The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday said it would conduct a full technical review of Holtec International’s application for a license to build an interim spent-fuel storage facility in southeastern New Mexico.
The Camden, N.J.-based energy technology company filed its application on March 30, 2017, for authorization to store as much as 8,680 metric tons of used fuel from commercial nuclear reactors under a 40-year license. It says its planned facilty, built in partnership with the local Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, could ulitmately hold up to 120,000 metric tons of spent fuel now stored on-site at nuclear power plants around the country.
NRC staff spent nearly a year on its acceptance review of the application, including a request for supplemental information from Holtec.
“The NRC staff reviewed your application, as supplemented, and concluded it provides sufficient information for docketing; and for the staff to begin a detailed safety, security, and environmental review,” Michael Layton, director of the NRC’s Division of Spent Fuel Management, wrote in a letter to Holtec Licensing Manager Kimberly Manzione.
The evaluations are expected to be complete by July 2020, Layton said, assuming Holtec provides “timely and high-quality” responses within 60 days of any further requests for additional information.
Holtec hopes to begin receiving spent fuel in 2022.
The Energy Department is mandated under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act to find a permanent home for the nation’s growing stockpile of spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste, but has made little progress on siting, licensing, and building the repository in the last 36 years. Meanwhile, the federal government has already incurred more than $6 billion in liability payments to nuclear utilities forced in the interim to manage the spent fuel.
Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists in April 2016 submitted its own license application for consolidated interim storage of spent fuel at its disposal complex in West Texas. The company asked the NRC a year later to suspend the review ahead of the then-pending federal bench trial on its acquisition by nuclear services provider EnergySolutions, of Salt Lake City. A federal judge blocked the deal, but Waste Control Specialists was acquired in January by private equity firm J.F. Lehman. There has been no official word since then whether the company will revive its license application.
