The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has denied two petitions from 34 environmental groups, which claim the regulator’s “piecemeal” approach to its continued storage rule hides the environmental significance of certain regulations on spent fuel storage and disposal at nuclear power plants.
The continued storage rule, formerly known as the waste confidence rule, includes a sweeping, generic environmental impact statement (GEIS) that is required in the issuance or renewal of plant operating licenses. In a separate case, NRC defended the rule in federal court in February, after New York state and other petitioners claimed the “one-size-fits-all” GEIS doesn’t address site-specific environmental concerns at plants. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to release an opinion on the matter at a later date.
Attorney Diane Curran submitted two separate petitions on behalf of 34 environmental organizations between 2013 and 2014. Among their claims is that NRC’s “piecemeal and disjointed approach” to regulating spent fuel storage and disposal violates National Environmental Policy Act guidelines that say an agency cannot segment its analysis in a manner that “conceals the environmental significance of its action.” The petitioners suggested the NRC is segmenting the regulation into smaller components to avoid preparing additional environmental impact statements, or avoid addressing related concerns in its generic environmental impact statement. The petitioners requested that NRC revise certain regulations in its 10 CFR part 51, claiming the rule is “balkanized” “and disparate and inconsistent,” and that it should be made into a “cohesive and consistent whole,” according to an NRC filing Thursday.
The petitioners’ second petition contends that staff evaluations concerning Japan Lessons Learned recommendations on expedited transfer of spent fuel and a study on beyond-design-basis earthquake impacts on certain spent fuel pools constitute “new and significant” information. The group suggested the NRC alter regulations to reflect this new information.
NRC denied the petitions on the basis that “petitioners have not presented a sufficient basis to amend the regulations.” The regulator contended that the petitioners “have not shown any case where the NRC artificially divided a licensing action into smaller components.”
“Under Commission precedent, information that provides a ‘seriously different picture’ of the environmental consequences than previously considered is new and significant information,” Thursday’s filing reads. “As explained below, the NRC finds that the petitioners’ information does not provide a ‘seriously different picture’ of the environmental consequences of spent fuel storage. As a result, the NRC concludes that the current technical bases for those regulations challenged by the petitioners remain sound.”
Curran said in a statement the petitioners are “disappointed that the NRC continues to defy NEPA by refusing to inform its reactor licensing decisions with a cradle-to-grave analysis of the impacts of generating, storing and disposing of spent fuel.”
“If the NRC were to reckon with these impacts at the time of licensing or re-licensing reactors, it could change the agency’s decision regarding whether it is cost-effective to continue generating highly radioactive spent fuel for which no safe means of disposal yet exists,” she said by email, adding that the group is exploring the potential for an appeal.
