Holtec International this week secured the latest exemption to a low-level waste tracking rule that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has planned to rework as part of a long-stalled decommissioning rule.
The proposed rulemaking would instruct companies shipping low-level radioactive waste to a disposal site to track shipments and notify the commission if the waste packages don’t reach their final destination within 45 days, an agency spokesperson told RadWaste Monitor via email Wednesday.
Current regulations require that notification to take place after just 20 days, which Holtec said in its request for an exemption is so short that it will inevitably trigger reporting requirements because of lag-times associated with rail transport.
Although the final version of NRC’s decommissioning rulemaking was supposed to be ready in 2019, it has been the subject of some delay. The agency spokesperson told the Monitor Wednesday that the commission has yet to release any further guidance.
The foot-tapping over the proposed rules change continued as NRC Oct. 19 granted Holtec International an exemption to the 20-day rule for waste leaving Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, according to a Federal Register notice.
NRC has granted five similar exemptions to the shipping rule to other nuclear power plants including San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in California, Nebraska’s Fort Calhoun plant and Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station, an agency spokesperson told the Monitor Wednesday. The agency granted the first of those exemptions to Illinois’s Zion Nuclear Power Station in 2015.
According to the Oct. 19 notice, Holtec argued in an August exemption request that while a 20-day rule is adequate for truck shipments, waste from Pilgrim is sent to Waste Control Specialists’ Texas disposal site by rail — a process that Holtec said has taken up to 56 days in the past. One reason for that delay, the company said, is because there is no direct rail access to the plant. Waste shipments from Pilgrim must be trucked to a railyard, where drivers may idle for some time before loading up a railcar. Subsequently, shipments can get stuck waiting around a railyard while a carrier waits to assemble a full train load, Holtec said.
The company also believes that “administrative processes at the disposal facility and communication of receipt times could add several additional days to shipping delays,” the notice said.
In lieu of the 20-day requirement, Holtec will use a tracking system that allows “daily monitoring of a shipment’s progress to its destination” and notify NRC if shipping takes longer than 45 days, NRC said.
Meanwhile, Holtec has moved about half of Pilgrim’s spent fuel inventory into dry storage. The company said in late September that 17 of the Plymouth, Mass. plant’s 34 spent fuel canisters had been transferred to an onsite storage pad. The transfer should wrap up in November, the decommissioning project manager said at the time.
Holtec acquired Pilgrim from Entergy in 2019. Decommissioning work should finish up in 2027 or so, the company has said.
