The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday gave interested parties just over two additional weeks to file requests for hearings and intervention on a license application for temporary storage of spent nuclear reactor fuel in West Texas.
The deadline has been pushed back from Monday to Tuesday, Nov. 13, according to an order from Annette Vietti-Cook, secretary to the commission.
Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of Orano and Waste Control Specialists, in June filed the application for a 40-year NRC license for a storage facility with an anticipated maximum capacity of 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel from nuclear power reactors. The application is a slightly updated version of the request previously filed and then suspended by Waste Control Specialists, and the storage facility would be built on its property in Andrews County.
The NRC order Friday offered limited approval to a significantly broader request filed on Oct. 2 by 37 nongovernmental groups and four individuals. The parties, including the Sierra Club and Nuclear Watch New Mexico, had asked that the license application and associated documents be printed in Spanish, with the comment and intervention period extended by 180 days after that was complete. They also asked for meetings on the scope of the NRC environmental impact study for the license application be held in several cities in Texas and communities near transport routes for spent fuel on its way to the planned storage site. The scoping period should also be extended by 180 days, the groups said.
Vietti-Cook denied the other requests for relief, saying they are beyond the scope of the opportunity cited in the NRC’s Aug. 28 Federal Register notice on the opportunity to request a hearing on the application.
In a letter Wednesday to Karen Hadden, executive director of the Austin, Texas-based Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition, the NRC noted that four environmental impact statement scoping meetings were held last year during the initial review of the then-solo WCS application. While no additional meetings are planned, the scoping period has been extended to Nov. 19.
