Holtec International President and CEO Kris Singh on Wednesday said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should not give the public extra time to comment on a key document in licensing his company’s planned facility in southeastern New Mexico for storage of spent fuel from nuclear power plants.
In a draft environmental impact statement issued in March, NRC staff said the consolidated interim storage facility in Lea County should have no significant effect on the environment. Staff preliminarily recommended approval of the license.
The public was initially given to May 22 to submit comments on the document. At the urging of members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation and others, that was extended to July 22 due to the impact on the process of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The agency appears to be considering a further extension of up to three months, Singh wrote in a letter dated June 10 to Andrea Kock, director of the NRC Division of Fuel Management. Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the nongovernmental Union of Concerned Scientists, posted the letter late Thursday on Twitter.
Holtec supported the first extension for a total of 120 days, Singh stated, but sees little value on drawing out the comment period.
“Holtec believes that a further extension is unlikely to yield any enlightening input to the discourse on environmental impact,” he wrote. “We note that, at this writing, the Commission has received 344 comments from private citizens and groups. Unfortunately, it seems that none of the comments point to any environmental consideration that the Staff may have overlooked.”
The project faces a targeted campaign by its opponents, the Holtec founder added. He said the environmental scoping process for the EIS in 2018 drew 7,000 comments, but the vast majority were a largely identical form statement.
“They are evidently using marginally interested citizens to bolster the decibel level of their noise,” according to Singh. To which Lyman responded via tweet: “Perhaps he should listen more carefully.”
There have not been any new requests for an extension to the public comment period, NRC spokesman David McIntyre said by email Friday. However, “staff continues to assess the situation with the public health emergency and our intention to hold public meetings in New Mexico during the comment period, which currently expires July 22,” he wrote.
On April 1, a coalition of 50 nongovernmental groups asked the NRC asked for at least 199-day comment period amid the pandemic.
Holtec, an energy technology company headquartered in Camden. N.J., in March 2017 applied for a 40-year license for underground storage of up to 8,680 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel. With further authorizations from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the facility could hold in excess of 100,000 metric tons of the radioactive waste for up to 120 years.
The regulator expects to finalize the environmental impact statement next March. It would rule on the license application shortly afterward, based on the environmental findings and a separate safety report.
If opened, the Holtec facility and a smaller storage site planned by Interim Storage Partners nearby in West Texas could offer nuclear utilities an option for shipping away tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel now mostly held at the power plants where it was generated. By law, disposal is the job of the Department of Energy – but after several decades of trying, the agency still does not have anywhere to put the waste. Consolidated interim storage, theoretically, bridges the gap between on-site management and a permanent repository.
“We should recall that removing the used fuel from some 75 scattered sites across the country and to aggregate it into few manageable consolidated interim storage facilities has been the U.S. Government’s announced goal since the days of the Obama Administration,” Singh wrote. “Believing in our government’s sincerity of purpose, we began the HI-STORE CIS to build on the arid plateau of New Mexico that will use our incomparably safe and below-the-ground storage system (HI STORM UMAX).”
Holtec has faced stiff opposition to its plans from the administration of New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D), as well as corporate concerns and advocacy groups in the region and around the nation. Among their concerns are potential releases of radioactive material in transit or in storage, along with hazards to the state’s core agriculture and oil and gas industries. They fear interim storage will become permanent if the federal government never builds its disposal site.
A number of organizations have petitioned the NRC for hearings in which they could formally raise concerns about both storage project , with little success. Last week, Maryland-based Beyond Nuclear filed an appeal in federal court against two NRC decisions against its filings on the Holtec application.
A three-month delay in completing the environmental impact statement could also harm another of Holtec’s newer businesses – acquisition of retired nuclear power plants for decommissioning, Singh told Kock. The company has already bought facilities in New Jersey and Massachusetts, with further acquisitions planned in New York state and Michigan.
In each case, it takes on all responsibility for cleanup and management of used fuel. In return, Holtec assumes ownership of reactor decommissioning trusts that can hold hundreds of millions of dollars, and at times exceed $1 billion. But finishing the job, and returning the properties for other uses by local communities, requires a place for the spent fuel – which would be in New Mexico.
“Any delay in licensing of the project undermines our government’s publicly stated position and our representations to the public,” according to Singh. “Therefore, we urge the NRC to consider time to be of the essence in this licensing evolution.”
The NRC has scheduled a webinar for June 23 in which staff will discuss the findings of the draft EIS and take public comments. The online meeting is scheduled for 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern time and can be accessed here. The meeting number is 199 800 0026 and the password is HOLTEC.
Live meetings are also planned in New Mexico, though no dates have been set.
