By John Stang
A scenario is being investigated of private corporations moving their spent nuclear fuel — possibly independent of U.S. Department of Energy ownership — to proposed consolidated interim storage sites in New Mexico and Texas.
That scenario — being studied by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) — was discussed this week at the ExchangeMonitor’s virtual Decommissioning Strategy Forum.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) of 1982 calls for DOE to take ownership of spent nuclear fuel from reactors to transport it to a permanent repository. That repository has been presumed to be Yucca Mountain in Nevada. But Congress, led by Nevada’s congressional delegation, has stalled that project since 2010. The Donald Trump administration likewise has suspended its push to license the facility with the NRC.
However, the NWPA does not prohibit private corporations from shipping fuel from their reactors to a consolidated interim fuel storage facility, David McIntyre, an NRC spokesman, said. This reactor-to-interim-site scenario would not require DOE assuming ownership of the fuel.
Currently, spent reactor fuel is stored at roughly 60 sites in 34 states
On Tuesday, Gerard Jackson, an NRC transportation security specialist, outlined the preliminary steps that the NRC will take in analyzing this scenario. The NRC hopes to finish determining by May 2021 whether it can staff and fund a national program to supervise the private sector transporting its fuel to New Mexico and Texas.
This project will be not tied to the NRC’s review of the requests to get licenses for the two interim storage sites, Mcintyre said. He added: “There will certainly need to be stakeholder outreach of some sort around an industry transportation campaign.”
Most of the transportation is expected to be by rail.
In western Texas, Interim Storage Partners hopes to obtain an initial 40-year NRC license in 2021 or 2022 to build and operate an interim storage site. The tentative construction completion date is 2023 or 2024, beginning with 5,000 metric tons of storage capacity. The site could ultimately hold 40,000 metric tons of capacity, potentially licensed for up to 120 years.
Meanwhile, Holtec International hopes by 2023 to open the initially licensed part of a used fuel facility, with underground-storage capacity for 8,680 metric tons, between the cities of Hobbs and Carlsbad in New Mexico. Its total capacity could eventually exceed 100,000 metric tons.
Beyond Nuclear and several other nuclear watchdog organizations are contesting the proposed New Mexico and western Texas interim storage facilities on legal and environmental grounds. However. Beyond Nuclear does not have a problem with private corporations retaining ownership — along with the accompanying legal responsibilities — of spent fuel shipped to and stored at an interim site, said Dianne Curran, one of the attorneys for Beyond Nuclear.
