Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company, Haddam Neck Plant Records

Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company was a nuclear power plant located in Haddam Neck, Connecticut on the Connecticut River. The first commercial nuclear power plant in the state, it began operation on January 1, 1968, with an initial capacity of 490,000 kilowatts. Its capacity was later increased to 582,000 kilowatts. In its twenty-nine years of service the plant produced over 110 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. The plant was formally retired on December 6, 1996, when the Board of Directors voted to permanently close the plant after an economic analysis determined the cost of supplying electricity was not beneficial to its customers.

Decommissioning of the plant, known as a "construction in reverse" process, began in 1998. Connecticut Yankee chose to dismantle the site, as opposed to placing it in protective storage or sealing it and leaving it in place for decades. The process to decommission a nuclear power plant involves reducing the amount of radioactivity on the site to a level that allows the site to be released for future use. It is a step-by-step process that takes years to complete and involves the decontamination and dismantling of existing facilities, cleanup for any contaminated soil, and possible groundwater treatment.

The dismantling of the plant was monitored by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other government agencies as well as local citizen groups. A storage facility was constructed about ¾ mile from the reactor site for dry cask storage of the plant's 1019 spent fuel assemblies. Decommissioning of the plant concluded in 2007.

The decommissioning project required compliance with federal legislation regarding the preservation and management of archaeological sites. From 2002 to 2006, Connecticut Yankee commissioned several archaeologists to undertake reconnaissance surveys to identify and evaluate archaeological resources on the Haddam Neck property.

[This text is from the 2012 Connecticut Yankee annual report, used with permission]: Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company owned a single unit nuclear power electric generating plant (the “Plant”), which has been decommissioned. The Company's common stock is owned by eight New England electric utilities. On December 4, 1996, CY permanently ceased power operations at the Plant and commenced the process of decommissioning the Plant’s site. To provide for interim storage of its spent nuclear fuel and greater-than-Class C (“GTCC”) waste, the Company built an on-site independent spent fuel storage installation (“ISFSI”) and completed the transfer of the spent fuel and GTCC to the new facility in March 2005. On November 27, 2007, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (“NRC”) announced the issuance of the license amendment releasing the Company’s non-ISFSI land from the NRC operating license, effectively confirming the completion of physical decommissioning of the Plant’s site. An appropriate number of corporate and technical employees and contractors, along with security personnel, remain on the site in connection with the operation and maintenance of the ISFSI.