By John Stang
The U.S. Regulatory Commission this week pushed back its schedule for completing reviews of license applications for two planned used nuclear fuel storage facilities in Texas and New Mexico.
The agency by letter notified the corporate teams behind the projects: Holtec International, which wants to build a site with maximum capacity exceeding 100,000 metric tons of waste in Lea County, N.M.; and Interim Storage Partners (ISP), which wants a 40,000-metric-ton-capacity facility not far away in Andrews County, Texas.
Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of Orano and Waste Control Specialists, should expect the agency to finish its draft environmental impact statement by May 2020 and the final version by May 2021, according to a July 1 letter from John McKirgan, chief of the Spent Fuel Licensing Branch in the NRC’s Spent Fuel Management Division, to ISP CEO Jeff Isakson. The safety and security review for the license application is set to be done by May 2021. Previously, the reviews had been scheduled for completion in August 2020.
The additional time is intended to give ISP more time to respond to requests for additional information from the NRC, according to the letter. Interim Storage Partners had responded to at least three such requests by late April.
Interim Storage Partners hopes to obtain an initial 40-year NRC license in 2021 or 2022 for its site in western Texas, just across the state border from the planned Holtec facility. It would begin with 5,000 metric tons of capacity.
Waste Control Specialists submitted its solo license application in April 2016 for a storage facility that would be built on its waste disposal complex. That process was suspended as the Dallas-based company unsuccessfully fought the Department of Justice over its planned merger with rival EnergySolutions. After being acquired by private equity firm J.F. Lehman & Co. in January 2018, the company last year partnered with the U.S. branch of French nuclear company Orano to revive the application.
“With any shift in timing, there’s the potential to affect the overall schedule,” ISP spokeswoman Karen Johnson said by email. “But ISP plans to continue providing accurate and timely responses to help complete the NRC license review at the earliest possible date. This is all part of the rigorous review process that NRC goes through to ensure a complete and accurate license is approved.”
Separately, the NRC told Holtec it expects to complete its draft environmental impact statement for the license application by March 2020, with a final EIS to be published by March 2021. The NRC told Holtec to expect its final security and safety review to be done by March 2021. The original completion date for the environmental plus safety-and-security reviews for Holtec was July 2020.
Again, the revisions are to accommodate Holtec when it receives requests for additional information from the NRC for its March 2017 application.
The licensing decision will ultimately be made by the director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards or a designee.
“Timing of final licensing decisions may depend, of course, on whether there is a hearing underway for a particular application,” NRC spokesman David McIntyre said by email.
Holtec hopes by 2023 to open the initially licensed part of used fuel facility, with underground-storage capacity for 8,680 metric tons between the cities of Hobbs and Carlsbad.
“Holtec’s objective is to ensure that the Company provides the NRC with timely and accurate information to permit the NRC to perform the license review. Pending funding for construction from DOE and/or nuclear utilities and/or other entity(s), operations could begin in 2023 – 2024.,” Holtec spokesman Joe Delmar wrote in an email.
A quasi-judicial NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board in May all rejected six petitions for adjudicatory hearings and intervention in the Holtec licensing proceeding. All but one of the petitioners, which include the Sierra Club, Beyond Nuclear, and regional oil and gas interests Fasken Land and Minerals and Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners, have appealed the decision to the full commission.
Many of the same groups have filed corresponding petitions for the ISP licensing. Oral arguments on the petitions before the same three-member Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that considered petitions in the Holtec case are scheduled for July 10 and possibly July 11 at the Midland County, Texas, Courthouse.
If built, the facilities could provide an option for the Department of Energy to meet its congressional directive to remove commercial used fuel from nuclear power plants. It is already more than 21 years past the Jan. 31, 1998, deadline set in the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act to begin taking the waste.
