The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should address water supply and quality and a number of other issues in its environmental impact statement (EIS) for a planned spent nuclear reactor fuel storage site in southeastern New Mexico, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The environmental evaluation is a key part of a broader NRC technical review of Holtec International’s license application to temporarily store 8,680 metric tons of radioactive waste – and eventually more than 100,000 metric tons — between the cities of Hobbs and Carlsbad.
Interested parties have until Monday to submit input on the scope of the regulator’s EIS. Most of the roughly 200 comments filed to date have generally argued for or against the project, but the EPA dug into the details in a June 11 letter that was posted Tuesday on the NRC website.
Among the recommendations:
- The environmental impact statement should offer details of groundwater conditions in the area around the facility site and potential impacts to groundwater quality and quantity from “reasonably foreseeable activities.”
- There should be a comprehensive accounting of all candidate and listed threatened and endangered species in the project zone. Potential impact of building, installing, and maintaining the facility on the local habitat should also be discussed in the EIS.
- The NRC should discuss and forecast air emissions that could be produced by the project, along with possible means for reducing emissions.
- The document should discuss direct, indirect, and total affects of solid and hazardous wastes from building, maintaining, and operating the facility.
The letter was sent to the NRC from Cheryl Seager, compliance assurance and enforcement director for the EPA’s Region 6, which covers New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and 66 tribal areas. The same office would presumably keep an eye on a separate license application from a partnership of Waste Control Specialists and Orano for storage of up to 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel in West Texas.
