Interested stakeholders should get a chance this month to chat with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about a recent staff report analyzing the agency’s ability to regulate large-scale transportation of spent nuclear fuel in the U.S., commission documents show.
NRC staff plans to hold public meetings “beginning in January 2022” to discuss the results of its spent fuel oversight survey, Executive Director for Operations Daniel Dorman told the commissioners in a letter dated Dec. 2. A spokesperson for NRC told Exchange Monitor via email Wednesday that a meeting date had not yet been scheduled.
The report, completed in October but made public in late December, aimed to assess NRC’s current regulatory framework in anticipation of a “large-scale, multimode, multipackage, extended-duration [spent fuel transportation] campaign,” Dorman said. NRC does not store or transport spent fuel, but would be responsible for overseeing the safety and security of potential shipping campaigns.
The commission in September licensed a private company, Waste Control Specialists-Orano USA joint venture Interim Storage Partners (ISP), to build an interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel in west Texas. NRC is also weighing granting a license to a similar commercial site planned for New Mexico by Holtec International.
ISP has said that its site could eventually host around 40,000 tons of spent fuel during the period of its 40 year license. Holtec, meanwhile, has said that its site would initially be able to store roughly 8,700 tons of nuclear waste in 500 canisters, with room for up to 10,000 additional storage canisters that could be added through future license amendments. According to the latest data from the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. commercial nuclear power industry has accumulated about 80,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel.
NRC staff found that the agency currently has an adequate regulatory framework to handle large-scale spent fuel transportation that provides “reasonable assurance” of public safety, security and environmental protection, Dorman said. Despite that, the report suggested NRC update its safety and security inspection guidance for spent fuel transport and increase public engagement on the topic.
“[W]hile no commercial shipping campaign is currently imminent, this assessment determined that the NRC is ready and able to provide the proper oversight should one eventually occur,” an agency spokesperson told Exchange Monitor in a Wednesday email.
As NRC prepares for the possibility of overseeing large-scale spent fuel transport across the country, the two proposed sites where those waste shipments would most likely end up are facing legal obstacles. The states of Texas and New Mexico, as well as a coalition of anti-nuclear groups and other stakeholders, have sued the commission in federal courts over the last year to block the Holtec and ISP sites from being built.
If either company manages to see its project through to completion, the proposed interim storage sites would be the only operating locations in the U.S. licensed to store the tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel currently stranded at reactor sites across the country.
