NAC International is asking the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to waive $632,398 in fees from its review of the company’s new transportation package for spent reactor fuel.
The Georgia-based used fuel management specialist said the costs were an unfair outcome of incorrect thermal modeling of the MAGNATRAN system by an unidentified contractor for the federal agency.
The company ultimately was charged just over $2 million in review fees before the NRC last April issued the certificate of compliance (CoC) for the product after a review of more than eight years.
“NAC believes that approximately $632,398 of those fees can be attributed to delays and unnecessary rework resulting from the extended review process and the lack of openness and transparency with regard to the Contractor’s work,” NAC International President and CEO Kent Cole wrote in a Sept. 11 letter to NRC Chief Financial Officer Maureen Wylie.
Cole also said his company sustained more than $500,000 in labor costs to address the thermal-modeling discrepancy. He noted that the NRC does not appear to be regulatorily prohibited from paying interest on improper fees. The NRC should do so for the disputed fees in this case “to make NAC whole,” according to Cole, though he said the company is willing to drop that matter in favor of expedited resolution of the fees issue.
The NRC on Tuesday said it was reviewing the request. NAC International did not respond by deadline to a query on the matter.
The MAGNATRAN transport cask would be used to carry NAC’s MAGNASTOR used fuel canisters during transport. The company is partnering in Interim Storage Partners’ project to build a facility for centralized storage of spent fuel assemblies now kept on-site at nuclear power plants around the country.
