Three administrative judges of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel have been selected to rule on requests for intervention in the agency’s review of a license application for a planned spent nuclear reactor fuel storage facility in Texas.
However, a number of environmental organizations quickly petitioned that the judges be disqualified because they are already hearing corresponding requests in the licensing proceeding for a similar project less than 50 miles away in New Mexico.
Interim Storage Partners (ISP), a joint venture of Orano and Waste Control Specialists, in June submitted an application for a 40-year license to build and operate a facility in Andrews County, Texas, that could hold up to 40,000 metric tons of used fuel from commercial power plants until a permanent repository is ready. The NRC began its full technical review in August, and ISP hopes for a ruling by 2021 or 2022.
Several advocacy organizations filed requests for intervention and a hearing in the proceeding: Beyond Nuclear; the Sierra Club; regional oil and gas production concerns Permian Basin Land and Royalty Organization (PBLRO) and Fasken Land and Minerals; and a coalition of environmental and anti-nuclear groups led by Don’t Waste Michigan. In public and in filings with the NRC, these groups have warned of the potential dangers of shipping and then storing tens of thousands of tons of radioactive material now stored at nuclear plants across the country.
Administrative Judges Paul Ryerson, Nicholas Trikouros, and Gary Arnold will decide whether to approve the intervention requests, according to a Nov. 23 notice in the Federal Register. Ryerson will chair the three-judge Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.
One or both of the consolidated interim storage facilities (CISF) could be a means for the Department of Energy to meet its legal mandate to remove spent fuel from storage at commercial reactors. The agency is more than 20 years past the Jan. 31, 1998, deadline set by Congress to begin this process.
To be authorized to intervene in the CISF applications, petitioners will have to demonstrate they have standing and have submitted reasonable contentions against the license. By one accounting, more than 36 contentions have been raised against each storage license application on matters including location, geology, hydrology, and the potential for seismic events in the region.
On Nov. 23, NRC staff said the Fasken-PBLRO group had shown standing to intervene in the Interim Storage Partners licensing given the proximity of its members’ energy operations near the planned storage site, on Waste Control Specialists’ disposal property in Andrews County. However, staff said only one of five Fasken-PBLRO contentions against the Texas project should be ruled admissible. As of Friday afternoon, no similar NRC staff documents had been posted for the other intervention petitions.
“The application requires common sense and in-depth research of the risks involved in placing a high-level nuclear waste dump on top of the largest crude oil producing region in the U.S.,” Fasken attorney Monica Perales said by email Wednesday. “We await the decision of the Commission and the opportunity to present our arguments at a hearing.”
The same three administrative judges comprise the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board established on Oct. 31 to consider requests for intervention in Holtec International’s 40-year license application for a nearby facility in Lea County, N.M., that would hold up to 173,000 metric tons of spent fuel. Assuming NRC approval, the New Jersey energy technology company hopes to open the facility by 2022.
Would-be intervenors in that proceeding largely cover the groups seeking hearings in the Interim Storage Partners licensing, with the Don’t Waste Michigan coalition slightly reconfigured. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has recommended in part approval of the intervention requests from Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club. Four southeastern New Mexico municipalities that are working with Holtec on the project have also filed to participate in the proceeding as interested governmental bodies.
On Thursday, Ryerson scheduled oral arguments on the groups’ standing and contentions for Jan. 23 and possibly Jan. 24 in Albuquerque, N.M. “We do not expect oral argument will be necessary on the standing of all petitioners or on the admissibility under [federal regulations] of all proffered contentions,” he wrote.
The immediate future of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board for the ISP licensing is a bit hazier.
The Sierra Club and a Don’t Waste Michigan-headed coalition made the case in a Nov. 26 disqualification petition that using the same board “suggests the appearance of bias and requires appointment of a different ASLB panel to preside over this case.”
“The two pending CISF licensing adjudications are momentous and easily comprise the most visible litigation before the NRC since the Yucca Mountain repository case. There will be multiple portentous rulings within each separate CISF case,” according to the petition. “It is incumbent that the two adjudications be assigned to separate, non-overlapping ASLB panels to dispel any appearance or suggestion that the complex and controversial decisions in one case are being made, but in short-shrift or summary fashion, by the same judges in the other CISF licensing case.”
The NRC declined to comment Tuesday on the petition. The agency had not filed a formal response to the disqualification request as of Friday.
