The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Nov. 6 issued its first request for additional information for Interim Storage Partners’ license application for a temporary spent nuclear reactor fuel storage facility in West Texas.
The request covers 28 distinct questions regarding physical security at the planned installation on Waste Control Specialists’ waste disposal property in Andrews County. The actual questions are not being released because they address sensitive security issues, an NRC spokesman said Tuesday.
“The enclosed RAIs only address the physical security portions of the application. Additional RAIs may be issued in the future as the staff’s detailed review progresses,” according to the letter, from NRC Spent Fuel Licensing Branch senior project manager John-Chau Nguyen to Interim Storage Partners Senior Vice President and General Manager Elicia Sanchez, posted Tuesday to the NRC website.
The company should submit its responses within 60 days of receiving the letter, Nguyen wrote.
Interim Storage Partners is a joint venture of Waste Control Specialists and the U.S. branch of French nuclear firm Orano. In June, it filed an updated version of the license application that had been previously submitted in 2016 by Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists. The partnership is initially seeking a 40-year license for 5,000 metric tons of used fuel, though the total capacity for the facility is planned at up to 40,000 tons.
The NRC began its full technical review of the application in August, covering safety, security, and environmental aspects of the project. Interim Storage Partners hopes the review will wrap up in August 2020.
The West Texas project, and an even larger facility planned by Holtec International just across the border in southeastern New Mexico, could provide a means for the Department of Energy to meet its legal mandate to remove spent nuclear reactor fuel from the sites of generation. The agency is already two decades past the Jan. 31, 1998, deadline set by Congress, but it does not yet have a permanent repository for the material.
Tuesday was the deadline for outside parties to file requests with the NRC for intervention and an adjudicatory hearing in the review of the Interim Storage Partners license application. The filing organizations are: Beyond Nuclear; the Sierra Club; regional oil and gas production concerns Permian Basin Land and Royalty Organization (PBLRO) and Fasken Land and Minerals; and a coalition of environmental and anti-nuclear groups led by Don’t Waste Michigan.
Those organizations all also filed corresponding requests in the NRC license adjudication of Holtec’s spent fuel storage facility in Lea County, N.M., which would have an anticipated maximum capacity of 173,000 metric tons.
The cases against both projects are similar, starting with potential health and environmental dangers posed by shipping and storing what is now nearly 80,000 metric tons of radioactive waste spread around dozens of nuclear facilities across the country.
“Compounding this problem is that, realistically, there is no assurance that a permanent repository for nuclear waste will ever be found,” the Sierra Club said in its petition for intervention. “Therefore, an ‘interim’ storage facility as proposed by ISP may very likely become a permanent repository, without the protections that would be required of a permanent repository.”
Interim Storage Partners, like its rival, says its facility would not represent a radiation threat to workers or residents in the area, and that the likelihood of a leak of the solid spent fuel assemblies is exceedingly small. All storage canisters would be inspected upon arrival at the Waste Control Specialists property and then placed inside concrete modules.
“[T]here is very little risk from the transport casks to people or communities,” the company says on its website. “Transportation of used nuclear fuel is highly regulated. Shippers must comply with all regulations and oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Department of Transportation among others.”
To be allowed to intervene, the nongovernmental organizations will have to show standing on the license application and have submitted appropriate contentions against the program. Holtec has steadfastly opposed the petitions for intervention, and Interim Storage Partners seems likely to do the same.
The process for reviewing intervention requests for Interim Storage Partners will be much like that for Holtec, an NRC spokesman said this week. In that proceeding, a three-judge board of the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel has been established to rule on the intervention requests. It expects in January to conduct a prehearing conference with oral arguments on standing and contentions for the Holtec licensing.
