The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a two-month extension to the deadline for stakeholders to request intervention or a hearing in Waste Control Specialists’ license application to build and operate an interim spent nuclear fuel storage facility in West Texas.
The deadline has been shifted from March 31 to May 31, according to an NRC order issued on March 29 and posted Monday on the regulator’s website.
After initially requesting that the NRC extend the intervention schedule by 120 days, the Sierra Club joined with Waste Control Specialists last month to ask for another 61 days, to May 31. NRC staff did not oppose that request, but did come down against requests for a 120-day extension from the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service.
“Given that the joint [Sierra Club-WCS] motion is unopposed, and in the interests of efficiency … I hereby grant all petitioners an extension of time until May 31, 2017, to file hearing requests on WCS’s license application,” Secretary of the Commission Annette Vietti-Cook wrote in her order. “The deadline for answers to timely hearing petitions shall be July 14, 2017. And the deadline for any replies shall be July 21, 2017.”
Waste Control Specialists in April 2016 submitted its NRC license application for a storage facility capable of holding up to 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel now stranded at reactor sites around the country. Pending NRC approval, the Dallas-based company hopes to begin operations in 2021.
Holtec International last month submitted its own license application for a facility that could hold up to 120,000 metric tons of waste in southeastern New Mexico.
The sites would be temporary homes for the spent fuel until the Department of Energy meets its congressional mandate to build a permanent repository — likely decades from now.
