The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week officially resumed its technical review of a license application for a facility in West Texas that would store up to 40,000 metric tons of used nuclear reactor fuel.
A partnership of Waste Control Specialists and Orano in June filed an updated license application for the planned consolidated interim storage facility in Andrews County. That was more than a year after Waste Control Specialists asked the NRC to suspend review of its-then solo application.
“The NRC staff has reviewed your request and concludes that the revised license application provides information sufficient to resume its detailed review,” Chau-John Nguyen, a senior project manager in the NRC’s Spent Fuel Licensing Branch, wrote in a letter to Jeff Isakson, president and CEO of the Interim Storage Partners joint venture. The letter, dated Aug. 21, was posted to the NRC website on Aug. 24.
Agency personnel will now restart work on the environmental impact statement and separate safety evaluation for the license application, Nguyen wrote. The NRC will also post Federal Register notices giving the public an opportunity to request a hearing on the application and for the refreshed scoping period for the environmental impact statement.
The agency anticipates completing the safety, security, and environmental evaluations of the application in August 2020, according to Nguyen. That schedule could encompass up to four rounds of requests for additional information on safety and environmental issues in 2018 and 2019. Interim Storage Partners hopes to obtain the license in 2021 or 2022.
“As noted in the NRC’s letter, we are pleased that the quality of our submission met the NRC’s review requirements, including our initial safety analysis and environmental reports,” Isakson said in an Interim Storage Partners press release issued Monday. “We look forward to an energized and timely process, and continuing to provide high-quality responses to any NRC requests for additional information.”
Interim Storage Partners is seeking a 40-year storage license, covering eight phases each encompassing 5,000 metric tons of radioactive waste, at the Waste Control Specialists disposal complex. Holtec International is also seeking an NRC license for a larger interim storage facility just across the state border in southeastern New Mexico.
The two properties could help the Department of Energy meet its congressional directive to remove all U.S. used nuclear fuel from the commercial reactors where it was generated. The federal government is already more than two decades behind the Jan. 31, 1998, deadline set by the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act to begin taking the waste. The interim storage sites could open in a handful of years, but a permanent solution remains up in the air given the ongoing battle over the planned Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada.
Waste Control Specialists was actually first out of the gate, filing its application with the NRC in April 2016. The agency completed its acceptance review in January 2017, but the Dallas-based company in April of that year asked the NRC to temporarily wind down the evaluation. Management in part cited the anticipated $7 million-plus price tag while Waste Control Specialists waited to be sold from holding company Valhi Inc. to nuclear services company EnergySolutions. That deal came apart in June 2017 when a federal judge ruled in favor of a Department of Justice lawsuit that alleged the merger of two low-level radioactive waste disposal providers would violate federal antitrust laws. Private-equity firm J.F. Lehman acquired WCS in January, and the company in March joined Orano to revive the spent fuel storage project.
The license application has been updated to reflect the new joint venture, but the waste storage plan remains the same.
Holtec, meanwhile, in March 2017 filed its own license application for a facility in southeastern New Mexico. The initial license would cover 8,680 metric tons of spent fuel, but the New Jersey energy technology company envisions ultimately storing more than 100,000 metric tons just underground starting in 2022.
The NRC began its technical review of the Holtec application at the end of February. The agency held several open meetings at its Rockville, Md., headquarters and around New Mexico. Debate over the project remains intense, with more than 4,800 comments submitted to the NRC, most in opposition to the facility – though many of those are identical statements from different individuals.
Opponents worry about the dangers posed by transporting and then storing dangerous radioactive waste for decades, and suspect temporary storage could become permanent if the federal government remains unable to build a final repository. Supporters emphasize the long safety record in domestic transport and storage of this material and the economic benefits provided by what is expected to be a $2.4 billion capital project in New Mexico.
Presumably these same dynamics could play out as the NRC considers the Interim Storage Partners license request.
Agency staff have already conducted four meetings to take public input on the scope of the environmental impact statement for the Texas project, NRC spokesman Scott Burnell said by email. “These meetings offered interested members of the public, both near the WCS site and across the country, the opportunity to express their concerns and to raise issues they believe should be addressed in the EIS.”
Over 16,000 letters, emails, and other comment documents were also sent to the NRC.
Staff was preparing requests for additional information at the time of the license application suspension last year. That work will now resume, Burnell said.
Both reviews involve 20 to 30 agency technical personnel and contractors. It could take about three years and $7.5 million – ultimately repaid by the applicants – to process a high-quality application for a consolidated interim storage facility, according to Burnell. But that does not cover resources for hearings on an application.
“If a hearing is sought and granted, the extra time and cost to complete the hearing process will depend on the complexity of the hearing, including the number and complexity of hearing issues,” he stated.
