Holtec International must submit dozens of pieces of additional data before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can proceed with its initial review of the company’s license application for interim storage of spent nuclear fuel in southeastern New Mexico.
To start, the Camden, N.J., energy technology company must, per NRC rules, affirm under oath that all the information included in the original application filed earlier this year is true and accurate, an agency spokesman said Tuesday. Holtec’s application for the independent spent fuel storage installation was not submitted “under oath or affirmation,” the regulator said in its July request for supplemental information.
NRC staff also determined that Holtec had not supplied sufficient information on certain safety, environmental, and security measures at the planned facility to complete the acceptance review of the license application and proceed into the full technical evaluation. While details of the security-related information requests remain under wraps, the NRC’s other requests range from information on the probability that aircraft could crash onto the storage site to data on environmental impacts of the planned access road and railroad spur for the facility.
Holtec on March 31 submitted its application for an underground facility with capacity for up to 120,000 metric tons of used fuel from U.S. commercial nuclear reactors, which it hopes to complete by 2022. The site, if approved, could play a role in the federal government’s effort to meet its legal responsibility to remove what is now more than 75,000 metric tons of waste from nuclear utilities.
Holtec as of last week had informed the NRC it would respond to the safety-related information requests in two separate data tranches in October and December. It had not set a schedule for responding to the security-related questions, the NRC spokesman said at the time.
