NEWPORT, Mich. — A 20-year extension for Fermi 2’s operating license has been put on hold because an activist group has convinced the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to take a closer look at how potassium iodide pills would be distributed to area residents if the plant ever has a major release of radioactive steam.

They especially will look at those residents living within the 10-mile emergency planning zone around the plant.

Originally scheduled for Tuesday, the long-awaited license extension has been postponed because of a last-minute legal contention raised by Citizens’ Resistance at Fermi 2, or CRAFT.

The plant’s owner-operator, DTE Energy, applied for the license extension on April 30, 2014 after spending years putting together the application.

In a memo to senior NRC officials on Monday, Bill Dean, the agency’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation director, who oversees licensing requests for each of America’s commercial nuclear plants, said the NRC staff was told to hold off on issuing the 20-year extension for now because of the issue raised.

The memo said agency staff is expected to develop and submit a white paper about CRAFT’s contention to the NRC’s governing board in the coming weeks, and that the NRC will decide at that point how to proceed.

CRAFT’s contention was filed Nov. 21. It convinced the NRC to reopen what had been a closed record in the Fermi 2 license renewal proceeding since Sept. 11, 2015.

In its motion, CRAFT said the issue of potassium iodide pills needs to be explored in greater detail because it was not adequately addressed in DTE’s final environmental impact statement. The group asserts the utility used “incorrect input data, thus resulting in incorrect and unreasonable conclusions about the costs versus benefits of possible mitigation alternatives.”

“This contention alleges a deficiency or error which has enormous independent health and safety significance,” the motion states.

Jessie Collins, CRAFT co-chair, said today her group’s filing “has thrown a monkey wrench in both the NRC and DTE’s timetable.”

“We don’t expect it will stop the license extension, but will hold it off a little longer,” she said. “Hopefully, DTE and the state of Michigan distribute potassium iodide to every household within the emergency planning zone like Canada is doing.”

Guy Cerullo, DTE spokesman, said the utility "will ask the NRC to deny the motion to reopen the proceeding, because the contention is without merit and does not meet the regulatory criteria for reopening."

"Distribution of potassium iodide is not within the scope of a license renewal review," Mr. Cerullo said.

DTE is confident "the process will confirm that Fermi 2 can continue operating safely – as it is now – and provide clean, economic baseload electricity to our customers well into the future," Mr. Cerullo said.

Other activist groups support CRAFT’s contention, including Michigan-based Alliance to Halt Fermi 3 and Maryland-based Beyond Nuclear, both of which have been engaged in a potassium iodide campaign in Monroe County since 2015.

Keith Gunter, Alliance to Halt Fermi 3 co-chair, said on Nov. 22 the lessons learned from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi disaster on March 11, 2011 “illustrate that the millions of Michigan [and Ohio] residents who live and work within 50 miles of DTE’s Fermi 2 plant need to be better prepared and protected in advance of a potential nuclear accident.”

Fermi 2 - which is operating at full power today - is located about 30 miles north of downtown Toledo along the western Lake Erie shoreline. It is the largest of 23 U.S. reactors with the same type of General Electric design as those at Fukushima.

NRC records show the plant began operating July 15, 1985. Its original license expires on March 20, 2025.

DTE is trying to get the plant’s license extended into 2045.

Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.

First Published November 30, 2016, 7:05 p.m.