquire the 1,600-acre Vallecitos Nuclear Center in Sunol with plans to decommission, decontaminate and environmentally restore the site.
The New York-based firm made the announcement that it had taken ownership of the site from GE Vernova Inc. and GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy Americas (GEH) in mid-March after approvals from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
GEH initially announced the sale in May 2023 to NorthStar, which cleans up nuclear and other industrial sites so they can be used for other commercial or industrial use. Terms of the deal were not announced, but published reports indicated the sale price was $7 million. The deal closed on Jan. 29, 2024, according to county property records.
“Our team has developed deep experience in the safe and efficient decontamination, decommissioning and restoration of former nuclear reactor sites across the country, including the successful implementation of NRC License Termination Plans at five other research reactor sites nationwide,” NorthStar CEO Scott State said in a statement. “We appreciate GEH’s recognition of our expertise and the trust in our abilities this deal represents.”
The Vallecitos site was the country’s first privately owned and operated nuclear power plant to put significant electrical energy into the public power grid, along with several other test reactors, laboratories and hot cell facilities located on site, NorthStar said.
Before it shut down in 1963, the reactor delivered about 40,000 megawatt-hours of energy to the grid. Today’s power plants can deliver that much energy in a day.
Two years after it closed, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s Nuclear Energy Program, a precursor to the Department of Energy, and the civilian nuclear power industry used Vallecitos for research until 1975, and again in 1981 and 1982.
Employees at Vallecitos developed and tested reactor fuel, controls and systems for larger plants built later, and offered training for the industry’s engineers, scientists and reactor operators.
Other nuclear operations after the halt of research included neutron radiography, a type of industrial imaging, and radioisotope production for medical use.
During decontamination work done in 2009 and 2010, GEH disposed of clothing, tools, rags, debris and other items tainted with small amounts of radioactive elements. The waste was shipped for permanent disposal at a plant in Carlsbad, N.M., the DOE said.
Since the sale was first announced nearly two years ago, NorthStar continued the work that GEH had started. NorthStar said it marked a milestone in November 2023, completing the removal of the Vallecitos boiling water reactor from the Vallecitos Nuclear Center and shipping it for safe disposal to a NorthStar affiliate, Waste Control Specialties, in Andrews County, Texas. NorthStar will dispose of additional low-level radioactive waste from Vallecitos at that facility.
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Ruth Roberts contributed research to this story.
