TVA said in a statement Friday afternoon that it would not complete the sale of Bellefonte Nuclear Plant to Nuclear Development, LLC.

TVA said the following in the statement:

“On Nov. 30, 2018, the parties were unable to complete the sale of the Bellefonte property after Nuclear Development’s lack of progress in meeting its legal obligations related to future ownership of the site. Nuclear Development did not complete the necessary NRC license transfer prior to the closing date as required by the Atomic Energy Act.”

But, Nuclear Development disagrees and said they believed they had met every obligation to complete the deal and were “baffled” by TVA’s position.

Nuclear Development’s attorney sent TVA a letter disputing its reasons for failing to allow the deal to close. It says TVA’s claims that the sale would be unlawful because Nuclear Development doesn’t have a license for a production facility is incorrect, since at this point Bellefonte isn’t capable of producing nuclear material.  It also faults TVA for raising the issue just six days before the sale deadline.

Nuclear Development argued that it offered to extend the sale deadline to resolve the issue with federal regulators, but TVA declined to do so.

Nuclear Development won the purchase rights to the plant at auction in 2016 for $111 million.  The company had already paid $22 million to TVA in earnest money and had covered overhead costs for the plant over the past two years, according to Bud Cramer, the former north Alabama congressman who was shepherding the deal for Nuclear Development.