Interim Storage Partners (ISP) on Monday petitioned for dismissal of the sole permitted contention against federal licensing of its planned consolidated interim storage facility in West Texas for spent fuel from nuclear power plants.
Upon rejecting the contention, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Board should then close out the entire proceeding of requests for adjudicatory hearings and intervention by several advocacy organizations, ISP added in its motion.
Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of Orano and Waste Control Specialists (WCS), in June 2018 applied for a 40-year NRC license to store up to 5,000 metric tons of used fuel on the WCS property in Andrews County. With additional authorization from the agency, the facility could hold a maximum of 40,000 metric tons of material for up to 120 years.
The Sierra Club, Beyond Nuclear, and a number of other groups filed requests for hearings in which they could present contentions against the license application. On Aug. 23, the three-member, quasi-judicial Atomic Safety and Licensing Board approved only one of the Sierra Club’s 17 submitted contentions and rejected the other petitions. All the organizations have said they will appeal the ruling to the full commission.
The allowed “contention of omission” posited that ISP’s environmental report for its license application failed to adequately describe five reference documents used in evaluating the potential impact of the project on the Texas horned and dunes sagebrush lizards. The documents are also particularly difficult for the public to find.
Interim Storage Partners said the contention should be dismissed because, as of Sept. 4, it has transmitted electronic copies of the studies in question, or made clear where they can be found in the NRC’s electronic documents database.
“As Sierra Club’s sole contention must be dismissed as moot, there remains no pending contention – nor any other contested matter – before the Board in this proceeding,” lawyers for ISP wrote.
