WISCASSET (AP) – As the Maine Yankee decommissioning proceeds, company officials have been forced to take up temporary quarters as the administrative office building is demolished piece by piece.

Three double-wide trailers have been set up for workers taking part in the decommissioning, while Ted Feigenbaum, Maine Yankee president and CEO, has moved into an office at Fort Andross in Brunswick.

The administrative offices and two warehouses that are being demolished are among the few reminders of the 900-megawatt nuclear power plant that produced electricity during 24 years of operation.

The domed containment building that was knocked down by explosives in September has been replaced by several piles of rubble.

As the work continues, Manafort Bros. of Connecticut is in the process of conducting a final status survey to ensure that all radioactivity is removed before the decommissioning is finished this spring.

By the time decommissioning is completed, it will have cost $500 million. All that will remain are a security building and the storage facility where canisters hold the highly radioactive fuel rods.

Those spent fuel assemblies will remain until the federal government follows through with its promise to build a repository for high-level radioactive waste. The earliest that is expected to happen is 2010.

One of the final tasks for Maine Yankee is putting into place a corporate structure to oversee the management and security of the spent fuel storage facility, said spokesman Eric Howes.

“Maine Yankee Corporation will continue as an entity as long as the spent fuel is there,” Howes said. “The company’s mission is becoming an interim spent fuel storage facility.”

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