The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting an environmental assessment as part of its review of the Energy Department’s application for a 20-year extension of its license for storage in Idaho of waste from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.
“The purpose of the EA is to assess potential environmental impacts that may significantly affect the human environment,” Cinthya Román, environmental review chief in the NRC’s Fuel Cycle Safety, Safeguards, and Environmental Review Division, wrote in a July 6 letter to Susan Burke, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) oversight coordinator at the state Department of Environmental Quality. “The EA will include an analysis of potential impacts to environmental resources such as land use, air quality, socioeconomic environment, historic and cultural resources, and occupational and public health (radiological and non-radiological).”
The Three Mile Island Unit 2 Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) at INL holds 341 canisters of spent nuclear fuel core debris left by the partial meltdown of the Pennsylvania reactor in March 1979. The Department of Energy does not plan to expand the storage pad or bring in any additional waste should the license be extended, Román wrote.
The license is scheduled to expire on March 19, 2019. The requested extension would allow the facility to operate through March 19, 2039. However, an agreement with the Idaho government directs DOE to ship the spent fuel from the ISFSI out of state by Jan. 1 of 2035.
Three Mile Island’s other reactor remained operational after the accident, but plant owner Exelon in May announced plans to close the plant in 2019.
