The licences to finish taking apart Three Mile Island Unit 2 and Kewaunee now sit under a new ultimate parent, and the regulator approved that on the applicants' own representations
The reactor is not going anywhere.
What moved on 12 August is the ownership sitting several floors above it. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued an order that day, effective on issuance, consenting to the indirect transfer of control of six licences from EnergySolutions, LLC to ECP VI, LLC and its ultimate parent, Bridgepoint Group, PLC. The order was published in the Federal Register on 20 August. Nobody is selling a reactor and no licence is being handed to a new operator, because the licensees stay exactly where they are and what changes is who owns the holding company above them.
The six licences
Radioactive Materials License No. 39-35044-01 is held by EnergySolutions, LLC and covers support for a range of possible work scope activities. License No. DPR-43, with Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation general licence No. 40, is held by Kewaunee Solutions, Inc. and authorises decommissioning at Kewaunee Power Station and possession of the spent nuclear fuel stored there. License No. DPR-73 is held by TMI-2 Solutions, LLC and authorises decommissioning at Three Mile Island Nuclear Station Unit 2, including work on a general licensed spent fuel installation currently under construction. Export Licences XW010 and XW018, held by EnergySolutions Services, Inc., authorise the return of radioactive materials to Canada and to Germany.
Unit 2 at Three Mile Island is the reactor that suffered the partial meltdown in 1979. The licence to finish taking it apart is on that list.
What the agency actually found
The application was dated 24 April 2026 and supplemented on 29 July. Notice of receipt, with an opportunity to comment and to request a hearing, ran in the Federal Register on 6 June at 91 FR 36169. Two public comments arrived. Staff reviewed both and determined that neither contained information within the scope of the action.
The operative finding is narrow, and the order says so in its own words: relying on the representations contained in the application, staff determined that Bridgepoint Group, PLC is qualified to indirectly hold the licences. Staff then made the three findings the statute requires, that there is reasonable assurance public health and safety will not be endangered, that activities will be conducted in compliance with the regulations, and that the transfers are not inimical to the common defence and security or to public health and safety. A supporting safety evaluation carries the same date as the order.
The applicants gave their own reason for the transaction, which the order quotes rather than adopts: to maintain private equity investment in the decommissioning, waste management and nuclear services business by investment managers with considerable experience in the sector, and to help grow it. In that one sentence the document spells the parent Bridgeport. In its caption and in the ordering paragraph it spells it Bridgepoint.
Two conditions
The applicants must tell the Director of the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards in writing at least two business days before the planned closing. And if the transfer is not completed within one year of the order's issuance, the order becomes null and void, subject to extension on written application for good cause. That puts an outside date of 12 August 2027 on a transaction that has already cleared its regulator.
