RadWaste Monitor Vol. 11 No. 38
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RadWaste Monitor
Article 6 of 7
October 05, 2018

Battle Over NRC Spent Fuel Storage Licenses Continues

By ExchangeMonitor

A nuclear watchdog organization and two private oil and gas entities are contesting the stance from the staff at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that they cannot request dismissal of license applications for facilities to store tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel in Texas and New Mexico.

Beyond Nuclear and the teaming of Fasken Land and Minerals and Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners (PBLRO) on Sept. 14 filed the dismissal motions against Holtec International’s planned facility in Lea County, N.M., and a venture by Orano and Waste Control Specialists for radioactive waste storage in Andrews County, Texas.

Along with highlighting the potential risk posed by the radioactive material, they argued the license applications breached the requirement of the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act that a permanent disposal site be established prior to the Department of Energy assuming responsibility for shipping or storing spent reactor fuel.

There is no permanent repository yet. The Texas and New Mexico facilities are intended to operate for 40 years or more, potentially enabling DOE to meet its legal mandate to remove spent fuel from nuclear power plants until the final disposal site is ready.

The anti-storage arguments were quickly met by separate counter-filings by NRC staff and the two license-seeking companies, which said the dismissal motions fell short on several fronts, including being filed past a 10-day deadline after the inciting event and failing to prove the groups had legal standing to file in the first place. Agency staff also said that requesting to intervene in the NRC review of the license applications (as Beyond Nuclear has done) is the proper means to address the potential legal violation.

In documents filed Sept. 28, and posted to the NRC website Monday, Beyond Nuclear and the Fasken/PBLRO group pushed back against the pushback. The three have legal standing to file the dismissal requests and the NRC is required by federal law to bring the motions into the agency’s deliberations, their attorneys asserted in the latest briefs.

“A substantial number of arguments raised in the (NRC’s) Responses are incorrect and misleading on significant issues such as judicial and NRC standing requirements and the relevance of previous NRC decisions on the application of the NWPA to NRC proceedings. Without the opportunity to reply, Beyond Nuclear cannot address these mischaracterizations,” the Takoma Park, Md.-based antinuclear watchdog said in its reply.

The commission is not statutorily required to accept the latest replies from Beyond Nuclear and Fasken/PBLRO. The groups’ new filings feature both leaves to reply and the replies.

If the NRC approves its project, Holtec hopes by 2022 to open the initially licensed part of the facility with underground-storage capacity for 8,680 metric tons of used fuel. It ultimately could increase licensed storage to about 173,000 metric tons.

The Orano-Waste Control Specialists team, officially called Interim Storage Partners, hopes to obtain a 40-year NRC license in 2021 or 2022 for its site in West Texas, just across the border from the planned Holtec facility. It would begin with 5,000 metric tons of capacity, up to a total of 40,000 metric tons.

Reached for comment on the latest paperwork in the case, Holtec referred RadWaste Monitor to its Sept. 24 filing with the NRC. Representatives for Interim Storage Partners and Fasken did not return requests for comment.

In its filing addressing the original dismissal motions from Beyond Nuclear and the Fasken-PBLRO group, Holtec said previous case law determined that “mere geographical proximity to potential transportation routes is insufficient to confer standing. … Where there is no current injury and a party relies wholly on the threat of future injury, the fact that one can imagine circumstances where a party could be affected is not enough. The petitioner must demonstrate that the injury is certainly impending.”

In earlier briefs, Beyond Nuclear said seven of its members live near Holtec’s proposed facility or the railways that would carry the spent fuel into the site.

Beyond Nuclear legal counsel Diane Curran countered that federal documents show that the NRC has used proximity as a factor in past deliberations. Since all the shipments to both sites would ultimately be funneled through one or two railroad lines, those trackside communities will be threatened by potential exposure constantly, she said.

The Fasken-PBLRO brief also argued that NRC regulations provide legal standing to anyone within a 50-mile radius of a nuclear site. Fasken said it has oil and gas resources roughly 2 miles from the planned Holtec location between the cities of Hobbs and Carlsbad. Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners represents oil and gas operators and royalty owners in the region straddling the two states who believe their financial interests could be harmed by local spent fuel storage.

The NRC staff and the two applicants have until Tuesday to file their responses to the Sept. 28 filings.

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NEW: Via public records request, I’ve been able to confirm reporting today that a warrant has been issued for DOE deputy asst. secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition Sam Brinton for another luggage theft, this time at Las Vegas’s Harry Reid airport. (cc: @EMPublications)

DOE spent fuel lead Brinton accused of second luggage theft.



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