SUMMERLIN, NEV. — Although its Nuclear Regulatory Commission license has been delayed four times now, Holtec International’s proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel could be up in running in New Mexico, at least partially, by 2025, an executive said here.
NRC’s May announcement that it would hold off on licensing the proposed Holtec site until January 2023 presents “only 18 to 24 months” of disruption to the company’s plans to build and begin operating its facility by 2025, Myron Kaczmarsky, vice president of Holtec’s government services division, told RadWaste Monitor Thursday on the sidelines of Exchange Monitor’s Radwaste Summit.
Kaczmarsky did hedge a little, telling the Monitor that the proposed site could be considered operational even with just a few storage canisters installed.
“The answer is, yeah, we could be operational,” Kaczmarsky said. “We can have some cells available immediately and then continue to build on a modular, stepwise basis.”
Kaczmarsky also said that Holtec was “talking to a number of utilities” that own nuclear power plants about getting financial support to transport spent fuel from their facilities to a future Holtec interim storage facility.
“There is potential for some sort of deal, with funding, possibly, to move spent fuel,” Kaczmarsky said.
Holtec itself owns several former nuclear power plants with their own spent fuel inventories, such as New Jersey’s Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station, New York’s Indian Point Energy Center and, the latest addition to the stable, the recently acquired Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan. Waste from those sites could be moved to the proposed interim storage site as proof of concept for potential utility investors, Kaczmarsky said.
Meanwhile, NRC is waiting on Holtec to provide a fourth round of information agency staff needs to complete a required safety review for the proposed site. The commission has said that report is currently scheduled for publication alongside a final licensing decision in January 2023. An environmental impact statement for the site should be ready by July, NRC has said.
If it gets built, Holtec has said that its proposed interim storage site, planned for Eddy County, N.M., could initially be able to store around 8,700 tons of spent nuclear fuel in 500 canisters. That capacity could be increased by 10,000 canisters in future license amendments.
