By John Stang
Appeals were filed Tuesday with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission over petitions to intervene in the federal licensing of a proposed site in western Texas for temporary storage of used fuel from commercial nuclear reactors.
On Aug. 23, an NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruled that only the Sierra Club has legal standing to intervene in the deliberations on the application from Interim Storage Partners — and that only one of the 17 contentions it submitted will be considered at an adjudicatory hearing on the licensing. That issue is whether the license application sufficiently addressed what impact the storage site might have on the local habitats of the dune sagebrush and Texas hound lizards.
The board rejected petitions for adjudicatory hearings on the licensing from Beyond Nuclear, a coalition of environmental organizations led by Don’t Waste Michigan, and the regional oil and gas concerns Fasken Land & Minerals and the Permian Basin Land and Royalty Organization. All on Tuesday filed appeals to the NRC commissioners of the board’s finding that they had either not proved standing to intervene or had not submitted admissible contentions. Interim Storage Partners itself appealed the board’s approval of standing and one contention from the Sierra Club.
Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of disposal provider Waste Control Specialists (WCS) and the U.S. branch of French nuclear company Orano, wants by early in the next decade to operate a facility in Andrews County with a maximum capacity of 40,000 metric tons of used fuel. The facility on the WCS waste disposal property, along with a competing project planned by Holtec International nearby in southeastern New Mexico, could enable the Department of Energy to finally meet its 1982 congressional mandate to remove used fuel from nuclear power plants.
The NRC expects to complete its full technical review of ISP’s license application by May 2021, a delay from the prior schedule of August 2020. The Holtec review is due for completion by March 2021, pushed back from July 2020. Both companies hope to begin operations within a couple years of licensing.
The commission, currently at four members, has not set a schedule for ruling on the appeals.
The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board determined the Sierra Club had standing because one of its members lives within 6 miles of the proposed ISP site. The accepted contention is that five references ISP used in concluding the lizards would not be impacted were not attached to the application and were almost entirely unavailable to the public. While Interim Storage Partners has now appended the documents to its application, the Sierra Club is still contesting some legal nuances on this matter, said Wallace Taylor, the attorney representing the organization.
Taylor said Friday this issue must be resolved before the Sierra Club can legally file appeals on some of the other 16 contentions. Those arguments include that the environmental report in Interim Storage Partners’ application does not support its case that consolidated storage of used fuel is safer and more secure than keeping the material at nuclear power sites; and that additional evaluation of earthquake dangers are needed.
Representatives for the Sierra Club, NRC staff, and ISP on Wednesday held an initial conference call on scheduling the contention proceeding.
The three-member, quasi-judicial Atomic Safety and Licensing Board found last month that the Fasken-PBLRO group had legal standing to intervene, but that but none of its five contentions met the legal threshold for consideration. The petitioner this week requested the commission allow three of the contentions rejected by the board: that ISP has not sufficiently studied abandoned wells in the area, it has not studied the effects of an airplane crash on the site, and groundwater contamination threats have not been adequately researched.
The Don’t Waste Michigan coalition encompasses advocacy groups based in Texas, California, and other states, along with a resident of Albuquerque, N.M. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruled that only the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) had standing to intervene based on having a member who lives within 7 miles of the ISP site. It rejected the other groups that said they have members who live near railways that could be used to transport used fuel — a threshold the board concluded was too low to be awarded standing. All 15 of the contentions were ruled inadmissible.
The coalition is trying to revive seven contentions, including concerns about waste volume estimates, potential exposures to minority and low-income communities along transport routes, inadequate knowledge of oil and gas drilling that occurred earlier at the site, and security risks.
While ISP has not yet selected potential transport routes, the appellants argued “ISP itself enumerated every major rail route in the lower 48 states as a possible transportation artery.”
Beyond Nuclear was granted legal standing because it has a member living 7 miles from the site. However, the board rejected the single contention against the legality of licensing a commercial facility for spent fuel storage. Under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Energy Department cannot take title to used power plant fuel until a permanent repository is available – which has not yet happened.
Interim Storage Partners has acknowledged the law, but has also indicated it might do business directly with nuclear power companies. That appeared to be sufficient for the board on the legality question.
“Beyond Nuclear requests the Commission either deny the application in its entirety or rule that all provisions in ISP’s license application that violate the NWPA must be removed,” the organization said in its appeal.
The same three Atomic Safety and Licensing Board panelists in May rejected all petitions for intervention in NRC licensing of the planned Holtec facility in Lea County, N.M. The petitioners there were largely the same as in the ISP proceeding, and they have already appealed to the commission. NAC International, a used fuel management provider that is working with Interim Storage Partners, was the only entity not to appeal its rejection from the Holtec case.
