Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
8/22/2014
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission tentatively plans to vote on the final rulemaking for the Waste Confidence update on Aug. 26, according to the Commission’s online meeting schedule. The NRC Staff released the draft final rulemaking at the end of July, which would make this affirmation vote a quick turn-around from the Commission. It appears the reasoning behind it is to enable Commissioner William Magwood’s vote to count towards the final decision-making. Magwood announced earlier this summer that he would be leaving the Commission at the end of August to take over as the Director-General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA). The NRC declined to comment on the tentative vote date.
The NRC’s proposed waste confidence ruling, released last year, found that spent fuel can be stored on site for 60 years past a reactor’s licensed life. When the NRC first issued a revised waste confidence rule in 2010, the Commission extended the length of time assumed to be safe for storage of spent fuel at a reactor site from 30 to 60 years. In 2012, though, a federal court found the NRC’s rule deficient and mandated an updated version, along with an environmental impact statement. In response, the NRC based its draft revised rule on a generic environmental impact statement that found the environmental impact of storing spent fuel on-site was small in most categories. The recently released draft final rulemaking from the NRC Staff did not include any major changes to the rule, although a timeline of repository availability and safety considerations were removed from the rule.
Environmental Groups Upset with Magwood Vote
The group of 34 environmental activist organizations sent a letter this week to NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane, urging her to delay the vote so that Magwood could not participate. The group has spent the summer unsuccessfully trying to obtain Magwood’s resignation and retroactive recusal for his involvement with the NEA while still holding office in the NRC. The group argues in their letter to Macfarlane that Magwood’s compromised status would put a cloud of doubt around the vote. “If Mr. Magwood is permitted to participate in the upcoming vote, state and local governments and members of the public – who must live with the effects of the NRC’s decisions – will have legitimate grounds to question whether Mr. Magwood unduly influenced the agency to gloss over the serious problems that attend the long-term storage and disposal of spent reactor fuel, in order to fulfill his new mission of promoting nuclear energy worldwide,” the group’s letter said. “Despite his glaring conflict of interest, Mr. Magwood has refused our request that he recuse himself from NRC decisions relating to safety and protection of the environment. Therefore it falls to you, the other members of the Commission, to protect the integrity and credibility of your decision-making process by postponing this very important affirmation session until after Mr. Magwood’s departure.” The NRC and Macfarlane declined to comment, but did say the vote was still scheduled.
NRC Commissioner Responds to Lawmakers’ Waste Confidence Concerns
NRC Commissioner Kristine Svinicki, meanwhile, indicated this week that the Commission expects to have a final rule for its Waste Confidence update published by early fall, she wrote in a response letter to House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.). Upton, along with other House Energy leaders, sent the NRC a letter back in July inquiring about the timetable of the Waste Confidence decision-making and how the delays have affected the timeliness of license renewals in an effort to draw urgency to the decision-making. While Svinicki could not elaborate on the effect the rulemaking has had on the renewal timelines, she assured the House lawmakers that the NRC is tackling the issue as a top priority. “With regard to your interest in the NRC’s schedule to conclude its review of the continued storage rule, I can assure you that the Commission is actively reviewing the draft final rule package provided by the NRC staff on July 21, 2014,” Svinicki said in her letter. “Although the NRC has not established a specific date for publication of the rule, this is an important rulemaking and the Commission is treating the matter as one of high priority. The Commission expects to have a final rule published by early fall.”
