By John Stang
For the second time this year, opponents of temporary, centralized storage of the nation’s spent nuclear power reactor fuel took a crack at such a project before an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The opponents presented their cases to the three-person board Wednesday and Thursday that evidentiary hearings are needed in the licensing proceeding for the facility proposed by Interim Storage Partners (ISP) for Andrews County, Texas.
This week’s oral arguments in Midland, Texas, mirrored those made in January to the same board of administrative judges concerning a larger facility planned by Holtec International in Lea County, N.M. Several of the same groups have demanded to be heard in both cases, and their concerns about the dangers posed by the projects are similar.
The board on May 7 ruled against all petitions for intervention in the Holtec license proceeding. All but one of the petitioners are now appealing to the full Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The New Jersey-based energy technology company hopes by 2023 to open the initially licensed part of its used fuel facility, with underground-storage capacity for 8,680 metric tons between the cities of Hobbs and Carlsbad. Its site could ultimately exceed 100,000 metric tons of capacity, potentially licensed for up to 120 years.
Meanwhile, the ASLB has until Aug. 25 to rule whether any of the opponents of the Texas consolidated interim storage facility have demonstrated standing to intervene and admissible technical contentions against the license. However, that deadline can be extended by filing any new or amended contentions. After the ASLB makes its decision, appeals can be filed for up to 25 days to the commission.
If the board approves any of the petitions, the filing group or groups would have the opportunity to formally present their contentions for consideration in an evidentiary hearing of the ASLB. Interim Storage Partners has opposed all the petitions.
Interim Storage Partners is a joint venture of Orano USA and Waste Control Specialists. The venture hopes to obtain an initial 40-year NRC license in 2021 or 2022 for its site, which would be built on the Waste Control Specialists property just across the state border from the planned Holtec facility. The tentative construction completion date is 2023 or 2024, beginning with 5,000 metric tons of storage capacity.
The partnership submitted its license application in June 2018, updating an application that Waste Control Specialists had previously alone filed and then suspended. It is now undergoing a full technical review by NRC staff, encompassing environmental, safety, and security aspects of the proposal.
The petitioners for intervention are the Sierra Club; Beyond Nuclear; regional energy concerns Fasken Land & Minerals and Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners; and a coalition of environmental organizations led by Don’t Waste Michigan. These are mostly the same as those groups that unsuccessfully sought to intervene in the Holtec proceeding.
Generally, the opponents don’t trust that transporting large amounts of used nuclear fuel can be transported cross-country and stored in Texas and New Mexico can occur without accidents that will lead to leaks of radioactivity that would endanger human and environmental health. The companies counter those concerns by emphasizing the safety and security of their engineered storage systems and the United States’ decades-long history of safe transport of nuclear fuel.
Consolidated interim storage has been viewed as an avenue for the Department of Energy to meet its legal requirement to remove U.S. spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from its point of generation until a permanent federal repository is ready. With the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada stalled since 2010, no such permanent facility can be considered locked-in, Curran said in her prepared remarks.
Legally, a major thrust by the opponents is that the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act directs the Department of Energy to take title to spent fuel from power plants only when a permanent repository is available. Assuming DOE would be Holtec’s and ISP’s direct customer, they could not legally take title to the material to ship it to interim storage, according to the petitioners.
“The applicant for this license presumes the federal government will take title to the highly radioactive spent fuel to be transported and stored at the proposed facility. But federal law prohibits the government from owning spent fuel unless and until a permanent repository is in place,” Diane Curran, an attorney representing Beyond Nuclear, said in prepared comments for a press conference Tuesday before the hearing. “No permanent repository exists or is even under review at this point. Therefore, the NRC shouldn’t be considering this license application at all.”
Fasken argued that greenlighting the ISP project would take the pressure off Congress and the federal government to set up a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain or elsewhere. “We don’t think the NRC should even be considering an interim storage site because the law says there needs to be a permanent repository,” said Tommy Taylor, Fasken director of oil and gas development, told the Midland Reporter-Telegram.
Fasken is a major regional oil company and believes an accident involving nuclear fuel would harm the area’s oil fields.
Holtec and ISP have said they could work around the 1982 law by contracting directly with the nuclear utilities.
That question was to be addressed directly in the second phase of this week’s hearing, according to a June order from Administrative Judge Paul Ryerson, chair of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. In opening statements for the first phase, Ryerson directed the petitioners to focus on the ways in which their filings against the ISP project differ from those in the Holtec proceeding.
“In the Holtec proceeding, the Board recently determined no contention to be admissible.3 However, as the Board recognizes, the sites and the applications at issue in these separate proceedings are not the same,” Ryerson wrote last month.
In a statement read to the press conference, Midland County Commissioner Randy Prude noted that the Midland County and city governments had passed resolutions to oppose the project, as had the Midland Chamber of Commerce.
“Given our tornadoes and train and truck wrecks, transporting or storing high-level nuclear waste in West Texas for the next 40 years or more is a bad idea,” said David Rosen, a Midland oil industry executive, said at Tuesday’s press conference, according to the Midland Reporter-Telegram. “Why should we endanger the oil and gas drilling that powers our livelihoods and the economy of Texas?”
Leaders in Andrews County, where the facility would be built, have meanwhile thrown their support behind the project.
Curran on Friday declined to forecast the outcome of this week’s oral arguments.
In a brief cell phone interview Thursday, Interim Storage Partners spokesman Thomas Graham voiced optimism about the eventual ruling based on the board’s questions and the flow of the discussions.
“The NRC licensing process for consolidated interim storage of used nuclear fuel is a very thorough and lengthy process allowing for several opportunities for public input,” Interim Storage Partners said in a separate statement. “The process also gives applicants the opportunity to address that input by clarifying our responses or providing additional factual information. This is a responsibility we take very seriously and we hold great respect for the processes and procedures such as these hearings.”
